Founders Office Associate

About the Role

Ci4 builds autonomous platforms and the AI autonomy stack that runs them, handling complex, dangerous or repetitive tasks across maritime (including underwater) and land domains. This is a high-ownership, generalist role within an early-stage deep-tech company working on defense and unmanned systems. You will work directly with senior leadership to help the company move faster and with more clarity.

Key Responsibilities

• Research markets, customers, competitors, programs and technology trends in defense, autonomy and AI-enabled systems, and synthesize findings into concise recommendations for leadership.
• Prepare presentations, reports, briefing notes and executive-level summaries for internal planning, partners, customers and investors.
• Coordinate cross-functional initiatives across engineering, product, business development, finance, operations, production, marketing and customers: define scope, set milestones, track deadlines and dependencies, and escalate risks early.
• Run operating rhythms for the leadership team, including agendas, travel, meeting follow-ups, action tracking and progress reviews.
• Build and maintain trackers, dashboards and models in Excel/Sheets to monitor project status, pipeline, budgets and key metrics.
• Maintain clear documentation and knowledge bases in task management and documentation tools so decisions and processes are easy to find.
• Support business development, fundraising and partnership efforts with analysis, materials and coordination.
• Take ownership of ad hoc, high-priority projects as they arise, with a bias for action and little hand-holding.
• Build working relationships across the engineering and business teams and work closely with senior leadership.
• Handle confidential company, customer and program information with discretion.

What the Role is Like

• Early-stage environment: priorities shift, processes are still being built, and you will often be the person who builds them.
• Close proximity to leadership and to the hardware and AI teams building real autonomous systems.
• Broad exposure to how a defense and deep-tech company is built, from product to program execution.