Head of Program — Cat City / PidgeyFLok / AntlerFlok

Open now. 1099 independent contractor. 30 % of program profit for as long as you stay on, plus a negotiated six-figure wage. California first, travel to pilot cities. No degree required. This is the only role we are hiring for today; every other position on the careers page opens after you do.

What you will actually do

• Run the program end to end. Take the written plan (the pilot, the four programs, the budget, the funding playbook) and turn it into a calendar with names on it. You own the outcome; the founder owns the vision.
• Make decisions. Which city first, which shelter partner, which warehouse hosts the gateways, when a pilot is ready to be presented, when it is not. You decide, you say why, you move. Escalate the big ones; do not sit on the small ones.
• Delegate and hold people to it. The city-contracts lead, the business-development lead, the shelter coordinator and the grants lead report to you. You hand them clear pieces, check the work, and unblock them.
• Build the team. Hire the leads, then the field crews city by city through the city's own job programs (Human Services, CalWORKs, recovery, veterans, autism / neurodivergent employment programs). Interview, choose, onboard, let go when it isn't working.
• Sign the partners. Nothing happens to an animal outside a written partner agreement. Shelters, TNR groups, pigeon clubs, vet clinics, a licensed pest-control operator per city, the vet school for the mobile clinic. You get them to yes and keep them there.
• Run the pilot. Ninety days, twenty collars, five gateways, one report. You make sure it starts on time, the data is clean, and the day-90 packet lands on the council's desk.
• Own the numbers. Colony counts, sterilization %, burrow before/after, heat and air data, jobs placed, dollars in and out. If a number is soft you say so before the council finds out.
• Set up the backend and the logistics. The map and message service, the parts pipeline, the print hub, the pickups, the feeding schedules, the battery swaps. Hands-on with tools and spreadsheets, not just meetings.
• Report to the founder. A short, honest weekly: what happened, what's stuck, what you decided, what you need.

Who fits

We do not care where you went to school or whether you went. We care that you are competent, that you can hold six things in the air without dropping any of them, and that people trust you after one meeting.

• Competent and common-sense. You read a situation fast, you know what matters, and you don't need a procedure written down to do the obviously right thing.
• Intelligent, practical, not academic. You can learn a LoRa radio, a TNR protocol and a city procurement process in the same month and explain each one to the other side plainly.
• A multitasker. Several cities, partners and crews moving at once. You keep the list, you keep it current, and you are the one everyone calls.
• A go-getter. You don't wait to be told. You see the gap, you close it, you tell us afterwards.
• Independent. You will work without someone standing over you. You set your own days, you own your own outcomes, and you ask for help early instead of late.
• A decision-maker. Comfortable choosing with 70 % of the information, owning the result, and changing course when you were wrong.
• A delegator and a team-builder. You know the difference between doing it yourself and getting it done, and you can build a crew out of people the system usually passes over.
• Good with animals. Okay around pets, strays and pigeons, and with the people who care for them — shelters, TNR volunteers, pigeon clubs, vets.
• Good with people and explaining. A council chamber, a warehouse yard, a vet clinic and a volunteer meeting on the same day, and able to speak to each of them in their language.
• A speaker people like. You can stand up in a council chamber or a volunteer meeting, say it plainly, take the hard question, and have the room on your side when you sit down. Likeable is part of the job: partners sign with people they want to work with.
• Computer-capable. Not a programmer — but you run your own communications, set up the tools to a degree (email, calendars, shared drives, the dashboard, a group chat for every crew, a spreadsheet that's actually current), and you can get a new hire working on all of it in a day.
• Honest to a fault. The whole pitch rests on numbers a city can check. If you bend numbers, you cannot do this job.

Requirements

• 5+ years running an operation with field staff — any industry. Construction, logistics, restaurants, property, nonprofits, military, animal welfare all count. Public-sector, grant or animal-welfare background is a plus, not a requirement.
• You have hired people, managed people and let people go, and you can talk about each without flinching.
• You have owned a budget and a deadline that someone else depended on.
• Clear, likeable speaker and writer: presentations, phone calls, texts, emails that get answered.
• Comfortable with computers: spreadsheets, maps, phones, shared drives, messaging tools, and setting up simple systems for a team. You will learn our dashboard and the hardware; you do not need to arrive knowing them.
• Clean driving record and a vehicle; travel to pilot cities in California, and later beyond it.
• Able to work as a 1099 independent contractor: your own schedule, your own taxes, invoices monthly.
• Comfortable around animals and outdoors: yards, roofs, parks, loft, clinic days.
• No degree required. No certifications required. References required.

Nice to have

• Have sold to or worked inside a city, county or school district and know what procurement actually looks like.
• Have written or managed a grant.
• Have run a TNR effort, a shelter program, a pigeon loft, or a drone program (Part 107).
• Have built something with your hands, or a team from nothing.
• Spanish helps in every city we're looking at.

What you get

• 30 % of program profit for as long as you stay on — written into the agreement, paid as programs pay.
• A negotiated six-figure wage from the start, as a 1099 contractor. No insurance or benefits are offered at this time; possibly in the future as programs are signed.
• Real authority: hiring, partners, schedule and spend inside the program budget are yours to decide.
• The founder's time, the plan, the studies, the hardware, the software, the pitch — all built and waiting for you.
• A program that, when it works, empties a city of strays and rats humanely and puts people the system passed over on a payroll.

First 90 days

• Days 1–14: read everything, walk a colony, sit in a loft, meet the founder's partners, tell us what's wrong with the plan.
• Days 15–45: pick the first city, sign the shelter and TNR partner, line up the warehouse hosts, hire the city-contracts lead.
• Days 46–90: pilot in the ground — twenty collars, five gateways — with the day-90 packet drafted before the data is even in.

How to apply

One page. Not a résumé. What you have run, the hardest call you made running it, and how you would start this. Send it to amh@artificialmindhive.com with "Head of Program" in the subject. We read every one and answer every one. Interviews are a phone call, then a walk through a real colony with the founder.

Apply: one page on what you have run and how you would start Back to careers