Chief Of Staff

PONDA

Ponda is a Bristol-based biomaterials company on a mission to build a supply chain that is inherently healing to the planet. Our flagship product, BioPuff®, is a plant-based insulation made from bulrush (Typha) harvested from rewetted peatlands. It outperformed 22 competing non-wovens on thermal performance in independent testing, and it is grown by farmers practising paludiculture - the regenerative wet-farming of degraded peatland.

We operate the world's largest supply chain of Typha biomass, spanning the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Ireland and Canada, with manufacturing partners across Europe. Wetlands store more carbon than all the world's forests combined; ~50M hectares of drained wetlands produce roughly 5% of global emissions. Rewetting them, profitably, is one of the highest-leverage climate interventions available - and Ponda is the commercial engine that makes that possible.

Where we are today

• Closed a £2M seed round in 2025

• £2.3M Innovate UK grant secured, programme starts July 2026; multiple concurrent grants running across UK and EU consortia.

• Partnered previously with Stella McCartney, Berghaus, Sheep Inc, Parley for the Oceans.

• Producing at the 10,000m scale of BioPuff Wadding, doubling YoY

• GTM launched 2026 to significant commercial traction
  

THE ROLE

The Chief of Staff is the CEO's right hand and the operational backbone of the company. You will work directly alongside the founders, turning strategy into execution and holding the company's day-to-day rhythm so the leadership team can focus on the highest-leverage work: fundraising, partnerships, brand and science.

This is a deliberately broad, senior role for someone who gets energy from making things work across the whole business - operations, finance, people and legal - rather than from any single specialism. Today, much of this work is stitched together between the CEO, a fractional CFO, an external bookkeeper, a year-end accountant, a grants advisor and external counsel. That has served us well, but it is not the right structure for the leading Ponda into our Series A.

You will inherit a well-funded company, a real product, a mission-aligned team, and a clear runway of decisions and processes that need an owner. It is a role with the scope of a Chief of Staff today, with a clear path to broaden further as the company scales into and beyond Series A.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

1. Business operations & operating cadence

• Own the company's meeting rhythm end-to-end - scheduling, agendas, prep and follow-ups for the weekly Team Stand-Up, Leadership Meeting, and the functional weekly syncs.

• Run the team's weekly review cycle - collecting submissions, chasing stragglers, and surfacing what leadership actually needs to see.

• Be the connective tissue across the team - translating the founders' priorities into clear actions, owners and deadlines, and chasing them to done.

• Build and maintain the systems, trackers and documentation that keep a fast-moving company coherent.

• Be the trusted generalist who picks up the important-but-unowned, so nothing falls through the cracks.

2. Finance & financial control

You are the internal owner of Ponda's finance function - running and integrating the external stack rather than doing every technical task yourself, and acting as the CEO's financial thought partner.

• Own the monthly close and produce a consistent management accounts pack that sources information from our finance stack and delivers it to leadership/board. Work with a fractional CFO to deliver.

• Own the relationships with external FinOps - review their work, hold them to SLAs, resolve queries quickly. Own the Pleo/Dext expense stack: policy, approvals, GL coding, integration into the close.

• Maintain a single live runway and cash position view; co-own an operational break-even plan.

• Support CEO and CFO on building financial models and unit economics to create effective reporting mechanisms to Ponda’s commercial and operational teams.

• Support on banking relationships, FX exposure (£/€/USD/CAD), treasury policy, and robust authorisation/segregation-of-duties controls as cash balances grow.

3. Grant management

• Own the financial side of Ponda's grant portfolio: Innovate UK (FIP), PEF, NERIF, IPS, R&D claims and successor programmes.

• Run consortium-partner finance interfaces, forecast grant income timing into the cash runway, and run match-funding calculations against grant rounds

• Coordinate with the grant project managers on cashflow checks, exploitation plans, QRM, Lambert/consortium agreement schedules and VAT treatment.

4. Legal, governance & compliance

• Maintain corporate governance hygiene alongside CFO: statutory registers, Companies House (and equivalent overseas) filings, board approvals and minutes, and the corporate-admin layer (company verifications, supplier setup).

• Own compliance and reporting for Ponda's subsidiaries

• Maintain and reconcile the cap table with CFO

• Coordinate with external counsel on Ponda’s commercial legal needs.

• Manage EIS/SEIS certificate processing for investors and the legal mechanics of share issuance.

5. Board, investor & fundraising

• Produce a consistent monthly board pack with the CEO, CFO and external bookeepers: KPIs, runway, burn, actuals vs budget, departmental spend and forward-looking commentary (management accounts)

• Support CEO on monthly reporting to investors, helping to draft any materials that may be necessary.

• Work with CEO, CFO and leadership team to build and own the Series A data room and partner with the CEO on process: investor pipeline, term sheet analysis and due-diligence response.

• Be a primary day-to-day finance and operations contact for board members and investors between meetings.

WHO ARE YOU

Must-haves

• A trusted operator - discreet, reliable, and comfortable holding confidential commercial, financial and people information.

• Exceptionally organised, with a bias for action and an obsession with follow-through; you can write clearly, run a tight meeting, and chase people warmly but firmly.

• Genuinely cross-functional - happy to move between a finance reconciliation, a people policy, a board deck, legals, sales and more.

• Strong financial and commercial fluency: you have owned (or managed) a monthly close and a board-quality management accounts pack, you think in unit economics and gross margin, and you are comfortable owning a 3-statement model and a cash runway.

• High autonomy - you take things off people's plates and own outcomes without needing hand-holding.

• You care about climate, regeneration and physical-product businesses.

Strongly preferred

• Experience at a venture-backed startup or scale-up that has been through a priced round, ideally with exposure to fundraising, Series A prep or a data room.

• Hands-on EMI/employee options experience (grants, valuations, ERS returns), ideally including cleaning up a backlog.

• Grant financial management experience (Innovate UK, Horizon Europe or equivalent) including consortium claims and match-funding.

• Familiarity with Xero, Pleo, Seed Legals and/or Carta; exposure to subsidiaries, cross-border VAT/tariffs, crowdfunding mechanics and SFDR/sustainability reporting.

• Prior chief-of-staff, founders-associate, operations or consulting experience; comfort with modern tools and a no-code/automation instinct.

WHAT YOU GET

• £55,000 – £70,000, dependent on experience

• Equity Plan

• Be part of an innovative endeavour towards truly regenerative materials

• Contribute to company direction

• Flexible working around core hours

• Cycle to work scheme

• Scale with a rapidly growing organisation, working with experienced and motivated individuals

• Birthday day off

• Dog friendly office