Chief Operating Officer Jobs in Santa Rosa, CA (NOW HIRING)

About the Job

Founding go-to-market role at a profitable, venture-backed B2B AI startup. Own our growth engine end-to-end.

Position: Founding GTM Operator (Full-Time)

Reporting to: CEO

Location: San Francisco (4 days/week in person)

Compensation: $90,000-$110,000 base salary, plus your choice of equity or a bonus linked to company revenue (bonus expected to be $10,000+ for this role).

Company Overview

Lenders spend over $24B every year hiring agents to perform manual, repetitive servicing work. Existing AI solutions try to automate this, but they treat regulatory guardrails as an afterthought - meaning they can’t guarantee compliance and can’t be trusted with critical servicing workflows.

Kato takes a different approach.

Regulations aren’t an afterthought - they’re the foundation. We start with a regulatory rules system and layer an AI decision engine on top. With this architecture, we’re building an AI-powered servicing platform that automates critical workflows across every channel with full compliance and best-in-class recoveries.

We are starting today with a compliance first Voice AI agent that handles outbound and inbound loan servicing calls, and are already in production with major names in the fintech lending space like Bilt Rewards, Bluevine and Parafin.

Here's what makes us different from most venture-backed startups: we're profitable with strong unit economics, so we own our destiny. We're not forced to raise capital to survive; we'll raise strategically, on our terms, to accelerate the business when it makes sense. That changes how we work:

• We make long-term decisions. We optimize for durable, long-term value, not short-term vanity metrics.
• We run like a real business. We focus on what matters and have no patience for false busyness.
• You share in what we build. You choose how: equity in the company, or a bonus linked to company revenue. Either way, when the company grows, you do.

Kato is founded by a team with deep operating expertise in financial services and software engineering:

• Pratik Risbud (CEO/Co-Founder): Former Investment Banker at Goldman Sachs and led Credit/Operations at Brex
• David Zhu (CTO/Co-Founder): Former Software Engineer at Google and Engineering Manager at Brex

Kato is backed by institutional capital from Pear VC and angel investors from top tech companies such as Brex, Bridge, and Square.

About the Role

We already know how to find and close customers. We are now hiring our Founding GTM Operator: a generalist who owns demand generation and turns our go-to-market into a repeatable growth engine. This is one of the most critical hires at Kato and you'll work directly with the CEO.

On the outbound and conference side, that means getting sharper and more sophisticated about how we find customers - tracking the right buying signals, testing new plays, and expanding our conference presence.

And on the brand side, it’s wide open. We want to turn Kato into a household name in the lending space. You'll own building our presence from scratch: events, webinars, LinkedIn posts, newsletters, blogs. When someone in this industry thinks about AI for servicing & collections, we want them to think of Kato first.

Across both, we don't just want someone who can run the motion - we want someone who builds the system behind it, using AI and automation to take out as much manual work as possible.

This role is a fit if you have 1-3 years of experience and:

• You are a former founder, or owned GTM / growth at an early-stage startup
• You have done either sales development (SDR/BDR) or demand-focused marketing (MDR, field or event marketing) - a role where you were measured on pipeline/revenue.

This role is not a fit:

• If your background is analytics / data focused without direct exposure to revenue
• If your background is pure brand or content marketing measured on reach and impressions

Responsibilities

Outbound & Lead Generation (50%)

• Build and maintain a comprehensive database of the lending market
• Own end-to-end outbound: research, list building, copy, multi-channel outreach (email + LinkedIn), message refining
• Create and manage nurture campaigns for older or dormant leads
• Run Kato’s conference efforts (e.g. outreach, marketing campaigns, booths)
• Systematize relentlessly - automate list building, signal tracking, personalization, and sequencing wherever you can with AI and other tooling

Content & Marketing (30%)

• Define Kato’s content strategy by creating blog posts, newsletters, and other top-of-funnel materials
• Launch Kato’s marketing efforts - e.g. webinars, in person events
• Systematize relentlessly - automate research and content drafting wherever you can with AI and other tooling

Sales Operations (20%)

• Build custom collateral for prospect meetings and keep Kato's core materials current
• Own GTM reporting - define what we measure (e.g. outbound conversion rates, pipeline velocity, meeting-to-opportunity conversion) and act on them

Required Skills

We covered who this role is a fit for above. Beyond that you:

• Have 1-3 years of full-time work experience and a Bachelor’s degree
• Are a structured thinker who questions assumptions and reasons independently, rather than taking things at face value
• Are coachable and quick to act on feedback
• Have exceptional written communication
• Are comfortable operating with high agency and driving independent progress toward company goals
• Have strong attention to detail, organization, and follow-through
• Are AI-native and automation-minded, with a track record of using AI tools to remove manual work
• Are proficient with common business tools such as Google Workspace (e.g. Google Docs, Google Sheets) and Slack. Experience with CRM systems like Hubspot preferred

Why Join Kato

• Work with founders that have built and scaled financial products for 9+ years
• Own real scope from day one - you'll own core parts of our revenue engine and see your work hit customers fast.
• Work hard on things that matter. This won't be a 9-to-5, but we don't believe in busy work. We work hard on the problems that actually move the business and don't waste your time on the ones that don't.
• Get unmatched career acceleration: you’ll learn sales, GTM strategy, and startup execution at a depth few roles offer.

SalesSprint is a GTM talent and search partner working with Kato on this search. Applying here you will hear from SalesSprint team for quick screening call before introductions are made to the Kato team. Direct introductions can be made for exceptional candidates.