Chief of Staff

About Mafer

Mafer AI builds an AI data platform for R&D teams in formulation industries: flavors & fragrances, food & beverage, cosmetics, personal care, home care and specialty chemicals. We structure the molecular and formulation data that today lives across instruments, spreadsheets and lab notebooks, and turn it into systems that accelerate analysis, formulation and regulatory work.

We are a small, highly technical team of engineers and scientists based at Pier07 (Via Laietana 26, Barcelona), backed by tier-1 investors. Everyone here works close to customers: you are either building or selling.

The role

You will work directly with Fer (CEO) and Marc (CTO) as the operating spine of the company. The role sits at the intersection of strategy, customer delivery, hiring and operations — wherever the company is bottlenecked, you'll be there.

What you'll do

• Strategy: sharpen our ICP across our core verticals (food & beverage, beauty & cosmetics, fragrance, specialty chemicals) and help decide which adjacent industries we open next.
• Customer ops: sit in deep-dives with R&D, regulatory and lab teams at clients and prospects, help scope pilots, and close the loop between what we ship and what gets contracted.
• Hiring engine: build the pipeline for our next hires across engineering, science and GTM — own the funnel from sourcing to offer.
• Internal infra: finance, legal, investor-facing materials, and the automation layer we're building.

What we look for

• 2–3 years at a top consulting firm or a fast-growing scale-up — ideally in operations, industrials, chemicals or consumer — used to ambiguity, structured thinking and sharp work under tight cycles.
• A technical or scientific undergrad (engineering, math, physics, chemistry, biotech, food science) or a credible self-taught technical layer: you can follow a chromatogram or a formulation matrix and translate it into a roadmap.
• Big plus: prior exposure to food & beverage, beauty & cosmetics, fragrance, specialty chemicals or industrial manufacturing — as a client, intern, advisor or operator.
• High agency: autonomy, judgment and initiative. You ship and you don't wait to be asked.
• Comfortable facing customers and walking into labs and factories — the role is operational, not deck-driven.
• Entrepreneurial mindset: the last step before starting your own company, or the role where you grow into a future GM/COO.

What you won't get: a PowerPoint job, a fixed scope, or a management chain between you and the work.

What you will get: a founding equity package and a front-row seat to a category being defined right now — a >$1T industry surface, a ~$100Bn/year R&D pool, and a software market where the next decade of share gets allocated in the next few years.

Hiring process

1. Apply below — we review every application and reply if there's a potential fit.
2. A 30-minute conversation with Fer (CEO) to get to know each other and align expectations.
3. A technical interview with Marc (CTO), around one hour.
4. A case study reviewed by the team — you'll have 48h to complete it.
5. We move fast: decisions typically take just a few days.