Technical Executive Assistant to the Founder and CEO

Technical Executive Assistant to the Founder & CEO

Location: Los Altos, CA | On-site

Employment Type: Full-time

About Dyssonance

Dyssonance is building the next generation of AI infrastructure: large language models learn language. We believe the next frontier is modeling thought itself.

Our research combines ideas from machine learning, cognitive science, neuroscience, active inference, physics, and multi-agent systems to build a new class of reasoning systems capable of stateful, coherent, and continuously evolving thought.

We're a small, highly technical team of researchers and engineers building foundational technology from first principles.

About the Role

We are looking for an exceptionally resourceful Technical Executive Assistant to work directly with the Founder & CEO of a cutting-edge AI research company.

This is an unusual EA role.

You will own the traditional responsibilities of a high-performing executive assistant (including calendar, travel, communications, meetings, logistics, and follow-through), but a significant part of your job will be helping the CEO execute technical and operational projects that would otherwise consume her time.

Those projects can range from researching and deploying conference-room systems, smart-office infrastructure, Wi-Fi, displays, and IoT devices to coordinating an office redesign, evaluating new robotics hardware, setting up automated office systems, or figuring out how to make an entirely new piece of technology work.

You do not need to be an engineer. But you need to be technically curious, unusually resourceful, and completely comfortable being handed a problem you have never encountered before.

The job is not to already know the answer. The job is to figure it out how to get it done, and eventually, how to automate it, with agents, smart devices, robots, drones.

What You'll Own
Executive Support

• Manage a complex, fast-changing executive calendar and aggressively protect the CEO's time and priorities.
• Coordinate domestic and international travel, investor meetings, events, dinners, and important visitors.
• Triage communications, prepare materials, track commitments, and ensure important follow-ups happen.
• Handle highly confidential company, employee, investor, and research information with exceptional discretion.

Technical & Special Projects

• Research, compare, procure, configure, and deploy technology for the office and lab.
• Own smart-office infrastructure including connected devices, displays, conference systems, smart assistants, sensors, lighting, plugs, and automation.
• Help evaluate and deploy emerging hardware and robotics systems.
• Troubleshoot hardware, networking, AV, IoT, and everyday technical problems—and coordinate specialists when the problem requires one.
• Take ambiguous projects from “we should do this” to “it's done.”

Office & Lab Operations

• Own the day-to-day operational readiness of the office and research environment.
• Coordinate office improvements and redesign projects, working with vendors, contractors, designers, and the internal team.
• Manage equipment, deliveries, supplies, repairs, installations, and vendors.
• Maintain inventory and organization of hardware, electronics, tools, robotics equipment, and other physical assets.
• Ensure the space is always ready for employees, candidates, partners, investors, and demos.

Who You Are

• Technically fearless. When confronted with unfamiliar technology, your instinct is to explore it rather than avoid it.
• Extremely resourceful. You research, call people, read documentation, experiment, troubleshoot, and keep going until you find a solution.
• An exceptional organizer. You can manage a CEO's calendar while simultaneously keeping multiple operational projects moving.
• Hands-on. You are perfectly happy configuring software, opening boxes, connecting hardware, labeling equipment, moving things around, or getting underneath a desk to figure out which cable goes where.
• High-agency. You don't wait for detailed instructions when the objective is clear.
• Low-ego. The importance of a task is determined by whether it needs to get done, not whether it sounds impressive.
• Detail-obsessed. You notice the missing adapter, the scheduling conflict, the package that hasn't arrived, and the room that isn't ready.
• Highly discreet. You understand what it means to operate immediately adjacent to a founder and sensitive company information.

Background

There is no single conventional background for this role.

You might have worked as an executive assistant, founder's associate, startup operator, technical operations specialist, IT generalist, lab or makerspace manager, or in another highly hands-on role.

What matters most is that you have demonstrated the ability to take ownership of unfamiliar problems and solve them independently.

Experience with modern workplace tools such as Google Workspace, Slack, Notion, and project-management software is expected.

Especially Interesting

We'd particularly like to meet you if you:

• Build or tinker with technology for fun.
• Have experience with smart-home systems, networking, AV, electronics, Arduino/Raspberry Pi, 3D printing, robotics, or maker projects.
• Have worked directly with a founder or highly technical executive.
• Have operated in an early-stage startup where job descriptions were suggestions rather than boundaries.
• Get disproportionate satisfaction from taking something complicated, messy, or broken and making it work.

Why Join Us?

• Work directly with the founder of a fast-growing AI Lab (still in stealth)
• Ship quickly and have an immediate impact
• Work on difficult, foundational problems
• Help define entirely new categories of AI infrastructure
• Join early and help shape the future of the company

If you're the kind of person who sees an inefficient process and immediately starts thinking about how to build a repeatable process with the latest tech, we would love to talk to you.