Business Operations Lead

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Black Forest Labs is seeking a Business Operations Lead to serve as the operational Swiss Army knife for a ~50-person frontier AI company behind Stable Diffusion and FLUX. This high-leverage role sits with the founders and Chief of Staff, tackling the most critical problem now and building scalable solutions. You’ll work across R&D, GTM, Finance and Operations, own end-to-end delivery of strategic initiatives, define and monitor KPIs with finance, and turn monthly reviews into actionable leadership narratives. The ideal candidate has 4–6 years in operations, strategy, consulting or banking, plus 1–2 years as an operator in a high-growth firm, executive presence, and the ability to switch between strategy and hands-on execution while translating infrastructure decisions into business impact. AI or ML adjacent experience and SQL modeling skills are a plus. To apply, highlight quantified outcomes, cross-functional impact, and a bias for action aligned with multi-year goals, plus a genuine passion for AI and collaboration. Based in Europe, onsite in Freiburg.

What if the bottleneck to scaling a frontier AI company isn't the technology, but figuring out which operational problems to solve first—and actually solving them?

We're the ~50-person team behind Stable Diffusion, Stable Video Diffusion, and FLUX.1—models with 400M+ downloads. But here's the reality: breakthrough research doesn't automatically translate into sustainable business impact. Between cutting-edge models and a scalable company lie dozens of operational challenges that don't fit into neat job descriptions. That's where you come in.

What You'll Pioneer

You'll be the operational Swiss Army knife working directly with our founders, Chief of Staff, and leadership team. This isn't a traditional BizOps role with a fixed scope—it's a high-leverage position where you tackle whatever the most critical problem is right now, building solutions that scale as the company does.

You'll be the person who:

• Works across multiple business functions as priorities shift—serving as connective tissue between R&D, GTM, Finance, and Operations
• Drives special projects and strategic initiatives on behalf of the Chief of Staff and founding team, owning end-to-end delivery from ambiguous brief to measurable impact
• Defines, tracks, and optimizes key performance metrics across business areas, partnering with finance to ensure data-driven decision-making
• Owns monthly business reviews—synthesizing performance trends, insights, and recommendations into clear narratives that help leadership make better decisions
• Deep dives into critical business drivers, uncovering operational bottlenecks and inefficiencies across both business and technical operations
• Partners with technical teams to translate complex infrastructure requirements (compute planning, capacity management) into business cases and strategic recommendations
• Supports executive communications—preparing board materials, strategic presentations, and leadership meeting content that distills complexity into actionable insights
• Pressure-tests strategic alignment—assessing current projects against multi-year goals to ensure daily execution builds toward long-term success

Questions We're Wrestling With

• How do we prioritize between competing operational needs when everything feels urgent?
• What metrics actually matter for understanding business health in frontier AI versus traditional SaaS?
• How do we translate technical infrastructure decisions (GPU cluster investments, compute allocation) into business strategy?
• Where are the hidden bottlenecks preventing us from scaling faster?
• How do we maintain execution velocity while building the operational discipline needed for sustainable growth?
• What does "good" look like for a business function we're building from scratch?

These aren't hypothetical—they're the questions that determine whether we scale successfully or hit a wall.

Who Thrives Here

You've worked in environments where ambiguity is the default and structure is something you create, not something you inherit. You're equally comfortable building financial models and facilitating cross-functional alignment meetings. You understand that the best strategy is worthless without execution, and the best execution needs strategic clarity.

You likely have:

• 4–6 years of combined experience in business operations, strategy, consulting (MBB), investment banking, venture capital, or private equity—with at least 1–2 years as an operator within a high-growth company
• A bias for action with a can-do attitude—you thrive in ambiguous environments by bringing structured thinking to complex problems and always driving toward outcomes
• Executive presence and influence—proven ability to engage confidently with executives, technical teams, and operational staff, shaping strategic priorities across functions
• The ability to switch gears between high-level strategy and hands-on execution, collaborating effectively across all levels of the organization
• A commercially minded approach with sharp focus on translating operations into revenue growth and market impact
• Exceptional communication skills with proven ability to connect big-picture goals to tactical execution
• Deep passion for technology and the future of AI

We'd be especially excited if you:

• Have prior experience in AI, generative AI, or ML-adjacent businesses where the technology itself is evolving rapidly
• Are highly analytical with advanced modeling expertise and familiarity with SQL

What We're Building Toward

We're not just solving operational problems—we're building the foundation that determines how this company scales. Every process you design becomes how we operate. Every metric you define shapes what we optimize for. Every bottleneck you remove accelerates our growth. If that sounds more compelling than maintaining existing operations, we should talk.

We're based in Europe and value depth over noise, collaboration over hero culture, and honest technical conversations over hype. Our models have been downloaded hundreds of millions of times, but we're still a ~50-person team learning what's possible at the edge of generative AI.