This is Cradle

Proteins are the molecular machines of life, used for many therapeutic, diagnostic, chemical, agricultural and food applications. Designing and optimizing proteins takes a lot of expert knowledge and manual effort, through the use of custom computational and biological tools.

Machine learning is revolutionizing this space, by enabling high-fidelity protein models. At Cradle, we offer a software platform for AI-guided discovery and optimization of proteins, so that biologists can design proteins faster and at scale. We are already used by clients across biopharma, biotech, agri-tech, food-tech, and academia.

We're an experienced team of just under 100 people. We've built many successful products before and have enough funding for multiple years of runway. We are distributed across three offices in Amsterdam, Boston, and Zurich, alongside a few remote colleagues.

We offer our employees a very competitive salary, a generous equity stake in the company and a wide range of benefits and career progression opportunities.

The Role

As Executive Assistant at Cradle, you'll keep two of our founding executives moving. Between customer visits, investor meetings, hiring and travel across Amsterdam, Zurich and the US, there's a lot to keep track of, and your job is to make sure nothing gets dropped. You'll own their calendars, inboxes and travel, and take care of the personal admin that would otherwise eat into their time. This role suits someone who likes being trusted with the whole picture, professional and personal, and treats both with the same care.

Responsibilities

• Run two calendars as one system: Protect focus time, balance competing priorities across time zones, and decide what deserves a meeting and what can be an email.

• Own the inbox front line: Triage, draft and reply on their behalf to customers, investors, candidates and the team, so the important things surface and the rest gets handled.

• Plan travel end to end: Customer visits, conferences and trips between Amsterdam, Zurich and the US, from flights and hotels to the meeting room and dinner booking on the other side.

• Take care of personal and life admin: Appointments, household logistics, official paperwork, bills and renewals, handled so none of it lands on their desks.

• Prepare every important meeting: Make sure briefs and context are ready beforehand, and follow up on decisions and action items afterwards.

• Make recurring admin disappear: Automate repeated processes so they mostly run themselves.

Requirements

The best people we've hired didn't match a checklist. Below is a list of what matters most for this role. If you bring most of it and are curious about the rest, we'd love to hear from you:

• 4+ years supporting senior executives, ideally more than one at a time

• Sharp judgment about what's urgent, what can wait and what never needs to reach the exec

• Clear, polished written English

• You spot the next problem before anyone asks and fix it

• Experience handling personal admin alongside the professional side, with the discretion that comes with it

• Organised and dependable without needing a rigid structure; at a ~90-person company you'll often build the process yourself

• At home in Google Workspace and quick to pick up new software tools

Nice to Haves

These aren't requirements, but they'd give you a head start:

• German fluency would be ideal to would make local appointments, paperwork and authorities much easier

• Experience in a startup or scale-up environment

• Familiarity with Swiss administrative procedures (permits, insurance, tax paperwork, relocations)

• Experience with task tools like Todoist, Notion or Linear

Our commitment to inclusive hiring

Cradle evaluates all candidates based on merit, regardless of sex, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic background, or any other aspect of identity. We maintain zero tolerance for discrimination and actively encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply.

AI disclosure

Cradle uses an applicant tracking system that includes basic AI-assisted features which may generate scores or rankings based on how applications match a job description. These outputs are not used to make or meaningfully influence hiring decisions — all candidates are evaluated through a thorough, human-led review by our recruiting team.

A notice about recruitment scams

Please be aware that scammers are posing as us in order to get your personal details or money. We only communicate via @ email addresses, we only make job offers after having met you in person at our office in Zurich or Amsterdam, and we never ask you to pay for anything during the interview process.