Executive Business Partner
Merge Labs · San Francisco
Merge Labs is a frontier research lab with the mission of bridging biological and artificial intelligence to maximize human ability, agency and experience. We’re pursuing this goal by developing fundamentally new approaches to brain-computer interfaces that interact with the brain at high bandwidth, integrate with advanced AI, and are ultimately safe and accessible for anyone to use.
About the team
Merge Labs’ People team hires, develops, and supports extraordinary scientists, engineers, and operators, then build the systems that let them do the best work of their careers — rigorously, safely, and with deep focus and creativity. Our scope spans recruiting, talent development, leader enablement, and people operations. We are thought partners and bar-raisers: clear principles, evidence-based decisions, and respectful candor ensure that talent and culture compound into a long-term strategic advantage.
About the role
We're looking for an exceptional Executive Business Partner who can make our leaders — and, by extension, Merge Labs — meaningfully more effective.
At its foundation, this is an executive support role, and we care deeply about excellence in the fundamentals: scheduling, preparation, logistics, communication, and follow-through. But the ceiling is much higher. We want someone who sees executive time and attention as scarce company resources and uses strong judgment to help allocate them well. This role sits within the People team and supports three members of company leadership, including two co-founders. You will report to our Head of People, who views excellent executive support as a distinct craft and an important source of organizational leverage.
As you earn trust, your scope may expand beyond individual support. You will help shape leadership agendas, track important decisions and commitments, improve how information flows across the organization, and take ownership of selected operational projects. The best person in this role will combine exceptional attention to detail with strong organizational judgment and a genuine commitment to the craft of executive support.
In this role, you will:
Shape how our leaders spend their time. Manage complex calendars for three leaders, with the majority of support focused on the co-founders. Proactively reconfigure, shorten, cancel, and sequence meetings; protect focus and preparation time; and make routine prioritization calls using established company priorities and executive preferences. Surface business tradeoffs to the executive rather than becoming a gatekeeping layer.
Build the right operating system around each executive. Develop working cadences that reflect how each leader operates best, reduce contextless meetings and coordination failures, and take increasing ownership of inbox and communication triage as trust is established. Create useful morning/evening digests where appropriate, link the right pre-reads and context to upcoming meetings, flag missing preparation, and proactively carve out time for actions that require the executive's attention.
Improve how information and decisions flow through the company. Understand how 1:1s, team meetings, cross-functional forums, leadership meetings, planning cadences, and company-wide communication connect. Maintain visibility into where priorities, decisions, and ownership are getting lost; surface issues requiring leadership alignment before they become blockers; and ensure important leadership decisions reach the people responsible for execution.
Steward important external relationships. Maintain an organized view of key scientific collaborators, clinical partners, funders, advisors, government and regulatory contacts, strategic partners, vendors, and prospective hires. Track relationship history, commitments, and next steps; coordinate visits, dinners, demonstrations, scientific meetings, and partner reviews; and help leadership sequence outreach so important relationships receive consistent attention without redundant or conflicting communication.
Handle logistics, travel, and sensitive context with exceptional judgment. Own travel end-to-end, learning each executive's preferences rather than simply booking the first workable option. Manage Merge-related receipts and expenses, coordinate executive and team events, and external partner visits, and act as a credible, high-presence host for important visitors. Handle highly confidential personal and professional information with discretion.
Provide limited personal support when it meaningfully protects work time. Be willing to coordinate occasional personal logistics that would otherwise materially disrupt an executive's workday. This is not a personal-concierge role: routine household errands, grocery shopping, family-related tasks, and similar ongoing personal tasks are out of scope.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Sweat the details and are proud of your craft. You believe exceptional executive support is a craft and take genuine pride in getting the fundamentals exactly right. You have supported founders or similarly demanding senior leaders and can point to specific ways you made them more effective.
You have exceptional prioritization judgment. You do not think of calendar management as scheduling; you think in terms of context, tradeoffs, and leverage. You can anticipate what a leader is likely to care about, make confident routine calls and recommendations within established priorities, and know when a decision belongs with the executive rather than with you. You enable access and effectiveness rather than becoming a gatekeeper.
Adapt to the executive, not the other way around. You can support an extremely organized leader in one style and build substantially more structure around a less organized leader in another. You learn how different people work, create systems that fit them, and have enough confidence and tact to tell a senior leader when their habits are getting in the way.
Anticipate, simplify, and make complicated things work. You are unusually good at seeing what will happen next, preventing problems before anyone asks, and closing loops that might otherwise get dropped. When you are blocked, you communicate proactively and manage up rather than waiting to be chased. You enjoy being the person who quietly brings order to complexity.
You use AI to increase your leverage. You are an AI-native operator who looks for ways to delegate repetitive work, synthesize information, prepare context, and automate lightweight workflows while maintaining the judgment and verification required for high-trust executive support.
Are a trusted, high-judgment partner. You can absorb a large amount of confidential personal and company context without becoming political or indiscreet. You communicate clearly, exercise strong judgment about what should be shared and with whom, and build trust through consistency and discretion. You bring warmth, optimism, and enough presence to represent our leaders credibly with employees, candidates, partners, and important visitors.
Are intellectually curious about the work you support. You want to understand the science, engineering, people, and strategy behind the organization well enough to make better decisions about executive attention and organizational priorities. You do not need to be a scientist or engineer, but you should be energized by learning from people working on difficult technical problems.
You are deeply aligned with our mission. You are excited by Merge’s mission and want your work to help enable ambitious scientific research. You care about building the operational foundation that lets our scientists move faster and pursue difficult, long-term problems.
We care much more about demonstrated judgment and scope than a particular number of years of experience. Experience supporting scientific or engineering founders, particularly leaders with academic or research backgrounds, would be especially valuable.
If you're excited about this role but don't meet every qualification, please apply. As we build, we're hiring for complementary strengths to form a high-impact team.
For more information about hiring at Merge, please visit our Hiring FAQ
Merge Labs does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, family status, ancestry, citizenship, U.S. military (state and federal) and veteran status, or any other legally protected status. It is our intention that all applicants be given equal opportunity and that selection decisions are based on job related factors. We are an equal opportunity employer.
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made by emailing accommodations@merge.io.
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