AI Operations Associate

About Fuel Cycle : Fuel Cycle empowers leading organizations with agile research solutions that deliver decision-ready insights — fast, flexible, and fully integrated. As a market research disruptor, our AI-powered Insights Platform is built for speed, precision, and scale. With cutting-edge tools and seamless audience connectivity, we help brands ditch the guesswork and make smarter, customer-led decisions at lightning speed. Why work at Fuel Cycle? Join a high-growth team where curiosity is valued, ownership is encouraged, and your work drives real-world impact. Whether you’re based at our Los Angeles HQ, New York City hub, working remotely across the U.S., or part of our global team in India, you’ll help shape the future of decision intelligence for some of the world’s most iconic brands. The Role Fuel Cycle’s goal is to make every function in the company AI-native, starting with IT, Services, Sales, and Marketing. As our AI Operations Associate, you’ll lead that effort for IT first, then expand to the rest of the company. You’ll work with our Chief Product and AI Officer to set the roadmap, then build and ship it. This isn’t an IT Operations role with AI added on. Your job is to replace manual, hand-off-heavy workflows with AI-driven ones and show the business impact of each. • If an agent can do the work, you build and deploy it. • If it can’t yet, you fix the underlying data and rework the process until it can. What You’ll Do IT (your starting focus) • Service Desk and app automation: Build AI agents that resolve IT tickets on their own, including software provisioning, account access, hardware procurement, and troubleshooting. • Security and network automation: Build AI pipelines for threat detection, anomaly isolation, patching, firewall changes, and new-user network setup. • Performance tuning: Monitor and tune your agents against internal SLAs to cut resolution time, reduce downtime, and remove manual routing. • IT dashboards: Build BI dashboards showing infrastructure health, agent performance, software usage, and security, so leadership has one trusted source of truth. • Customer Zero for Product: Work with Product and Engineering, feeding what you learn from running agents internally back into Fuel Cycle’s AI platform. Company-wide (as your scope grows) • Find and prioritize automation opportunities in HR, Legal, Customer Success, and other teams. • Create and own our internal AI playbook for evaluating, deploying, and measuring AI replacements for manual work. • Help department leaders understand what can be automated now, what can’t yet, and what’s next. • Partner with Product and Engineering on the platform and MCP infrastructure behind our internal agents. Data and measurement • Keep data clean and definitions agreed across the teams you support, so there are fewer disputes over numbers. • Build evaluation loops into every workflow so quality, accuracy, and reliability are tracked continuously. • Report to leadership on manual hours saved, workflow coverage, and time-to-answer improvements. How Success Is Measured • AI-native coverage: share of routine workflows run or materially assisted by AI agents • Manual hours displaced: dollar value of time returned to IT and other teams each quarter • Speed to answer: time from a leader’s question to a trustworthy answer • Data trust: fewer escalations and disputes over operational numbers • Function coverage: number of internal teams with at least one AI-native workflow live and measured Who You’ll Work With Chief Product and AI Officer, Head of Product, Head of Engineering, DevOps, CMO and Marketing, CFO and Finance, HR, Legal, and other leaders as scope grows. You’ll also work alongside our other AI Operations Associate, who focuses on customer-facing teams. What We’re Looking For Required • A track record of building and shipping AI solutions in a business setting • Hands-on experience with agentic development: Claude Code, MCP, prompt engineering, and evaluation loops • Python for automation and data analysis, and SQL for querying and reporting • Familiarity with enterprise systems (CRM, marketing automation, ERP, BI), enough to build against them and learn more • Comfort with ambiguity and strong prioritization across a broad scope Strengths that will help you succeed • A systems thinker who can see how tools like Salesforce, marketing automation, and finance systems connect • Fluent in AI-native workflow concepts: agents, MCP, human-in-the-loop design • Clear communicator with both technical and business audiences • A builder who prototypes the replacement rather than documenting the current process Benefits & Perks: Fuel Cycle is committed to supporting the well-being, flexibility, and growth of our team. We offer a competitive and inclusive benefits package that includes: • Comprehensive Health Coverage : Medical, dental, and vision insurance plans • 401(k) with Company Match : Plan for your future with our retirement savings program • Equity Purchase Option : Participate in Fuel Cycle’s long-term success • Flexible Work Schedule : Empowering you to balance life and work • Generous Time Off : • 15 vacation days and 7 sick days per year • 12 company holidays • 4 floating holidays/recharge days to rest or celebrate what matters to you • Paid Parental Leave : Time to bond with your growing family • Monthly Internet & Phone Stipend : Support for remote work setup • Wellness & Lifestyle Perks : Access to tools like Rightway (healthcare navigation), Headspace (mental wellness), Peloton (fitness) , and more • Team Connection Perks : • Weekly community lunches , refreshments, and snacks at our LA & NY headquarters Compensation Overview: The expected starting salary range for this position is $85,000 - $105,000. This range represents the typical starting compensation offered to candidates hired into this role. Final base salary will be determined based on a variety of f