Description
The Experience:
The Chief of Staff plays a strategic and operational leadership role across Slack's Engineering organization, reporting directly to the EVP of Engineering. This person is the connective tissue between engineering leadership, finance, people, and cross-functional partners — ensuring the org runs with clarity, discipline, and momentum. The ideal candidate is both a strategic thinker and a hands-on operator who thrives in a fast-moving environment and can seamlessly shift between long-term planning and day-to-day execution.
This role also serves as an operational bridge to the Trust & Infrastructure teams — ensuring that reliability, security, and infrastructure priorities are reflected in planning, headcount decisions, and org-wide commitments.
What You'll Actually Be Doing:
Engineering Operations & Rhythm of Business:
- Own and drive the operating cadence for Slack Engineering — including staff meetings, leadership syncs, all-hands, and quarterly planning processes
- Partner with engineering leadership to set agendas, track commitments, and ensure follow-through on key decisions
- Serve as liaison to Finance for budget management, headcount planning, and escalations
- Oversee and coordinate onsite planning, leadership events (EM Summit, IC Summit), and engineering-wide programs
- Act as operational partner to the Trust & Infrastructure teams — helping translate infrastructure roadmap priorities into org planning, resourcing decisions, and leadership visibility
Headcount & Hiring Operations:
- Lead headcount monitoring — gathering approvals for backfills and position changes, and ensuring hiring aligns to the most critical business needs
- Partner with Recruiting to unblock hiring and ensure hiring managers are set up for success
- Approve position changes and sign-on bonuses within established budget parameters
- Drive location strategy in partnership with HR and engineering leadership
Planning & Budget Operations:
- Lead quarterly and annual planning processes — coordinating across pillars, finalizing measures, and ensuring content is ready for leadership review
- Partner with Finance on budget management, variance analysis, and rolling asks (RLOA) for incremental funding
- Maintain org-level data and reporting (headcount, metrics, V2MOM status) and ensure accuracy across systems
- Drive continuous improvement in operational workflows, including leveraging AI-powered tools to reduce manual effort and improve reporting
Communications & Culture:
- Oversee Engineering communications — managing announcement channels, coordinating all-hands content and logistics, and ensuring timely and consistent messaging across the org
- Partner with leadership on promotion communications, blurb gathering, and promo program operations
- Support engineering culture initiatives including SlackDay, Futureforce/intern programs, and the Engineering Blog
You're Our Person If:
- 14+ years in business operations, strategy, finance, or a related field — ideally within a high-growth technology company
- Proven track record of operating as a trusted partner to senior engineering or technical leadership
- Strong financial acumen including headcount planning, budget management, and variance analysis
- Exceptional organizational, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills
- Self-directed and proactive — comfortable managing multiple workstreams with minimal oversight
- Ability to build strong relationships across engineering, finance, HR, legal, and recruiting
- Experience working with or supporting Trust, Infrastructure, or Platform engineering teams is a plus
- Bachelor's degree required; MBA or advanced degree a plus
Even Better If:
- Prior experience in an engineering business operations or chief of staff role
- Strong familiarity with Slack, Salesforce tools, Workday, and Tableau
- Experience with AI-powered productivity tools
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, Salesforce will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
In the United States, compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, job level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Certain roles may be eligible for incentive compensation, equity, and benefits. Salesforce offers a variety of benefits to help you live well including: time off programs, medical, dental, vision, mental health support, paid parental leave, life and disability insurance, 401(k), and an employee stock purchasing program. More details about company benefits can be found at the following link: https://www.salesforcebenefits.com.