Founder Associate (NYC)

About this role

WHO WE ARE

Foundation models transformed text and images. Structured data - the largest and most consequential data format in the world - stayed untouched, until now. What LLMs did for language, we're doing for tables.

We pioneered tabular foundation models: TabPFN v2 was a Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08328-6 cover story, has passed 3.5M+ downloads and 7,500+ GitHub stars, and runs in production from detecting lung disease with Oxford Cancer Analytics https://www.oxcan.org/news/prior-labs-and-oxford-cancer-analytics-partner-to-advance-liquid-biopsy-and-clinical-decision-making-in-lung-disease to preventing train failures with Hitachi https://siliconangle.com/2025/12/01/prior-labs-debuts-tabular-ai-foundation-model-scales-10-million-rows/. The hardest problems - millions of rows, real-time inference, entirely new modalities - are still open, and no one else is working on them at this level.

We're a small, highly selective team of 40+ https://priorlabs.ai/about with backgrounds from Google, DeepMind, Meta, Apple, Amazon, Jane Street, and CERN, led by Frank Hutter https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-hutter-9190b24b/, Noah Hollmann https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-hollmann-668b9010b/, and Sauraj Gambhir https://www.linkedin.com/in/sauraj-g/, and advised by Bernhard Schölkopf and Turing Award winner Yann LeCun.

In July 2026, less than 18 months after our €9M pre-seed, we joined SAP https://priorlabs.ai/blog-posts/priorlabs-sap as an independent frontier AI lab - same team, mission, and open-weights models, now backed by more than €1 billion over four years.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As our Founder Associate, you sit in the founders' office and work directly with the founders and Chief of Staff to shape and execute the initiatives that drive Prior Labs' growth. You get real ownership of business functions, with broad exposure across the company, from strategy to execution.

We run our business functions with defined areas of ownership: Growth, Sales & Enablement, Marketing & Community, and People Ops. You pick up ownership across these areas based on what the company needs and where you're strongest, and you go deep where you have the most impact.

Everything we do is AI-first, so you'll spend less time on the grunt work and more time building the systems that make it obsolete.

CORE AREAS OF IMPACT

Below are examples of what you could own:

Growth

Leads that reach Prior Labs get qualified, enriched, scored, and routed automatically. You own that engine, make it better, and find the next channel.

- Own the inbound pipeline end to end

- Remove the manual steps that are left: better scoring, smarter routing, more automation

- Build the pipeline reporting the founders and sales team actually use

- Test new channels: data sources, outbound angles, our first paid experiments

- Own tracking and attribution, so we know where pipeline actually comes from

Sales Enablement

Our sales team talks to some of the largest companies in the world. You build everything around their conversations so they can focus on selling.

- Automate call prep: short briefings so no one walks into a call cold

- Own decks, case studies, battle cards, and demo assets

- Keep POCs on track: milestones, follow-ups, next steps

- Turn closed deals into reference stories and case studies

Ops & Automation

We think most internal work can be automated with today's AI, and your job is to do it.

- Pick the most annoying recurring workflow each month and automate it

- Build agents and automations across our stack: HRIS, CRM, Notion, Slack

- Own the internal tooling landscape: what we use, how it connects

- Prototype fast: a working script this week over a perfect system next quarter

- Ship things the whole company uses daily  

Expansion & People Ops

We're doubling headcount across 2 countries, and everything behind that is being built right now. If you're obsessed with people, culture, and process building, this is your playground.

- Help open our new offices and set up new countries

- Own onboarding end to end, from signed contract to a solid first week

- Take clunky people processes, redesign it, ship it

- Make our HRIS the single source of truth, with automations doing the boring parts

- Run the operational side of hiring: scheduling, candidate communication, interview logistics

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

You're a resourceful, adaptable, and self-driven builder who thrives in a fast-paced startup environment. We're looking for someone with the potential to grow into a future leader of the company. You have:

Essential Background

- A Bachelor's or Master's degree in Business Administration, Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field, or you've done the work without the credential

- 1-2 years of experience in consulting, venture capital, start-ups or similar roles

- An AI-first way of working: you try new tools the moment they come out, you know where they save time, and you know where your own judgment still has to take over

- High agency: you ship a v1 quickly, iterate, and don't wait for a brief to figure out what needs doing

- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a focus on execution

- Structured and reliable: when you own something, it's handled

- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, in English

What Makes You Special

- Experience working in or with early-stage startups

- You've built automations, agents, or internal tools that people actually used

- Background in machine learning, data science, or related technical fields

- Familiarity with open source, foundation models, or data science ecosystems

- Proven ability to manage cross-functional projects or initiatives

- Interest or experience in sales enablement, content creation, or community building

LOCATION

- New York

- On-site

BENEFITS - US

- Competitive compensation package

- 20 days paid vacation

- Health, dental and vision

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