Chief of Staff

Astral

At Astral, our mission is to make the Python ecosystem more productive by building next-generation developer tools — tools that enable developers to ship great software, faster.

To start, we've built Ruff, an extremely fast Python linter and formatter; and uv, a comprehensive Python package manager — two of the fastest-growing developer tools ever.

Next, we're continuing to push the future of Python with a state-of-the-art type checker — and building out our first commercial services.

Our early team includes the authors of influential open source projects like ripgrep and bat along with multiple CPython core developers — all building at the intersection of Rust and Python.

The Role

The Chief of Staff will report directly to the CEO with the ultimate goal of unburdening the executive team by:

1. Taking ownership of operational responsibilities across legal, finance, and other critical functions.

2. Executing on strategically important projects as a partner to the CEO.

Over time, the Chief of Staff may also be responsible for hiring and managing a larger operations team.

It's a role that will require learning (and executing) quickly, embracing the fast pace of a startup environment, and adapting to the rapidly evolving needs of the company.

Experience at an early-stage startup and/or a developer-focused business is a plus, but not required. A background in finance or consulting—paired with a strong desire to transition into a startup environment—could be a great fit. Similarly, a background in software engineering, combined with an interest in transitioning into a business-oriented role, could also make for a strong candidate.

Finally: if you view yourself as a future founder, the Chief of Staff role could be right for you — it's a front-row seat at a fast-growing company, with the opportunity to define an entire function and directly impact the trajectory of the organization.

The Team

• We're not only remote, but highly distributed. We hire from Pacific Time (e.g., San Francisco, USA) to Central European Time (e.g., Munich, Germany), and get together twice annually for week-long, in-person on-sites. For this role, given the level of expected engagement with the executive team, colocation in New York City is preferred.

• We pay competitively (salary and equity) and offer comprehensive benefits (healthcare and more).

• Our work is highly collaborative, but as is common in open source, much of that collaboration takes place asynchronously (in Discord, or GitHub, or Notion). We minimize meetings, and maximize time spent on heads-down work.

• We're a small, high-trust team. We strive to ship excellent software, at a fast pace... while having fun. (See: Our Values.)