Business Operations Associate

About Kernel

Agents are starting to sell, buy and operate on behalf of companies. But before an agent can close a deal, qualify an account, route a lead or assess risk, it has to answer a basic question: which company is this?

Today, that answer is messy, and no one answers it reliably. Business identity lives across CRMs, ERPs and third-party datasets full of duplicates, missing parent companies, stale addresses and incorrect enrichment. The cost shows up across the enterprise: sales teams miss revenue opportunities because they lack the right account context; operations teams take on avoidable exposure because risk signals are fragmented or wrong;

and finance teams end up chasing, writing off, or defaulting on bad debt that should have been caught earlier.

Humans have worked around that mess for years. Agents cannot. They need a reliable business identity layer they can trust.

Kernel is building that layer: the business registry for agents. We issue a permanent KERN  every business, plus the context an agent needs to act on it. Ops, data and revenue teams at Gong, Legora, Mistral, Canva and Checkout already use Kernel on their own systems. Agents are next, and there will be far more of them.

We have raised $14M from top VCs and operators at Plaid, OpenAI, Slack and others, and we are growing 5x YoY.

We're looking for a Business Operations Associate who thrives at the intersection of finance, operations and execution. This is a high-impact, project-based role where you'll act as a force multiplier for our Head of Finance & Operations - tackling diverse challenges from financial planning and analyses and agent costs to running operational systems and key initiatives.

You’ll be part chief of staff, part operator, part problem-solver. You’ll drive critical finance and operations projects that shape how we grow.

This role is perfect for generalists who are intellectually curious, commercially minded, and energized by variety. You’ll need to be comfortable with ambiguity, quick to learn new domains, and able to deliver results across finance and operations.

We’re looking for A-star players with a get-it-done attitude - “you’re a champion who is willing to take out the trash”.

• Act as a force multiplier for the Head of Finance & Operations, supporting key initiatives end-to-end

• Lead financial planning and analysis - including forecasting, budgeting, unit economics, KPI dashboards, and cross-functional planning cycles

• Own the economics of the product alongside Product and Engineering: agent and LLM spend, cost per customer, and gross margin

• Own back-office finance and operations: reviewing accounting, managing Carta, supporting SOC 2 compliance, vendor contracts, and the admin that comes with all of it

• Drive diverse operational projects - from compliance and office leases to compensation design and software contract optimization

• 2-4 years of experience in consulting, investment banking, or a high-performing startup environment

• Strong financial acumen - comfort with financial modeling, data analysis, and quantitative problem-solving

• Highly numerate and analytical; proficient in Excel/Google Sheets and comfortable learning new tools (Salesforce, Notion, data visualization platforms)

• Proven ability to manage ambiguous, cross-functional projects from start to finish

• Excellent written and verbal communication - you can distill complexity into clear, actionable insights

• Intellectually curious, self-directed, and comfortable working independently with minimal oversight

• You're sharp enough to take an unfamiliar problem and figure out how to solve it with AI - building workflows and agents where needed to get there - and while prior experience with tools like Claude Code, Codex and Cursor is a plus, it's not a requirement.

• Experience in GTM operations, sales operations, or revenue operations at a B2B SaaS company

• Exposure to early-stage or high-growth startups; comfort with rapid iteration and changing priorities

• Prefer deep specialization over breadth. This role means switching context constantly between finance,…