General Manager (Hybrid)
3 days ago
Barcelona
Charly Agency · Remote in Europe, hybrid option in Barcelona · Full time Who we are Charly Agency is a strategy-first web design, CRO, and branding agency. The founder started it in San Francisco while building a European team, took no outside investment, and grew it on the strength of the work and the relationships around it. He has since moved to Barcelona. Our clients are all in the United States, and our team sits in Europe, with part in Latin America. We work across many verticals, which is part of what makes the work fun. From B2B SaaS to DTC ecommerce, from a hotel to a surrogacy agency. A few clients are corporate, most are founder-led brands. The atmosphere here is genuinely positive. We are an extremely capable team that is also loving and casual, close with each other and with our clients whenever possible, which shows up in our reviews. That trust is the asset the whole company sits on. It comes with discipline. Agreed ways of working that people follow, deadlines that hold, and a quality bar that stays where it is regardless of how much we like each other. Holding both at once is most of what this role is about. What we do • Brand strategy, identity, and packaging, • Website design and development on Shopify, Webflow, WordPress, and Framer, • CRO audits and conversion retainers, • Copywriting and brand storytelling, • SEO and GEO built into the site rather than sold afterward, • Amazon store and listing creative, • Custom application development Our projects carry CRO and branding inside the same build, with heavy copywriting and storytelling underneath, and technical delivery that holds up under real traffic. Where we are right now Thirteen people, in a high growth phase, with more projects and moving parts than a year ago. The core is a CTO and three project managers. Around them sit designers, developers, and copywriters, full time, part time, and contract, coordinated by the PM who runs each account. We are lean and plan to stay that way. Processes exist here and they are followed. Nobody writes a report that nobody reads. The role The General Manager runs Charly internally so the CEO can stay on new business, partnerships, and product. You own operations and the people side, and carry the weight of profitability with the CEO. It is the most critical hire we will make this year, and we want someone who sees themselves here long term. The line runs from the CEO to you, and from you to the project managers. They hold the day to day relationships with their clients and with the people on their projects. You set the parameters they work inside, oversee how they run, and make sure the work gets done well. You enter a client conversation when something is time sensitive or has gone wrong, which is a small share of your week. You are not starting from a blank page. Processes are in place for recruiting, delivery, and finance, an operations assistant supports recruiting, invoicing, and part of the reporting, and you work closely with the CEO on strategy and numbers. This is an aligned seat rather than a fully autonomous one. Direction and feedback come often and are expected to be carried through. Push back where you disagree, then land on a decision together rather than quietly taking another route. Alignment, organized priorities, open communication, and honesty are key here. Running the day to day • Own the internal rhythm: standups, weekly cadence, and decisions written down with owners named, • Oversee the project managers, keep visibility on scope, timelines, and quality, and see drift early, • Manage through the project managers rather than around them. Direction to designers, developers, and contractors travels through the PM who owns the project, • Unblock people. Much of the value is removing whatever stops someone from finishing: finding contractors, pushing them to deliver, or reshuffling assignments across project managers, often more than once a week, • Be the person the team goes to first Standards and pace • Create and own our few SOPs, covering things like daily standup posts, and make sure they are actually implemented. Policies have to be feasible for everyone to follow, since a procedure nobody uses changes nothing. Refine them as we learn, • Hold a high professional bar on deadlines, communication, and the quality of what leaves the door, • Address slips when they happen, • Set the tempo. Push toward finishing rather than polishing, and get what is close to done over the line, since a project that ships is one we can invoice, • Keep empathy in the conversation without letting it turn into an open ended timeline. Understanding why something slipped and accepting that it slipped are different responses. You are the boss Recruiting and capacity • Own recruiting for contractors and full time roles, from sourcing through test projects, offers, and onboarding, with a process and an assistant so it does not eat your week, • Build a bench ahead of the pipeline instead of scrambling once a project is signed, • Maintain the rate card and capacity plan, so we know what we can safely sell into next month, • Bring in people who fit how we treat each other, weighing temperament alongside portfolio Profitability Profitability is a large part of this job. Closest to the day to day, you see where money leaks and where it is left on the table. • The assistant produces the monthly P&L. Your focus is the forecast from incoming invoices and making sure they get paid, • Read the numbers for what to do next, and set direction on it with the CEO, • Know project margin during the project, not after it closes, with the assistant supplying the numbers. Improve them over time and build the data that informs decisions as we grow, • Review production costs, contractors, subscriptions, and tooling on a set cadence, with a view on what to cut, • Work with the project managers to find upsells inside existing accounts and make sure they are followed up, • Negotiate contractor and vendor rates and terms, optimized for the long term health of the company, • Keep the spread between what we bill and what we pay healthy, with contractor hours approved by the client before billing, • Invoices go out on schedule without a reminder, and receivables get chased while still recent Systems and growth • Improve our SOWs and terms so scope, revisions, timelines, and payment triggers are unambiguous before a project starts, closing the gaps that cost us unpaid revisions and late payments, • Sharpen the processes we run and retire the ones that stop earning their place, • Help move copy production, wireframing, and parts of SEO delivery onto AI tooling, which means changing habits, not only buying software, • Step into projects that go sideways, stabilize them, and hand them back. Be the escalation point when a client is unhappy, and deliver bad news early with a plan attached Who we are looking for • Three or more years managing teams, full time and contract. Agency or studio experience is ideal, • Proven at holding many competing priorities at once without dropping any or burning out, • Steady under pressure. Warm day to day, with enough distance to stay level when the temperature rises with a client, contractor, or team member, • Comfortable owning outcomes in both directions. You name a problem early, fix it, and move on, and give credit to the people who earned the wins, • Able to hold a hard line and stay well liked. You can tell someone their work is below standard and have an easy relationship with them the next day, • Naturally impatient about finishing. You take people out of their comfort zone so projects carry urgency, without wearing them down, • Recruits well, having sourced, tested, and onboarded people yourself, with an eye for temperament and culture fit as much as portfolio. You can spot BS in an interview, • Real familiarity with web projects. You can read a scope, sanity check a timeline, and tell when a build is behind, • Financially fluent. You have built or owned a P&L and are comfortable with utilization, margin, and cash flow. A strong negotiator on rates and terms, • Enjoys operational efficiency, and gets satisfaction from finding the version of a process that takes half the steps, • Detailed and organized. You track what was asked, follow up, and close it out without a reminder, • Comfortable in close alignment with a CEO. You follow direction and stay on the agreed path once a decision is made, • Cares that people do their work well and that the company behaves ethically with clients, contractors, and each other, • Interested in shaping culture and growing with the company over years. Fluent English A note on how we work The list is wide, though this is a thirteen person agency, so the scope is broad and the volume manageable. We stay lean, which means reporting exists where it helps make a decision, not as an exercise. You will work closely with the CEO. He is direct, cares about pace and detail, and will tell you early when something looks off. He expects the same in return. Logistics • Based in Europe, fully remote by default, • The CEO works out of Barcelona. If you are there, or want to be, the role can run as a hybrid with regular time in person. It is an option rather than a requirement, and being elsewhere is no disadvantage, • Full time, contract or employment depending on your country, • Three to four weeks of paid vacation, • We mean it about work life balance. Evenings and weekends belong to you, and we plan capacity around that rather than treating overtime as a resource, • Compensation is competitive and based on experience, • Occasional travel for team sessions How to apply Write to recruiting@charlyagency.com with your CV and a short note about an operation you inherited and what it looked like six months later. Skip the cover letter template and tell us the real story. Santiago Founder and CEO, Charly Agency | charlyagency.com
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