Executive Remote (U.S.) Full-Time

Chief Operating Officer

Formulation Factory is looking for its co-pilot. Not a traditional executive who manages from altitude — a genuine operator who thinks like a founder, moves like an athlete, and is as obsessed with performance as the person who started this company.

Reports To

Founder & CEO

Location

Remote (U.S. preferred, must overlap AST)

Compensation

$150K–$250K base + equity & performance incentives

Role Purpose

This role exists because the business has outgrown what one person can run. We are at $13M+ ARR and scaling hard. The COO takes ownership of day-to-day execution across every function — growth, operations, Amazon, DTC, finance, supply chain, and team — so the Founder can focus on product truth, brand philosophy, and long-term vision.

You are biased toward speed and decisive action, but you know how to protect the team from chaos with clear priorities and simple systems. You are not here to sit above the work. You are here to be in it, alongside the CEO, at the same intensity.

If you have a strong opinion about magnesium glycinate vs threonate, know what your cortisol looks like at noon, and have built or scaled something real in the DTC supplement space — keep reading.

Core Accountabilities

1. Operations Ownership

Own day-to-day execution across all business functions. Set priorities, sequence initiatives, and drive delivery to an elite standard. You design the operating rhythm — weekly reviews, KPI dashboards, cross-functional syncs, and accountability mechanisms — and you enforce it. You are the central integrator: you resolve trade-offs decisively, eliminate silos, and prevent escalation bottlenecks from reaching the Founder.

2. Channel and Revenue Orchestration

Fluent in Amazon FBA, Shopify DTC, TikTok Shop, and paid media. You've managed owners of these functions and can dive into details when needed, but your primary job is orchestrating — not being the channel specialist. You read dashboards, ask sharp questions, pressure-test strategy, and hold channel leads accountable to revenue targets.

3. AI-Augmented Operations

Comfortable using AI (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, etc.) daily and turning those tools into team workflows. You don't need to be a prompt-engineering guru, but you relentlessly replace manual work with smarter systems and expect your team to do the same.

4. Team Leadership

Directly lead a high-output remote team across Growth, Operations, and CX. Set uncompromising standards, give direct feedback, and hold people accountable to results. You never settle for B players when A players exist.

5. Financial and Commercial Acumen

Own the operating P&L alongside the Founder. Understand contribution margin, CAC, LTV, TACOS, ACOS, MER, and the unit economics of both Amazon and DTC channels at a detailed level. You can build a forecast, read a QuickBooks report, and connect financial performance to operational decisions without needing a CFO to translate.

6. Product and Supply Chain Intelligence

Understand supplement formats — capsules, powders, gummies, softgels — at a level that lets you have intelligent conversations with contract manufacturers, evaluate formulation tradeoffs, and manage supply chain timelines without being misled. You don't need to be a formulator, but you need to know enough to hold vendors accountable and protect product quality and margin.

Explicit Boundaries

This role does not own:

Product vision, core formulation philosophy, or brand worldview — those belong to the Founder
Final authority on brand standards or long-term mission — you execute within them and challenge constructively when needed
Creative direction for the brand — you ensure creative output is resourced and on schedule, not that you set the creative vision

You are expected to push back hard when you disagree, bring data when you challenge direction, and never simply comply when you see a better path. But the brand's non-negotiable standards — ingredient transparency, third-party testing, no misleading marketing claims — are the foundation you operate on.

Decision Rights & Key Interfaces

Owns: All execution-level decisions, resource allocation, operational priorities, team performance management, and channel-level strategy within guardrails set by the Founder.

Reports to: Founder & CEO.

Collaborates closely with: Head of Growth on paid media and DTC performance, Head of Amazon on marketplace execution, Head of Operations on supply chain and 3PL, and all agency partners.

This Role Is Not

A traditional COO who manages from a dashboard and delegates everything downward
A generalist operator who needs to be educated on the supplement or DTC ecommerce space
A cautious executive who slows things down to build consensus
A reactive tornado — all gas, no steering wheel

This is a co-founder-level operator who moves fast and builds the systems that let the whole team move fast without chaos.

Year-One Success Profile

Revenue is north of $20M and the trajectory is accelerating, not plateauing
DTC is a meaningfully larger share of revenue than when you started — not an experiment, a real channel
TikTok and Meta are scaling aggressively with a pipeline of offers, landing pages, ads, and creatives that runs like a machine — at any point we can press the gas harder and nothing breaks
Contribution margin is maintained or improved while growing topline 50%+
A rolling 13-week cash forecast is live and tracking within 10% variance
The Founder is freed from day-to-day execution and spending time on the things that only the CEO can do — acquisitions, major celebrity and influencer partnerships, podcast circuit, content creation, and long-term brand vision
A clear operating cadence is established across every function and the team is held to it without the Founder in the room
The team is stronger — higher standards, better accountability, fewer underperformers, and the business runs faster than it did before you arrived

Ideal Candidate

5+ years operating in DTC ecommerce with experience managing teams across Amazon FBA, Shopify, and paid social
Supplement, health, wellness, or fitness industry experience strongly preferred — you understand the products, the customer, the regulatory environment, and the category dynamics
A genuine, personal obsession with health optimization — you track your bloodwork, you know your stack, you follow the science
Strong financial literacy — you can own a P&L, build a forecast, and connect operational decisions to financial outcomes without translation
High-volume operator by nature — you manage complexity across multiple workstreams simultaneously and thrive in that environment
You have built or scaled a brand, a team, or a business unit from something small to something real

Bonus: You've built custom GPTs, automation workflows, or AI-powered systems that meaningfully changed how a team operates.

If this sounds like you, we want to hear from you.

Apply for This Role