Operations Manager
Role Description
We are looking for a relentless, detail-obsessed operations contractor based in Hamburg to own the internal operational backbone that keeps our German and US operations running. You'll handle the recurring operations that span both sides of the company — accounts payable and receivable, compliance and filings, vendor and procurement administration, and Hamburg-local logistics — and build the trackers and SOPs that make those processes reliable. The job is to make things actually happen: chase every vendor, close every loop in writing, flag risk early, and document what you build. This is hands-on individual-contributor work for someone energized by turning messy processes into clean, repeatable ones — not a strategy, customer-deployment, or people-management role.
- Hours: ~10 hrs/week to start.
- Async-first, with a fixed overlap for live coordination. The rest of your hours are yours to
schedule.
- Rate: €35–60/hr, invoiced monthly.
- Start: as soon as the right person is signed
Key Responsibilities
- Accounts payable & contractor payments. Run the full cycle — receive and log invoices, route for approval, pay on approval, and chase missing invoices and approvals until they're resolved. Prepare contractor tax paperwork (W-9/1099) with our external accountants.
- Accounts receivable. Issue milestone invoices, send statements, run dunning, and reconcile.
- Compliance & filings. Own a master filings calendar and drive every deadline — US state registrations and franchise tax, sales-tax filings, certificates of good standing, insurance certificates (COIs) — coordinating our external accountants, payroll, and insurance providers.
- Vendor & procurement administration. Onboard vendors, manage NDAs and renewals, keep SaaS licenses / seats / password-manager access clean, and follow up relentlessly until vendors deliver on their commitments.
- Hamburg-local logistics. Stand up and run local shipping/receiving in Hamburg, handle EU↔US customs paperwork, coordinate German-speaking vendors, manage EU equipment loaners (3D cameras, scanners), and support the Hamburg office/test-bed.
- Systems & documentation. Keep our trackers current, build and maintain SOPs, and work down the operations-improvements backlog from "not started" to done.
Minimum Qualifications
- A relentless follow-through operator. You chase counterparties who go quiet, hold vendors to their commitments without being asked twice, and confirm completion in writing.
- End-to-end ownership and judgment. You take a task from intake to done, flag slippage before it becomes a fire, and bring a recommended option instead of routing every decision upward.
- Detail-obsessed and systems-building. You like making messy processes clean and repeatable; you build the tracker, write the SOP, and keep both current.
- 3+ years in operations, finance operations, vendor/procurement administration, or a comparable execution-heavy role.
- Fluent German and English, written and spoken — German for local vendor/logistics work, professional English for US-facing communication.
- Based in Hamburg (or within commuting distance), able to handle occasional in-person local logistics.
- Async-first and self-managing. Comfortable working largely on your own schedule with a short daily overlap to the US morning, and writing clear, lead-with-the-ask updates.
- Set up to work as an independent contractor in Germany (registered/invoicing as Freie Arbeit), ideally with other clients.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience supporting a US company or US↔EU operations (customs, cross-border
shipping, US state compliance).
- Robotics, hardware, manufacturing, or logistics exposure — useful, not required.
- Experience standing up operations from scratch in a small, fast-moving company
About Jacobi Robotics
Jacobi Robotics is an early-stage AI and robotics company building software for industrial robotic automation. Using proprietary motion planning, simulation, and AI, we deliver a first-of-its-kind mixed-case palletizing solution — proven in production and deployed with major logistics and retail companies through a network of integration partners. Our technology partners include Boston Dynamics and ABB. Founded in 2022 by roboticists and AI researchers from UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, and KIT, we are a multinational team: our company headquarters is in Silicon Valley, California, and we have an office in Hamburg, Germany, where part of our engineering and operations are based. For more information, please visit .
