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Chief of Staff |

Somewhere

Fully Remote
📍 South Africa
🇿🇦 SA Friendly: 1.0/1.0

🇿🇦 Hirezar Summary for South African Applicants

This fully remote full time position at Somewhere is open to applicants from South Africa. The estimated monthly salary is R64,750 – R83,250 ZAR. This role is suited for lead-level professionals. As a remote position, you can work from anywhere in South Africa — whether you're based in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, or a smaller town.

Job Description

Position:Chief of Staff

Location:Europe, SA, LatAm

Work Schedule: Full-Time. Must overlap at least 6 working hours per day with Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST / UTC+10), Monday–Friday.

Salary:Market Related

About the Company

We are a fast-growing, highly profitable, and completely bootstrapped direct-to-consumer (DTC) health products business operating two distinct brands. We operate under a lean, remote-first, and async-friendly model. Our growth is explosive, and our brand vision is led directly by our founder.

Because we are scaling rapidly, the day-to-day operational execution has become the founder's primary bottleneck. We are looking for an exceptional, systems-minded Chief of Staff to take absolute ownership of the operational "back half" of the business, allowing the founder to focus entirely on product vision, branding, and growth engineering.

The Opportunity & Career Path

This is the most critical hire our company will make this year. This is not an administrative or Executive Assistant role; it is an outcomes-driven, high-accountability operational runway.
* Phase 1 (Months 1–3):You will rapidly absorb supply chain operations from the founder, install a centralized operating system (reporting cadences, project trackers), and execute urgent, ad-hoc strategic projects.
* Phase 2 (Months 4–12):You will assume complete ownership of supply chain management, financial reporting, data analytics, and external agency accountability across both e-commerce brands.
* Year 2 and Beyond:Success in this role leads to a possibility of Headof Operations. This milestone comes with a substantial compensation ladder adjustment and a structured path to equity/profit sharing. (Head of Operations is not guaranteed - but an opportunity for great talent)

Key Responsibilities
* Supply Chain & Operations Ownership:Take over and optimize logistics, inventory planning, vendor relationships, and supplier networks across both health brands.
* Systems Building:Audit our current workflows and replace fragmented, manual tasks with repeatable, automated, or clearly documented systems that scale.
* Financial Oversight & Value Sourcing:Manage internal financial tracking, run brand data analytics, and lead aggressive vendor and agency renegotiations to optimize our cost of goods sold (COGS) and shipping fees.
* Agency Accountability:Establish strict performance metrics, reporting guardrails, and daily accountability structures for our external marketing, creative, and technical agencies.
* Ad-Hoc Execution:Act as a Swiss Army knife operator, diving into vague, loosely defined organizational bottlenecks and driving them to absolute completion.

Strict Candidate Filters

To succeed in this role, you must possess an intense, battle-tested background.We are explicitly looking for individuals who meet one of the following four professional profiles:
* The Ex-Founder:You have started, scaled, and either sold or shut down your own entrepreneurial venture. You know what it means to care about the bottom line.
* The Ex-Management Consultant:You spent time as an Analyst or Associate at a top-tier global firm (Bain, McKinsey, BCG) or top-tier regional equivalent, developing world-class structured thinking on paper.
* The Startup BizOps / Chief of Staff Alum:You have actively sat in a Chief of Staff or Business Operations role at a scaling private startup tracking under $50M in revenue.
* The Startup Function Lead:You successfully ran operations, strategy, or growth inside a venture-backed or hyper-growth private company, owning measurable commercial outcomes.

Required Competencies & Traits
* Radical Self-Direction:You are a completely self-led operator. You do not wait to be told what to do; you naturally identify operational friction, design the solution, and deploy it autonomously.
* An Obsession with Loop-Closing:You are physically uncomfortable with open loops, loose ends, or unreturned messages. You aggressively drive tasks across the finish line.
* Systems-Building DNA:You naturally convert one-off problems into sustainable, reusable processes. You can point to specific tools, databases, or workflows you built from scratch that are still being used by others today.
* Flawless Communication Skills:Your written English is sharp, logical, and highly structured (C1/C2 level minimum). You can communicate complex business metrics concisely.
* Startup-Pace Hustle:You thrive at high velocity. You favor biased-action and rapid iteration over prolonged, bureaucratic corporate planning.

What We Do NOT Want (Hard Exclusions)

Please save your time and ours: do not apply if you fall into any of the following categories:
* Career Functional Specialists:We are not looking for someone who hasonlydone supply chain,onlydone finance, oronlydone analytics. You must be an agile generalist.
* BigCo Middle Managers:If your entire career has been spent climbing the ladder inside a Fortune 1000 company inheriting pre-existing corporate sy

Tips for South African Applicants

Timezone Advantage

South Africa (SAST, UTC+2) overlaps well with European business hours and has a few hours of overlap with US East Coast. Mention your timezone flexibility in your application.

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Salary in Context

At R64,750/month, this role pays well above the average South African remote salary. The USD equivalent ($3,500/mo) benefits from the favourable exchange rate.

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Application Tips

Tailor your CV to international standards — use a clean format, highlight remote work experience, and include your English proficiency. Many SA applicants succeed by emphasising their strong work ethic and cultural adaptability.

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Load Shedding Preparedness

If you're applying for a remote role, having a backup power solution (UPS, inverter, or generator) and mobile data as a backup internet connection shows employers you're prepared for South Africa's infrastructure challenges.

About Somewhere

Somewhere is a company in the Recruitment & Staffing industry that hires remote workers from South Africa. They currently have 685 open positions on Hirezar. View all Somewhere jobs →