**We are a startup-vibe work culture - please keep reading only if that kind of environment interests you. If you are looking for a highly structured, large enterprise, this is not the right position.
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We are looking for an Executive Administrative Business Assistant who can work directly with leadership and become a second set of business judgment inside the company.
This role includes executive administration, business decision support, and execution.
You will work closely with a senior leader and learn how they think, write, prioritize, assign work, evaluate risk, handle people, and make business decisions. Over time, the goal is for leadership to trust you to handle work the way they would handle it.
That means you will not only be scheduling meetings or organizing files. You will be expected to:
- Draft and send emails on behalf of leadership
- Turn verbal instructions into clear tasks for the team
- Decide who should own a task and what the expected outcome should be
- Track whether work was actually completed
- Identify when something is being mishandled or delayed
- Prepare leadership for decisions by gathering the right information
- Make practical recommendations instead of only reporting problems
- Support business development, proposals, grants, and client follow-up
- Help build stronger systems as the company grows
The right person will be trained to understand the business well enough to act as a practical extension of leadership.
The pace is intense. The expectations are high. Strong performance will be noticed quickly and rewarded quickly.
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Why this opportunity is different
Most administrative roles are built around helping someone stay organized.
This role is built around helping leadership make better decisions and execute faster.
Talos is still small enough that one sharp person close to leadership can have a major impact. A good person in this role will not just make the executive’s day easier. They will help the company make fewer mistakes, follow through faster, communicate better, and stay more accountable.
You will see the real decisions behind operations, staffing, proposals, sales, client communication, internal management, hiring, systems, and growth. You will learn why certain decisions are made, what information matters, which people need to be involved, and how to move something from discussion to completion.
This role is for someone who wants to understand how a business actually works, including:
- Wants to be trusted with important work
- Enjoys being the person who makes things happen
- Can handle pressure without becoming scattered
- Wants to understand the business behind the task
- Is comfortable being corrected, trained, and held to a high standard
- Can grow from assistant into business operator
- Wants their contribution to be obvious, useful, and measurable
The role can expand quickly for the right person.
If you become strong at writing, judgment, task control, business development support, proposal work, internal coordination, software systems, automation, or project tracking, those strengths can become a larger part of the role.
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The quick summary
Your goal is to become a trusted execution and decision-support partner for leadership.
That means helping convert leadership thinking into action across the company. You will support work across:
- Executive communication
- Internal task assignment
- Team follow-up
- Meeting preparation
- Meeting notes and action items
- Business development support
- Client and partner communication
- Proposal and bid coordination
- Grant and supplier applications
- Hiring and recruitment support
- Internal process improvement
- Company-wide priority tracking
- Contractor and vendor coordination
- Software, AI, dashboard, and automation workflows
The goal is simple: leadership should be able to hand you an issue and trust that you will understand it, organize it, move it forward, and come back with either a result or a clear recommendation.
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What you will own
You will own the work that turns leadership direction into business execution. This includes:
- Drafting emails in the executive’s tone and sending them when trusted to do so
- Reviewing incoming emails and identifying what requires action
- Preparing suggested responses for sensitive, important, or unclear messages
- Assigning or preparing task assignments for team members based on leadership direction
- Tracking open items until they are completed
- Preparing meeting agendas, notes, and action lists
- Spotting process gaps and suggesting practical fixes
- Following up with team members when work is due or unclear
- Making sure decisions from meetings become actual next steps
- Helping leadership compare options before decisions are made
- Helping organize internal systems, documents, SOPs, trackers, dashboards, and files
- Identifying when a task is vague, incomplete, delayed, or assigned to the wrong person
- Gathering information from the team so leadership does not have to chase it manually
- Supporting customer, partner, contractor, trainer, vendor, and government-facing communication
- Using tools like AI, Airtable, Microsoft 365, dashboards, and automation to make work cleaner and faster
- Taking verbal instructions and converting them into clear tasks, owners, deadlines, and expected outcomes
- Supporting business development emails, client follow-up, proposal coordination, grants, and supplier applications
- Helping leadership create better internal accountability across the teamThis role requires administration, but the standard is higher than administration.
You are expected to understand the business reason behind the work.
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What success looks like
Strong performance means leadership can rely on you with real responsibility. Success looks like:
- Leadership trusts you to draft accurate emails with the right tone
- You understand which issues matter and which ones do not
- You can turn a messy conversation into a clean task list
- Team members receive clear instructions, not vague reminders
- Open tasks are tracked until they are actually finished
- Leadership knows which work is stuck, delayed, or at risk
- You bring recommendations, not just questions
- You can handle recurring communication without constant review
- You understand when something should be escalated
- You know when to make a practical decision and when to ask first
- Meetings result in clear owners and next steps
- Business development, proposal, grant, and client follow-up work is supported properly
- Internal systems become cleaner because you are using them
- The executive becomes more effective because you are thinking alongside them
By the time you are performing well, leadership should be able to say: “Handle this,” and trust that you will move it forward properly.
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Who will do well here
This role is built for someone who wants to be more than an assistant but is also not above doing detailed administrative work. You may have experience as an:
- Executive Assistant
- Business Assistant
- Operations Assistant
- Founder’s Associate
- Chief of Staff Assistant
- Project Coordinator
- Office Manager
- Sales Coordinator
- Proposal Coordinator
- Recruitment Coordinator
- Customer Success Coordinator
- Business Development Assistant
- Administrative Coordinator
The strongest person for this role will be:
- Highly organized
- Very strong at follow-through
- Clear and direct in writing
- Strong enough to handle direct feedback
- Comfortable sending professional emails
- Good at deciding what information matters
- Interested in how business decisions are made
- Comfortable taking responsibility for outcomes
- Able to learn someone else’s tone and judgment
- Calm when several things are happening at once
- Serious about work, reliability, and personal growth
- Comfortable working in a startup-style environment
- Able to work with confidential or sensitive information
- Comfortable asking specific questions when something is unclear
- Interested in software, AI, automation, dashboards, and better systems
- Willing to do detailed support work while growing into higher-level judgment
This role will not fit someone who only wants a predictable admin checklist.
It will fit someone who wants to become useful at a much deeper level, and is looking a long-term relationship to grow a career.
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What makes this role different
This is a rare role because it gives the right person direct exposure to how a company is actually run.
You will be close to leadership decisions, client issues, team problems, business development, hiring, proposals, operations, systems, and growth planning.
You will learn how the executive thinks by working directly beside them.
Over time, you should become trusted to:
- Write like leadership
- Prioritize like leadership
- Assign work like leadership
- Evaluate urgency like leadership
- Notice risk like leadership
- Communicate expectations like leadership
- Recommend practical next steps like leadership
This does not mean you will make every decision independently.
It means the goal is for you to become aligned enough with leadership that you can reduce the number of decisions that need to go back to the executive.
That is what makes the role valuable.
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First 90 days
After the first few months you will be expected to operate with independence in defined areas. You should be able to:
- Handle routine emails
- Prepare decision notes
- Track key commitments
- Follow up with the team
- Assign or prepare task assignments
- Organize recurring leadership priorities
- Identify problems and recommend next steps
- Support proposals, grants, or client communication
- Keep leadership informed without needing every detail reviewed
At this stage, you should be seen internally as someone who improves execution and helps leadership make better decisions.
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What you get
This role gives you:
- Direct access to leadership
- A high-trust position inside a growing company
- Exposure to real business decisions
- Training in executive thinking, communication, and judgment
- Involvement in operations, sales, proposals, client work, hiring, systems, and growth
- A chance to shape the role around your strengths
- A fast-moving team where strong work is noticed quickly
- Financial reward tied to high commitment and strong performance
- The opportunity to help build a Canadian company serving the public sector
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About Talos
Talos exists to strengthen the people and systems that shape a country.
Talos is a Canadian company headquartered in Victoria, BC, serving government clients across training, technology, talent, and public sector operations.
Our team is unique, ambitious, and energetic. People here solve problems quickly, take ownership, and care about building something meaningful.
We work with the public sector across:
- Virtual training
- IT hardware and software
- Recruitment and headhunting
- Public sector operations support
- Technology and workflow improvement
From building secure technology systems to providing specialized staffing and running nationwide virtual learning programs, Talos designs reliable, human-centered systems that help keep public sector operations strong and adaptable.
The belief behind Talos is simple: stronger public servants create stronger institutions, and stronger institutions shape a stronger country.
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The bottom line
This role is for someone who wants to become trusted with real business responsibility.
You will write, organize, assign, track, follow up, coordinate, recommend, and help make decisions.
The right person will become more than administrative support.
They will become a practical business partner for leadership.
Pay: $64,000.00-$147,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Company events
- Dental care
- Extended health care
- On-site parking
- Vision care
Application question(s):
- Do you understand this position is IN-PERSON in Victoria BC?
- What is 1 thing that makes you unique?
- What 2 things could you confidently do in your 1st month that would deliver value in this position?
- Which one is your preference: VARIETY (where you are solving different challenges across different tools each week); or DEPTH (where you manage one core challenge across one tool each month)?
- How would you describe your tech skills using ONLY 1 word?
- What is the reason you are exploring new job opportunities like this one?
- What is your preferred $ hourly rate or annual salary?
Work Location: In person
