Executive Assistant

# Executive Assistant to the Founder & CEO ### About Payle Payle is building the financial infrastructure layer for the AI agent economy. Our platform enables AI agents to transact under human-defined rules: programmable spending policies, deterministic authorization, and a hash-chained append-only ledger that makes every transaction verifiable. We are a YC applicant backed by an independently audited, production-grade authorization engine. We operate as a remote-first, async-first distributed team across four countries, moving quickly to build the infrastructure that will power the next generation of autonomous financial systems. At Payle, we value ownership, discretion, precision, and execution. We believe exceptional people can have an outsized impact when given direct access to leadership and the autonomy to make things happen. ### The Role We are seeking a highly organized, proactive, and resourceful **Executive Assistant to the Founder & CEO** to work directly with the founder and help manage the operational, administrative, and organizational demands of building Payle. This is a high-trust, high-ownership role for someone who thrives in a fast-paced startup environment, anticipates needs before they arise, and can bring structure to an ambitious and rapidly evolving business. You will act as a trusted partner to the founder, helping protect his time, coordinate priorities, manage communications, and ensure that important initiatives move forward efficiently. You will have visibility into company strategy, investor relations, partnerships, and day-to-day decision-making. The ideal candidate combines exceptional attention to detail with strong interpersonal skills, sound judgment, discretion, and the ability to operate independently with minimal supervision. ### What You Will Own **Executive & Calendar Management** 1. Manage the founder's calendar, schedule meetings across international time zones, and proactively resolve scheduling conflicts. 2. Coordinate calls with investors, potential partners, customers, candidates, and other key stakeholders. 3. Prepare daily and weekly schedules, meeting briefs, agendas, and follow-up notes. 4. Protect the founder's time by prioritizing requests, managing interruptions, and ensuring attention is focused on the highest-impact activities. 5. Anticipate scheduling and operational needs before they become problems. **Communications & Relationship Management** 1. Draft, review, and organize professional emails, messages, meeting invitations, and follow-ups on behalf of the founder. 2. Maintain clear and professional communication with investors, partners, candidates, and external stakeholders. 3. Track outstanding conversations, commitments, introductions, and follow-up actions to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. 4. Handle sensitive communications with exceptional discretion and professionalism. 5. Help maintain strong relationships with key people across the company's network. **Operations & Administrative Coordination** 1. Coordinate travel arrangements, accommodation, itineraries, and logistics for business trips and meetings. 2. Organize documents, maintain digital filing systems, and ensure important information is easy to retrieve. 3. Assist with expense tracking, invoices, receipts, and other administrative workflows. 4. Support the preparation of presentations, reports, internal documents, and investor materials. 5. Coordinate administrative processes with external accountants, legal advisors, service providers, and other collaborators when needed. **Founder Support & Special Projects** 1. Take ownership of ad hoc projects that require research, coordination, organization, and follow-through. 2. Research prospective investors, partners, events, service providers, and business opportunities. 3. Help the founder prepare for meetings, negotiations, presentations, and important decisions. 4. Build lightweight systems and workflows that improve the founder's productivity and the company's operational efficiency. 5. Identify bottlenecks, suggest improvements, and independently execute solutions wherever possible. ### What We Look For **Required:** 1. Exceptional organizational skills and meticulous attention to detail. 2. Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English. 3. Strong professional communication skills and the ability to interact confidently with senior executives, investors, and external stakeholders. 4. High levels of discretion, integrity, and professionalism when handling confidential information. 5. A proactive, solution-oriented mindset: you anticipate needs rather than simply wait for instructions. 6. Strong prioritization skills and the ability to manage multiple tasks, deadlines, and changing priorities simultaneously. 7. Comfort working independently in a remote-first, asynchronous environment. 8. Proficiency with Google Workspace, calendar management, spreadsheets, and modern collaboration tools. 9. Reliability, responsiveness, and a strong sense of personal ownership. **Preferred:** 1. Previous experience as an Executive Assistant, Personal Assistant, Chief of Staff Associate, or Operations Assistant. 2. Experience working directly with a founder, CEO, entrepreneur, or senior executive. 3. Experience in a startup, venture-backed company, technology business, or international environment. 4. Familiarity with investor relations, fundraising processes, and startup operations. 5. Experience coordinating international travel, meetings, and complex schedules across time zones. 6. Familiarity with tools such as Notion, Slack, Linear, Google Workspace, and AI-powered productivity tools. 7. Additional language skills, particularly Italian and other European languages. ### How You Work We are looking for someone who: * **Takes ownership:** You see what needs to be done and make sure it gets done. * **Thinks ahead:** You anticipate problems, prepare alternatives, and reduce unnecessary friction. * **Communicates exceptionally well:** You are clear, thoughtful, professional, and concise. * **Operates with discretion:** You understand that trust and confidentiality are fundamental to the role. * **Moves quickly without sacrificing quality:** You can work under pressure while maintaining high standards. * **Brings order to complexity:** You turn scattered information, competing priorities, and last-minute changes into organized execution. You do not need to be told every step. You need to understand the desired outcome, figure out how to achieve it, and follow through. ### What We Offer * **Direct access to the founder:** Work closely with the CEO and gain first-hand exposure to company strategy, fundraising, partnerships, and startup building. * **Meaningful ownership:** Take responsibility for how the founder operates and help shape the company's internal workflows. * **High-trust environment:** Manage important priorities independently, with autonomy and clear expectations. * **Remote-first flexibility:** Work with an international team distributed across multiple countries. * **Learning opportunity:** Gain practical experience in AI, fintech, venture capital, and early-stage company operations. * **Room to grow:** The role can evolve toward broader executive operations or a Chief of Staff position as Payle scales, depending on performance and business needs. * **Fast-paced culture:** Work in a small team where initiative, reliability, and execution matter more than bureaucracy. ### Location & Working Arrangements * **Location:** Remote with the relocation to San Francisco * **Hiring region:** Worldwide, subject to employment and contracting arrangements * **Preferred time zone:** Central European Time (CET) * **Collaboration:** Regular availability during agreed working hours, with flexibility when coordinating across time zones * **Job type:** To be agreed based on experience and business needs * **Reporting to:** Founder & CEO * **Compensation:** Competitive and commensurate with experience, availability, and scope of responsibilities ### Recruitment Process We value initiative, judgment, communication, and practical execution. Candidates may be asked to complete a short, practical exercise involving calendar prioritization, professional communication, or organizing a hypothetical founder's schedule. The exercise is designed to assess real-world working skills rather than theoretical knowledge. ### Recruiting Contact **Mattia Ciuni** Founder, Payle