Chief of Staff job description, with examples

Most Chief of Staff job descriptions are written in an afternoon, copied from three other postings and regretted for a year. Twelve bullets, every one starting with "support" or "partner with", and no sentence saying what the person is there to change. The executive hires a generalist nobody can say no to, and a strong candidate either passes or takes a job that turns out to be calendar management with a bigger title. [SCOTT: a JD you hired against or wrote at Spring, and what it got wrong?]

Below is a template you can copy, three complete examples, prompts to draft and review yours, and the data to set level and pay, drawn from more than 1,800 Chief of Staff postings from 2026, the career histories of nearly 2,900 Chiefs of Staff, our salary surveys and our Leveling Framework. Candidates reading job descriptions should skip to the last section.

What should a Chief of Staff job description include?

A Chief of Staff job description should include eight things: the mandate, the principal, decision rights, first-six-month outcomes, responsibilities, requirements, level and pay, and what the role is not. The first four are what make it a Chief of Staff role. Without them, you've described a senior coordinator.

The order matters as much as the contents. Candidates for this role are usually senior operators who already have a job, and they decide on the first screen. If the first screen is a paragraph about your mission followed by "you will support the CEO", the people you most want have already closed the tab. Put the mandate and the principal above the fold, and the duties after.

Write the three decision rights before you write a single duty: what the person decides, what they recommend and what they don't own.

Chief of Staff job description template

Copy this template and fill in each bracket, keeping the order. Delete any line you can't fill honestly.

# Chief of Staff to [Principal title], [Company]

## About the role (optional, for job boards that cut the text)
[One paragraph: who the principal is, the one outcome this person will own, the level and the band.]

## The mandate
[Company] is [stage or situation, e.g. "growing from 60 to 150 people this year"]. The Chief of Staff will [the one outcome that matters most] so that [principal] can [what they focus on instead].

## The principal
You'll report directly to [name, title]. [One line on how they work: pace, style, where they spend their time, how they like to receive information.]

## Decision rights
- **You will decide:** [e.g. the leadership meeting agenda, priority calls on cross-team projects, spend up to $X]
- **You will recommend:** [e.g. the headcount plan, org changes]
- **You will not own:** [e.g. hiring decisions inside functions, the final budget]

## Your first six months
- **By month 3:** [a concrete outcome, e.g. one operating cadence running across the leadership team]
- **By month 6:** [a concrete outcome, e.g. the first board deck owned end to end]

## What you'll do
### Priorities and decisions
- [e.g. Decide which requests reach the principal and which get delegated]

### Operating rhythm
- [e.g. Run quarterly planning, the weekly leadership meeting and OKR reviews]
- [e.g. Own the board meeting cycle with the CFO]

### Communication up and down
- [e.g. Write the principal's board and investor updates]
- [e.g. Bring back what teams won't say in the leadership meeting]

### Cross-functional projects
- [e.g. Lead the [named] cross-team initiative]

## What you bring
- [Years of experience, matched to the level below. The median Chief of Staff starts with about 11 years.]
- [The two or three skills this mandate needs, e.g. running a planning process, executive writing, board work]
- [Nice to have: anything helpful but optional]

## Level, pay and tenure
- **Level:** [Chief of Staff Network Leveling Framework level, e.g. Level 4, Director]
- **Base salary:** $[X] to $[Y], plus [equity and/or bonus]
- **Location and schedule:** [remote / hybrid / on-site, time zone, travel %]
- **Tenure:** We expect this to be a [2 to 3] year role. After it: [the likely paths, e.g. a functional leadership role, a GM role].

## What this role is not
- [e.g. Not calendar or inbox management. We have an executive assistant.]
- [e.g. Not a functional head.]
- [e.g. Not a project manager for one team.]

Match verbs to decision rights: "own", "decide" and "run" for what the person controls, "recommend" for what they don't. And date every outcome, so you can judge it when month six arrives.

The mandate is the field people find hardest. A weak mandate describes the person: "We're looking for a strategic, high-energy operator to partner with our CEO." A strong one describes the change: "We've grown from 15 to 45 people in a year and every decision still runs through the CEO. The Chief of Staff will build the operating system that lets the company run without routing everything through one person." The "what this role is not" section feels negative, and it's the section candidates trust most. It also protects your hire, because when someone asks them to book travel in month two, the posting already said no.

If you'd rather start from rough notes, this prompt forces the same order and flags what's missing instead of inventing it.

You are helping me write a Chief of Staff job description. Use exactly this structure, in this order: The mandate, The principal, Decision rights (You will decide / You will recommend / You will not own), Your first six months (By month 3 / By month 6), What you'll do (grouped under Priorities and decisions, Operating rhythm, Communication up and down, Cross-functional projects), What you bring, Level pay and tenure, What this role is not.

Rules:
- Use only facts from my notes. If a section is missing information, write [NEEDED: what's missing] instead of inventing it.
- Use "decide", "own" and "run" only for things the person controls. Use "recommend" for things someone else approves.
- Keep admin tasks (calendar, inbox, travel, notes) under 20% of the bullets. If my notes include more, list them separately at the end as "Move to an executive assistant role?".
- Every outcome in "Your first six months" must be concrete and dated.
- Suggest a level using the Chief of Staff Network Leveling Framework (1 Analyst/Associate, 2 Senior Associate/Junior Manager, 3 Manager/Senior Manager, 4 Director, 5 VP, 6 Executive/CXO) based on the decision rights, and explain why in one sentence.
- Plain language. No "dynamic", "fast-paced", "rockstar" or "wear many hats".

My notes:
[paste your notes: company, stage, headcount, principal, why now, what this person should change, decisions they can make, budget for the role]

What does a good Chief of Staff job description look like?

A good Chief of Staff job description reads like the template, filled in for one specific situation. Below are three illustrative examples we wrote for the settings we see most, with pay bands anchored on our 2026 posting data and 2025 salary-by-level data. The first is shown in full; for the other two, the prose pulls out what changes.

Example 1: Chief of Staff to the CEO, Series A startup

The startup version is about building an operating system where there isn't one yet, so most of the specifics sit in the operating rhythm.

# Chief of Staff to the CEO, [Company] (Series A, 45 people)

## The mandate
We've grown from 15 to 45 people in a year, and the CEO is still the hub for every decision. You'll build the operating system that lets the company run without routing everything through one person.

## The principal
You'll report to [name], CEO and co-founder. She moves fast, thinks out loud and prefers a one-page memo to a meeting.

## Decision rights
- **You will decide:** the leadership meeting agenda, the quarterly planning process and timeline, and what goes into the board deck.
- **You will recommend:** priority calls when teams conflict, and the hiring plan for next year.
- **You will not own:** hiring decisions inside functions, or customer pricing.

## Your first six months
- **By month 3:** a weekly leadership meeting and quarterly OKRs running across all five teams.
- **By month 6:** the Series B board materials owned end to end.

## What you'll do
### Priorities and decisions
- Decide which requests reach the CEO and which get delegated.

### Operating rhythm
- Run quarterly planning, the weekly leadership meeting and OKR reviews.
- Own the monthly board update and the quarterly board meeting.

### Communication up and down
- Draft board and investor updates.
- Run a monthly pulse with team leads and bring back what isn't being said in the leadership meeting.

### Cross-functional projects
- Lead the first pricing review across sales and product.

## What you bring
- 6 to 10 years of experience, ideally in operations, finance or a startup leadership team.
- You've run a planning process or an operating cadence before.
- Board or investor work is a plus.

## Level, pay and tenure
- **Level:** Level 3 to 4 (Manager to Director)
- **Base salary:** $140,000 to $175,000, plus equity
- **Tenure:** a 2 to 3 year role. Likely next steps: head of operations, or a functional leadership role.

## What this role is not
- Not the CEO's assistant. We have one.

There's no "wear many hats" and no list of 12 duties. The decision rights tell a candidate this is a real seat, and the board work tells them the level.

Example 2: Chief of Staff to the CTO, scale-up

Technology and product leaders are now the second most common principal in postings that name one (21%). Here the main responsibility is priorities and decisions: protecting a technical leader's time from the status meetings that eat it. The person decides the engineering planning process and the CTO's staff meeting agenda, recommends headcount across six groups, and doesn't own engineer management or architecture. The month-six outcome is a monthly engineering business review that replaces five status meetings, at Director level, $165,000 to $200,000 plus equity.

# Chief of Staff to the CTO, [Company] (Series D, 900 people)

## The mandate
Engineering has doubled to 300 people across six groups, and the CTO spends most of the week in status meetings. You'll make sure engineering spends its time on the company's top priorities and that the CTO hears about problems early.

## The principal
You'll report to [name], CTO. He's deeply technical, protective of maker time and wants problems raised early and in writing.

## Decision rights
- **You will decide:** the engineering planning process and calendar, and the CTO's staff meeting agenda.
- **You will recommend:** headcount allocation across the six engineering groups.
- **You will not own:** management of engineers, or architecture decisions.

## Your first six months
- **By month 3:** one engineering roadmap tied to company OKRs.
- **By month 6:** a monthly engineering business review that replaces five status meetings.

## What you'll do
### Priorities and decisions
- Cut the CTO's recurring status meetings and protect time for the top three technical bets.

### Operating rhythm
- Run engineering planning, headcount allocation and the CTO staff meeting.

### Communication up and down
- Write the CTO's updates to the executive team and the technology section of the board deck.

### Cross-functional projects
- Run the cross-team AI tooling rollout.

## What you bring
- 8 or more years of experience, with time in engineering, product or technical program management.
- You've run planning for a large technical organization.
- You can read a technical design doc and explain it to the board.

## Level, pay and tenure
- **Level:** Level 4 (Director)
- **Base salary:** $165,000 to $200,000, plus equity
- **Tenure:** a 2 to 3 year role. Likely next steps: VP of engineering operations, or a product leadership role.

## What this role is not
- Not a technical program manager for one project.

The "will not own" line matters most here. A Chief of Staff to a CTO who starts making architecture calls loses the engineering managers in a month.

Example 3: Chief of Staff to a business unit president, enterprise

In a large company, the Chief of Staff's power comes from proximity and from being trusted to speak for the principal, so the main responsibility is communication. One extra decision right, "You will speak for the president in cross-unit forums when she can't attend", moves the role up a level, to Director or VP, at $200,000 to $240,000 plus bonus. The mandate is integration-heavy, and the "not" line says this is not a strategy role reporting into corporate strategy.

# Chief of Staff to the President, [Business Unit], [Company] (7,000 people, public)

## The mandate
Our largest business unit has three regional leaders, two acquisitions to integrate and a president who joined six months ago. You'll be the president's operating partner across all of it.

## The principal
You'll report to [name], President of [Business Unit]. She joined from outside the company, leads through her regional leaders and expects one clear recommendation when you bring her a decision.

## Decision rights
- **You will decide:** the unit's monthly operating review and the president's leadership team agenda.
- **You will recommend:** integration priorities for both acquisitions.
- **You will speak for the president** in cross-unit forums when she can't attend.
- **You will not own:** regional P&Ls, or people decisions inside the regions.

## Your first six months
- **By month 3:** a single performance view across the three regions.
- **By month 6:** the integration plan for both acquisitions approved by the executive committee.

## What you'll do
### Priorities and decisions
- Decide which regional issues need the president and which don't.

### Operating rhythm
- Build the unit's annual plan with finance and run the monthly operating review.

### Communication up and down
- Prepare the president's executive committee and town hall materials.
- Bring back what the regions won't say in the room.

### Cross-functional projects
- Lead the integration program office.

## What you bring
- 10 or more years of experience, including time in a large, matrixed company.
- You've run an operating review or an integration before.
- Executive committee or board exposure.

## Level, pay and tenure
- **Level:** Level 4 to 5 (Director to VP)
- **Base salary:** $200,000 to $240,000, plus annual bonus
- **Tenure:** a 2 year role. Likely next steps: a regional or functional leadership role in the unit.

## What this role is not
- Not a strategy role reporting into corporate strategy. You report to the president.

The four core responsibilities hold in every setting; what moves is which one leads, the scale and the decision rights. For a venture firm, a family office or a government office, start from the example closest in size and change the decision rights first. Once your posting has a mandate, a principal, decision rights and a band, post it on our job board, where Chiefs of Staff look for their next role.

What do you need to decide before you write it?

Decide three things before you open a doc: why you need the role now, who the principal is and what the person can decide without asking. If you can't answer those in a sentence each, you aren't ready to hire. Our guide on how to hire a Chief of Staff starts with that test.

Why now

Finish the sentence "In 12 months, this person will have..." If the answer is "taken things off my plate", you need an executive assistant or a strong operator in one function. If it's "made the leadership team run on one plan" or "shipped the reorg we keep postponing", you need a Chief of Staff. Name your pattern in the mandate: a founder who has become the hub of every decision, a new executive who inherited a large organization, or a fundraise, acquisition or turnaround the leader can't run alongside the business.

Who the principal is

Only 41% of postings name who the Chief of Staff supports, according to the Chief of Staff Network's 2026 Pathways Report. Where they do, fewer than half name the CEO.

A Chief of Staff to a CTO and a Chief of Staff to a CEO do different work, attract different candidates and sit at different levels. Name the person, and add one line on how they work: their pace, where they spend their time, how they like to receive information. That line is often the most-read sentence in the posting.

What the person can decide

Can this person reprioritize a leadership team agenda? Kill a project? Approve spend up to a limit? Speak for the principal in a meeting they miss? Each yes raises the level, and the pay with it. Bryan Silverman, who went from Chief of Staff to COO at the research platform Suzy, made the case on our podcast about Chief of Staff as a career accelerant: when the Chief of Staff is wearing the CEO hat, the heads of marketing, product and sales need to know who is deciding what and who is just involved.

Use three verbs, and only three. "Decide" for what the person controls outright. "Recommend" for what they shape but someone else approves. "Not own" for what stays elsewhere, stated plainly.

A VP who used to set the leadership agenda will read "decides the weekly agenda" as something taken away. Show the draft to every leader whose territory it touches before it's posted, and let them argue with their line. The posting takes a week longer, and your new hire doesn't spend their first month fighting a turf war they didn't start.

This week, write the three lines (decide, recommend, not own) and send them to two members of your leadership team. Settle any pushback before the hire.

How do you write the responsibilities?

Group every duty under the four core responsibilities and make each bullet specific enough to test. Here's what postings ask for, from the Chief of Staff Network's analysis of more than 1,800 postings in its 2026 Pathways Report.

Write priorities as decisions about the leader's attention. "Decide which requests reach the CEO and which get delegated, with a weekly review of what was declined" is a priority bullet; "Manage the CEO's calendar" isn't. 37% of postings also ask for a thought partner who prepares the big decisions and gives the leader an honest view.

For the operating rhythm, name the specific meetings and cycles the person will own, how often each runs and who attends, including OKR reviews and the board cycle. "Run the weekly leadership meeting and the quarterly planning cycle for an eight-person executive team" tells a candidate the scale; "Drive operational excellence" tells them nothing. Communication runs in both directions, and most postings only describe the leader's message going out. "Bring back what teams won't say in the leadership meeting" is a real responsibility. For cross-functional projects, name the first one: "Lead the integration of [acquired company] across finance, product and sales" is testable, and "Special projects as assigned" is a red flag dressed as flexibility.

Tag every bullet in your draft P, R, C, X or A (admin). If more than a fifth are A, you're writing an executive assistant role.

How do you set the level and pay in a Chief of Staff job description?

Set the level from the decision rights, then set the pay from the level, company size and experience you ask for. A "Chief of Staff" who implements decisions is a different hire from one who shapes them.

Our Leveling Framework splits the role into six levels by how much the person shapes strategic decisions. Here's how that maps to average base salary, according to the Chief of Staff Network's 2025 Salary Report (nearly 500 respondents).

If your Chief of Staff will decide the leadership agenda and recommend headcount, that's meaningful input at least, so Level 3 or 4. If they'll sit in board meetings, speak for the principal and shape the plan, that's Level 5 or 6. Adjust for company size and location using our salary guide, and see our post on designing compensation bands to fit a new role into your existing bands.

A worked example: setting the band

Here's the whole sequence on one role, as an illustration. A 300-person Series C company in Austin is hiring a Chief of Staff to the CEO.

1. Decision rights. The person will decide the leadership meeting agenda and the quarterly planning process, recommend headcount across teams and not own the budget. Deciding the planning process is more than input, so this is Level 4, Director.
2. Level benchmark. Director-level Chiefs of Staff average $173,667, with a middle half of $132,000 to $202,000, according to the Chief of Staff Network's 2025 Salary Report.
3. Size and city. Companies with 201 to 500 employees average $181,273, and Austin averages $180,577. The level figure is the floor and the size figure the ask.
4. Market check. Postings that list pay have a median of $180,000, so a band that tops out well below that will lose candidates to other postings.
5. Return check. The CEO expects the role to take planning and board prep off their desk, about a day a week, and to get the stalled pricing review shipped in two quarters. That justifies a Director band.

The posted line reads: "Level 4 (Director). Base $170,000 to $195,000, plus equity."

If the budget doesn't reach the band, don't post a Director scope at a Manager price. Move the planning process from "decide" to "recommend", and the role becomes an honest Level 3 at $140,000. A seed-stage startup can trade some base for equity and an earlier title, but should say so. A large company's HR team will often match the role to a program management band first, so push for the band of the leaders the role sits beside, and for a remote role, state which pay zone the band uses. A posted band also becomes an internal number the day it goes live, so if it sits above what some of your VPs earn, settle that conversation before you post.

Among postings that list pay, the median advertised Chief of Staff salary is $180k, with a typical band of $150k to $200k, according to the Chief of Staff Network's 2026 Pathways Report (more than 1,800 postings; pay stated on about 1 in 5, mostly US). That's the highest of any operator role outside AI leadership. Postings at companies with 11 to 50 employees have a median of $140k, against $215k at 5,001 to 10,000. Roles asking 1 to 5 years of experience advertise $155k, and 11 or more $221k. Chief of Staff and Strategy roles have a median of $250k, VP, Director or Head titled roles $230k, and a plain Chief of Staff title $174k.

One in four postings now asks for AI skills, but those postings don't pay more. If the Chief of Staff will own AI adoption across the leadership team, write that into the mandate and pay for the scope; if not, drop the requirement, because it only narrows your pool. And a $120k to $140k "Chief of Staff" at a 10-person startup is usually a founder's associate, a great first step for the right person. Call it that and you'll attract people who want it.

Put the band in the posting. Salary is stated on only about 1 in 5 Chief of Staff postings, so a clear band stands out and screens out candidates whose expectations you can't meet.

Each decision right you grant moves the role up a level, and the pay band with it.

What are the red flags in a Chief of Staff job description?

The biggest red flags are no named principal, no decision rights and a bullet list that's mostly calendar and inbox. Each one predicts a role with no authority and no exit. Here's the full list I'd check, whether you're writing a posting or reading one.

1. No principal. If the posting doesn't say who you support, ask. 59% don't.
2. The admin share. If more than a fifth of the bullets are calendar, inbox, travel or note-taking, it's an executive assistant role, and it should be posted and paid as one.
3. A split reporting line. Reporting into a strategy or operations team with a dotted line to the executive you support means you'll serve two bosses and influence neither.
4. "Wear many hats" with no mandate. That phrase plus no outcome means the role is a dumping ground for whatever nobody else wants.
5. No outcomes or time frame. If nothing says what success looks like in six months, nobody will agree on it later.
6. Consulting required. The requirement screens out the 93% of Chiefs of Staff who didn't come straight from consulting.
7. No band, or a band below the level. A Director-level scope at a $110k band means the company hasn't decided what it's hiring.
8. No word on what comes next. A Chief of Staff role is usually a tour, and a posting that never mentions tenure often hasn't thought about it.
9. Always on. "Available 24/7" means the role has no boundaries, and the burnout comes with the title.

The consulting requirement shows up in 27% of postings. But when we mapped the career histories of about 2,650 Chiefs of Staff for the Pathways Report, only 7% came straight from consulting. Operations and strategy was the largest single feeder, at 21%, and no other function supplied more than 10%.

The split reporting line is the one experienced Chiefs of Staff warn about most. Judy Abad, Chief of Staff to the CFOO at Freshworks, described it in our episode on moving from Chief of Staff to functional leader and back:

Run your draft through this prompt before you post it. It's the same check a sharp candidate will run in their head.

Review this Chief of Staff job description as a skeptical senior candidate would.

Check for these red flags and quote the exact line for each one you find:
1. No named principal (who the Chief of Staff reports to)
2. More than 20% of bullets about calendar, inbox, travel or note-taking
3. A reporting line into a strategy or operations team with a dotted line to the executive
4. "Wear many hats" or "special projects as assigned" with no stated mandate
5. No outcomes or time frame for the first six months
6. Consulting experience required
7. No salary band, or a band that looks below the scope (use these 2025 Chief of Staff Network averages: Manager $144,464, Director $173,667, VP $186,739, Executive $193,999)
8. No mention of tenure or what comes after the role
9. "Available 24/7" or similar always-on language

Then:
- Tag each responsibility as Priorities, Operating rhythm, Communication, Projects or Admin, and give the share of each.
- Say which Chief of Staff Network Leveling Framework level the decision rights suggest (1 to 6) and whether the band matches it.
- List the three most important questions a candidate should ask in the first interview.
Be direct and specific. Don't rewrite the job description.

Job description:
[paste it here]

How should candidates read a Chief of Staff job description?

Read it for authority first. Find the principal, the decision rights and the six-month outcomes, then sort every bullet into the four core responsibilities and count the admin share. If those pieces are missing, your interview is where you get them.

Take a pen to the bullets of the next posting you see on our job board. Circle the verbs: "own", "decide", "lead" and "run" mean authority, while "support", "coordinate" and "assist" mean the opposite. Tag each bullet, then check the band against the level table above. A gap of more than one level is either a negotiation or a warning.

Reading a posting, line by line

Here's the pen exercise on an illustrative posting, eight bullets under "Chief of Staff to the CEO", with the verb and the tag after each:

1. Support the CEO on strategic initiatives. Support: projects, no authority.
2. Manage the CEO's calendar and travel. Manage: admin.
3. Coordinate the weekly leadership meeting. Coordinate: rhythm, no authority.
4. Prepare board materials. Prepare: rhythm.
5. Own the quarterly OKR process. Own: rhythm, with authority.
6. Draft internal communications. Draft: communication.
7. Take notes and track action items. Take: admin.
8. Special projects as assigned. No verb, no mandate.

Two of eight bullets are admin, which is 25%, above the one-fifth line. One verb carries authority, and there's no principal style, no outcomes and no band. Read as written, this is Level 2 work. It might still be a good job, but you only find out by asking which of those "support" and "coordinate" lines you'd decide yourself.

Most postings leave out the things that matter, so use the interview. Judy Abad's advice, from the same episode:

Ask these four questions before you take any Chief of Staff role:

1. What decision would you trust me to make in my first month without checking with you?
2. What will I own in six months that nobody owns today?
3. Who did this work before me, and what happens to their role?
4. How long do you see this role lasting, and what comes after it?

Ask about tenure even if it feels early. Chiefs of Staff who stay two to three years are the most likely to step up afterwards (57%), against 38% of those who leave inside a year, according to the Chief of Staff Network's 2026 Pathways Report, across more than 2,100 moves. And 53% hold a more senior title after the role than before it, based on more than 1,200 moves with rank stated before and after.

Alex Cherucheril, who moved from Chief of Staff to head of business operations at Welcome Tech, added two tests from the interview stage. If the principal gives you a single 30-minute interview, they probably don't see the role as a close partnership. And ask each executive you meet what the role is: if their answers match each other and the CEO's, the role has impact. Missing outcomes, no band and an unnamed principal style are usually fixable. A split reporting line, an admin share that turns out to be the real job, and executives who describe different roles rarely change after you join, and if the answers on those stay vague by the final round, I'd walk away.

For the application, we recommend a cover letter that copies the most important bullets from the posting, bolds them, and answers each with a story from your own work that ended in a business outcome. Our list of 33 Chief of Staff interview questions covers what you'll be asked, and our resume examples show how to present operator experience. Don't rule yourself out on requirements: the median Chief of Staff starts with around 11 years of experience, but 12% have five years or fewer, and our guide on how to become a Chief of Staff covers the routes in.

Before Friday, run the pen exercise on one posting you're interested in, and write down which of the four interview questions it already answers.