Chief of Staff - (Business Operations & Strategy)
Location: Montréal, QC (preferred) | Canada/US - Hybrid/Remote considered for the right candidate
About Us: Read this part first
Most Chief of Staff job descriptions describe the same imaginary person: "trusted advisor," "force multiplier," "drives alignment." Those phrases sound impressive, but they rarely tell you what the job actually is - This one does.
At No Saint, we're building a different kind of consumer products company. We develop next-generation nicotine products with a focus on innovation, product quality, and responsible commercialization. We believe meaningful change starts with building products that consumers genuinely choose to use. That's what allows us to create lasting impact.
We're growing quickly. Our products were recognized as The Grocer's Top Product Launch of 2025, and we're expanding into new markets. That means solving problems most consumer companies never have to. One day, it's commercialization. Next, it's customs, regulatory approvals, inventory planning, AI, fundraising, or product. There usually isn't a playbook.
With that growth comes a constant stream of new opportunities, priorities, and initiatives that emerge faster than most organizations are built to absorb. Someone has to stand between that firehose and the rest of the company, deciding in real time what's real, what moves now, what waits, and who owns it - That's you!
You report to the COO, and you're the reason the company can move at founder speed without flying apart.
This is not an administrative role. It isn't about building process for the sake of process. If you need a clean org chart and a clearly defined scope to do your best work, you'll hate it here. If you're energized by ambiguity, enjoy solving problems that don't have obvious owners, and like learning entirely new domains quickly, you'll probably love it.
What you'll actually do:
You are the operating layer between leadership's priorities and whether they actually happen. The COO sets direction; you make the organization metabolize it. You hold the whole business in your head, find where it's stalled, and unstick it.
You'll partner with the Product Manager — they own technical and product execution; you own everything organizational around it. You don't need to write the spec, but you need enough technical fluency to sit in the room, follow the tradeoff, and keep the decision moving.
You will:
Decide what moves. Own prioritization and sequencing across the whole business. Kill or defer more than you greenlight. Pressure-test the COO's priorities instead of just executing them. Challenge assumptions, surface tradeoffs, and force decisions.
Run commercialization and expansion on the ground. Turn "we're entering market X" into owners, dependencies, timelines, and a launch that actually clears logistics, distribution, customs, inventory, and the operational plumbing. Build the templates once so the next market is faster.
Own the compliance surface. Every market we enter comes with approval and compliance regimes that govern what we're allowed to sell and how we're allowed to talk about it. You won't be the technical expert on every framework, but nothing ships without those requirements being visible, owned, and built into the plan from day one.
Keep the corporate structure coherent. Our entities have to work together for tax, financing, operations, and liability. You help leadership keep that architecture aligned with where the business is actually going, making sure structural decisions don't get made in a vacuum.
Make the business legible. Build dashboards that turn scattered product, commercial, operational, and financial data into actionable insights for leadership. If a risk or a stalled initiative is invisible, that's your failure. Support the ERP and reporting buildout.
Get us fundraise-ready. Own diligence preparation, data room management, investor follow-up, and board materials. When an investor asks a hard question, the answer should already be organized.
Who you are:
You're a high-judgment operator, not a coordinator. The difference: a coordinator asks what the priorities are; you tell people what they should be and defend them.
You've run operations or been a Chief of Staff at a company that was actually moving — 7+ years of it.
You've operated in real complexity. Multi-market, multi-discipline, things that break when they cross borders. You've worked alongside product and technical teams and held your own in the conversation.
You're comfortable becoming conversant in unfamiliar business domains quickly. You don't need to be the expert on customs, fundraising, ERP, compliance, or AI on day one, but you're the kind of person who figures things out, brings the right people together, and keeps execution moving.
You cut the process; you don't manufacture it. The fastest way to fail this job is to respond to chaos by adding layers. You add the minimum structure that keeps things from breaking, and not one step more.
You're fluent in the modern toolset. ERP (Odoo or equivalent), BI and dashboards, a project platform (Asana, ClickUp, Notion — pick your weapon), and AI tools like Claude or ChatGPT are genuine force multipliers in how you work. If you're not already automating parts of your workflow, you're behind.
You're comfortable not owning the outcome you're closest to. You make execution happen across teams without taking the tactical work away from the people who own it. Ego about being the doer will sink you.
Compensation: Base + meaningful equity
If you're looking for a role where your judgment matters as much as your execution, we'd love to hear from you!
Additional Application Requirement:
1. One thing that was on fire when you arrived and wasn't when you left. What was broken? What did you do? How did you know it worked? (Two paragraphs.)
2. One initiative you killed or deferred over someone's objection, and why you were right. We care about this one the most.
3. The dashboard, system, or process you're proudest of building. One screenshot or one paragraph is enough. Show us how you make a messy business legible.
