AI-Native Category CEO

Reports to: CEO

Compensation: $140,000 - $200,000 base + substantial equity (targeting 7-figure annual comp through upside)

Location: San Francisco (Jackson Square) - onsite, high-collaboration role

About Aonic

Aonic is deploying AI to drastically reduce the cost of living. We are building Aonic Club: the club contract Costco proved over four decades, rebuilt online and AI-native - an annual membership that gets Americans elevated everyday products at cost, starting with functional nutrition.

We make the products ourselves and run sourcing, content, forecasting and service with AI agents, which deletes the 30-40% of retail and marketing layers inside every consumer price. The savings go to members, not margins: under Kirkland wherever Costco competes, and on average 80% below the brands.

Our ambition is big: 1 million members and a $10 billion company within a few years, built by a handful of humans with extreme leverage - AI agents running the operations, a community as the channel, and the AI dividend delivered to everyday America.

Learn more about Aonic in our company presentation.

The Role

As our AI-Native Category CEO, you will work directly with the CEO on the highest-impact problems across operations, growth, and finance.

Your job is to take ambiguous, high-stakes problems and turn them into structured analyses, decisions, and execution - often by building AI-powered systems and workflows yourself.

You will own a dedicated large responsibility, an entire product category, and build it from scratch.

This role is intentionally broad and demanding. It is designed for someone with at least 3 years of experience who wants maximum responsibility, ownership, and exposure in the shortest possible time.

What You'll Work On

Product Category Ownership

• Take full ownership of an entire department or product category and build it from the ground up.
• Recent examples: rebuilding our online care and prescriptions offering, building our entire operations function from scratch, and launching new categories such as phone plans next year.
• Own strategy, execution, and results for your area end-to-end.

Operations & Execution

• Support and improve day-to-day operations across fulfillment, customer experience, supply chain coordination, and internal workflows.
• Identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies and help design AI-driven solutions to remove them.
• Own specific operational projects end-to-end, from problem definition to execution.

AI-Native Product Sourcing

• Use AI to continuously scan the market for new, innovative products and ingredients, and turn signals into a prioritized pipeline of sourcing opportunities.
• Build automated supplier discovery and outreach workflows that identify, qualify, and engage suppliers at scale.
• Design AI-assisted negotiation workflows for pricing, minimum order quantities, and terms, and take deals from first contact to signed agreement.

Growth Enablement

• Support growth initiatives across marketing, experimentation, and performance tracking.
• Build AI-assisted workflows for reporting, analysis, and execution.
• Help translate growth objectives into operational and financial implications.

Finance & Business Intelligence

• Support financial analysis, forecasting, and unit economics.
• Build and maintain models, dashboards, and AI-powered reporting tools.
• Help leadership make decisions based on contribution margin and real economics, not vanity metrics.

AI, Automation & Systems

• Leverage AI, automation, and low-code tools to improve speed and quality of execution across all functions.
• Build internal tools, scripts, and workflows that reduce manual work.
• Continuously look for opportunities to replace effort with systems.

Special Projects

• Tackle high-priority, ad-hoc projects directly with the CEO.
• Move fluidly between strategy and execution depending on what the business needs.
• Be comfortable owning problems that do not come with instructions.

Hard Requirements

To be successful in this role, all of the following must be true:

• At least 3 years of work experience (typically 3 to 8 years) at a leading company, with a strong track record of career progression.
• Degree from a top-tier university in engineering, science, math, business, or a related field.
• Candidates with a business background must have taught themselves at least basic coding and demonstrate technical fluency.
• AI-native mindset, with hands-on experience using AI tools, automation platforms, and low-code solutions to drive real outcomes.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving ability, with comfort working across operations, growth, and finance.
• Genuine interest in solving real-world business problems, including those involving physical operations such as production, supply chain, warehousing, delivery, and customer experience.
• Extremely hungry and ambitious, actively seeking responsibility and steep growth.
• Strong work ethic and intensity, comfortable operating in an environment that works 8-7 on Monday to Thursday and 8-5 on Fridays.

The Profile We're Looking For

This role requires a rare mix of traits:

• Book-smart: Strong academic foundation and structured thinking.
• Street-smart: Practical judgment, prioritization, and commercial intuition.
• People-smart: Able to work across functions without ego and communicate clearly.
• AI-native: Naturally reaches for AI and automation as a first instinct.
• High-agency: Sees problems, takes ownership, and executes without waiting.
• Content-native (bonus): You love creating content and want to ride the wave of authentic storytelling with us.

Why Join Aonic?

• Direct Founder Exposure: You will work side-by-side with the CEO on real decisions that shape the company.
• Unmatched Learning Velocity: This role compresses years of experience into months.
• Real Ownership Early: You will own an entire department or product category, not shadow one.
• Elite, Small Team: You will work with a tight group of highly driven operators in a no-bureaucracy environment.
• Modern Stack: We invest in the best AI and automation tools and expect you to use them aggressively.
• Meaningful Upside: This role is designed as a launchpad into senior leadership roles over time.

Compensation

The base pay range for this role is $140,000 - $200,000 per year.