About Emberline
Emberline is a two-partner investment firm that buys and builds founder-led businesses. We're operators at heart; we invest in great companies where hands-on support can make a real difference, then embed alongside management to build the infrastructure, teams, and capabilities that help them scale. You'll be part of a tight core team, but your day-to-day reaches across our portfolio companies and the operators, finance leaders, and advisors who support them.
This role sits at the center of how the firm actually operates day-to-day. You'll see everything.
Tasks
Why This Role Matters
We need someone who keeps the machine running, and makes it better over time. We have three portfolio companies today and are building toward five. As we grow, the firm needs one person who owns the day-to-day operating mechanics: investor record-keeping, board meeting prep, document coordination, tax-season logistics, advisor follow-up, and the hundred small things that keep a firm running cleanly.
What you'll be doing. A meaningful share of this role is hands-on administration: chasing documents, coordinating signatures, tracking down missing files, making sure a FedEx actually went out, keeping investor records current. That's how the whole firm runs. The Managing Partners chase the same FedExes, and nobody here is too senior for the work. Part of why we're hiring is to systematize and hand it off, but the culture won't change. If that sounds like your kind of place, keep reading.
An apprenticeship seat with real upside. The Managing Partners will coach you directly. You'll work alongside portfolio company CEOs, finance leaders, and external advisors, and you'll see how deals are structured, how companies are supported, and how a small investment firm actually runs. You'll use modern tools and AI to turn manual work into systems. As you master the mechanics, you'll take on real ownership: running full reporting cycles end-to-end, managing portfolio company onboarding for new acquisitions, and owning workstreams that don't have a playbook yet. This seat is built to grow into firm operations leadership, portfolio operations, or somewhere we haven't mapped yet. The ceiling is set by you, not the title.
We don't expect you to arrive knowing private equity. What matters is that you're organized, sharp, high-agency, and genuinely interested in learning.
What Monday Morning Looks Like
Here's what the early months look like so you can picture it concretely:
- Close open loops. Follow up on outstanding documents, deliverables from advisors, and action items from last week's meetings. Make sure nothing is sitting in limbo.
- Prep for upcoming meetings. Pull together materials for board calls, portfolio company check-ins, and partner meetings. Coordinate with portfolio teams to get reporting packages delivered on time.
- Keep investor admin current. Update records, respond to account inquiries, support quarterly update logistics, and stay ahead of tax-season coordination.
- Maintain the operating tracker. Update status, flag anything that's slipping, and make sure every item has an owner and a deadline.
- Document as you go. When you learn a workflow, write the SOP so it's repeatable. When a process is clunky, improve it.
What You'll Own
You'll start by learning and running the core mechanics, then expand your scope as you build context. The expectation is growth over time, not day-one mastery.
Day-to-Day Administration and Coordination
- Investor record-keeping, quarterly update logistics, and tax-season coordination, keeping everything current and nothing dropped.
- Board and operating meeting scheduling, materials prep, follow-up, and corporate records (minutes, resolutions, filings).
- Document coordination across portfolio companies: chasing deliverables, tracking signatures, managing deadlines with external parties.
- Drafting and sending investor communications: quarterly updates, capital call support, and ad hoc correspondence.
Systems, Tools, and AI
- Build and maintain the central operating tracker so every item has an owner, a deadline, and a clear status.
- Document recurring workflows into SOPs that someone else could follow.
- Use modern tools (Notion, Airtable, Linear, Claude) to turn manual work into repeatable systems. We're an AI-forward firm and expect you to be too. If you see a process that should be automated, build it.
- When the current approach isn't working, say so and help build a better one. We'd rather you flag a broken process than quietly work around it.
Advisor and Vendor Management
- Track third-party deliverables with clear owners, deadlines, and escalation paths.
- Hold external advisors and vendors to timelines, and flag slippage early so nothing surprises the partners.
Portfolio Operations (Over Time)
- Help portfolio teams keep reporting clean and consistent: work with finance leaders to deliver packages on time and in the right format.
- Take on expanded workstreams (portfolio company onboarding, new advisor setup, or other projects) as you build context and earn trust.
Who You Are
- High Agency: You don't wait to be told. When something is off, you flag it. When something could be better, you improve it. You take ownership of outcomes, not just tasks.
- Tech-Native: You default to modern tooling and AI to streamline workflows and kill repetitive work. You're not a developer, but you think in systems and you're always looking for the next thing to automate.
- Takes Pride in the Details: You see admin work as craft, not chores. A clean spreadsheet, a perfectly formatted board package, and a zero-miss deadline record are things you're proud of.
- Organized to the Core: Your own systems are tight. You don't just design trackers, you live by them. Multiple workstreams, competing deadlines, and external dependencies don't rattle you.
- Relentless Follow-Up: You send the third email and make the uncomfortable call until the work is actually closed. You never let a ball drop.
- Fast Learner, Not Fragile: You've navigated steep learning curves before: new industries, unfamiliar tools, responsibilities you weren't trained for. You ask sharp questions, absorb feedback without defensiveness, and get noticeably better week over week.
Requirements
- 2-5 years in administration, operations, project coordination, executive support, or another detail-heavy role.
- Genuinely hyper-organized. Not just "organized enough," but the person whose systems other people want to copy.
- Strong written communication with minimal editing required.
- Comfort managing external stakeholders (advisors, vendors, portfolio company contacts) and holding timelines.
- Comfort working in a small firm where role boundaries are pragmatic, not rigid.
- Private equity or finance experience is NOT required. Curiosity and learning speed matter more.