Founder's Associate at Physical AI Scale Up

Cerrion is a leader in Physical AI, building the AI platform powering the autonomous factory.

With more than $25M in funding from Creandum, Y Combinator, and leading Silicon Valley investors, we’re enabling industrial companies to deploy AI Agents that can see what’s happening on the production floor, identify problems in real time, and autonomously intervene to keep operations running smoothly at scale.

Headquartered in Zurich and expanding internationally with our second office opening in New York, Cerrion’s technology is already deployed across factories in 18+ countries, helping leading manufacturers in glass, beverage, food, CPG, building materials, and wood reduce downtime by up to 50%.

We’ve reached a rare inflection point: strong product-market fit, rapid commercial growth, and a massive market undergoing AI transformation.

This is where you come in.

We’re looking for an exceptional Founder’s Associate to work directly with our CEO across nearly every critical function of the company.

This is not a narrow role.

You’ll operate as an extension of the founder - helping drive strategic initiatives, executing high-priority projects, improving internal operations, supporting fundraising and hiring, working on key customer accounts, and helping Cerrion scale from a fast-growing startup into a category-defining company.

One week you might help close a strategic enterprise deal with a global manufacturer. The next, you might redesign internal recruiting processes, prepare investor materials, build operational dashboards, coordinate a product launch, or help solve bottlenecks across the company.

You will have an unusual amount of exposure, responsibility, and ownership from day one.

This role is ideal for someone who wants to become a startup founder, operator, investor, or executive in the future - and wants to learn by being in the room where the highest-impact decisions get made.

Act as a force multiplier across strategy, operations, hiring, GTM, fundraising, customer success, and execution.

Identify bottlenecks, structure ambiguous problems, align stakeholders, and ensure critical initiatives actually get done.

Work alongside the CEO on key accounts and partnerships — including customer strategy, preparation, follow-ups, commercial analyses, and expansion opportunities.

Design and improve processes, dashboards, reporting structures, internal systems, and cross-functional coordination mechanisms that help the company scale efficiently.

Help identify, evaluate, and recruit top talent across the company.

Collaborate closely with Sales, Customer Success, Product, Engineering, and Operations to solve problems quickly and keep the company moving at high velocity.

Help prepare fundraising materials, financial analyses, market research, and investor communications.

You should be comfortable moving between strategic thinking and highly practical execution.

We care much more about slope, intensity, and ownership than a specific background.

That said, the strongest candidates will likely have:

• 2–5 years experience in top-tier consulting (McKinsey, BCG, Bain), venture capital, investment banking, high-growth startups, or similarly demanding environments

• Exceptional analytical and structured thinking abilities

• A proven track record of excellence and unusually high achievement

• Strong communication and executive presence

• High intensity, urgency, and bias toward action

• The ability to independently figure things out in ambiguous environments

• Strong business judgment and operational instincts

• Comfort working across technical and commercial topics

• A genuine desire to help build a company, not just analyze one

You should thrive in environments that are:

• fast-moving,

• highly demanding,

• unstructured,

• and extremely ambitious.

This role is not optimized for work-life balance.

It is optimized for growth, ownership, learning, and impact.

You’ll work directly with the CEO across fundraising, GTM, hiring, product, operations, and company-building.

You will operate on mission-critical initiatives from day one.

Many Founder’s Associates go on to become startup founders, chiefs of staff, investors, or company leaders.

Manufacturing is one of the world’s largest industries and is undergoing a massive AI transformation. Cerrion is at the center of it.

Join a team of AI PhDs, ex-Googlers, repeat founders, and world-class operators from around the world.

• Full-time

• Based in Zurich

• Competitive compensation + meaningful equity package

• Willingness to travel

If you’re excited about building at high intensity, solving hard problems, and helping shape one of the defining industrial AI companies of this decade, we’d love to hear from you.