People and Operations Manager

Context Karavela is a neuroscience research company established in 2025 and currently based in Paris, France. We build a foundation model of the human brain relying on next-generation magnetic resonance. To do so, Karavela is collecting a very large MRI dataset from healthy volunteers listening to naturalistic stimuli (e.g., audiobooks, podcasts, radio programmes). This dataset is then used to train deep learning models that study how the brain reacts to a variety of complex stimuli. The goal is to leverage the representations learnt by these models in downstream applications, in particular by providing biomarkers for neurological and psychiatric diseases in clinical trials. Karavela is currently organised into 3 teams that each focus on one of the aforementioned aspects: data collection, model development, and clinical applications. Position summary Karavela is looking for a Chief of Staff to make day-to-day operations run smoothly, so that the team is in the best position to deliver efficiently on science. You will own people operations, the office, travel and events, and work directly with the founders on the most important and urgent topics. Beyond running processes, your mission is to automate them: when something is slow or manual, you will build the tool that fixes it, using AI coding assistants, no-code tools and our own infrastructure. In this position, you will be particularly involved in:
• running the hiring pipeline end to end (job posts, candidate tracking, interview scheduling, offers) ;
• onboarding and offboarding team members, interns and advisors (contracts, internship agreements, equipment, accounts) ;
• handling HR admin, compliance and contracts with our payroll provider, accountant and lawyers ;
• managing the Paris office (space, suppliers, equipment, IT basics), as well as vendors, subscriptions and expenses ;
• booking travel and accommodation for the team, conferences and visiting collaborators ;
• organising team events, offsites and Karavela's presence at conferences ;
• building and maintaining internal tools, dashboards and workflows that save the team time (applicant tracking, onboarding, bookings, expenses, internal knowledge base) ;
• helping prepare board, investor and advisory board materials, and following up on action items ;
• taking on cross-team projects that don't have an obvious owner. Qualifications The ideal candidate will have:
• 2+ years of experience in operations, HR, office management, chief of staff or a similar generalist role, ideally in a startup ;
• hands-on experience building tools with AI coding assistants (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, Lovable) or no-code tools ;
• some programming experience (Python, TypeScript, SQL), which is a plus ;
• knowledge of French administrative and HR processes, or the ability to learn them fast ;
• excellent organisational skills and reliability ;
• discretion and good judgement with confidential information ;
• fluency in French and English ;
• strong communication skills. Benefits This position offers:
• open-ended contract (CDI) ;
• competitive compensation, depending on experience ;
• equity options ;
• 25 days of paid time off per year, not counting French reduction of working time (RTT) ;
• full-time position in Paris, partial remote work is possible