General Manager (Hybrid)
3 days ago
Barcelona
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 mostly in Europe, with part in Latin America and North Africa. 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 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. 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. Clients are the CEO's territory: you enter a client conversation only when something is time sensitive or has gone wrong, which is a small share of your week. This is why your English needs to be strong, not flawless. The mandate for your first year Beyond keeping the day to day healthy, five outcomes define success in this seat: • Shorter projects. Our builds run four to six months. The target is three, through tighter scopes, faster feedback loops, and someone paying attention every single day. Speed is the single biggest lever on both margin and client happiness., • Healthier margins. We know roughly where money leaks: contractor rates nobody has benchmarked, subscriptions nobody reviews, revisions nobody billed. You find the leaks, close them, and know project margin during the project, not after it closes., • AI woven into delivery. Copy production, wireframing, and parts of SEO are moving onto AI tooling, and we have an internal tool in development. You do not need to build any of it. You do need to research what good agencies are doing, evaluate tools skeptically, run pilots, and change habits, which is the hard part. You should be a real hands-on user of these tools yourself, because you cannot push adoption of something you do not use., • A bench and a rhythm. A warm bench of tested candidates, contractors and future full time hires alike, ahead of the pipeline, weekly one-on-ones so people feel heard, standups that actually get posted, and slips that get addressed the day they happen., • A growing Latin America team. Today we are mostly Europe. Latam gives us strong talent, favorable rates, and natural overlap with US client hours, and we want to deliberately grow our presence there. You own recruiting it.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, • Hold weekly check-ins with the team. People here do their best work when someone is listening, and that someone is you, • Be the person the team goes to firstStandards and pace, • Create and own our few SOPs, make sure they are actually implemented, and refine them as we learn. A procedure nobody uses changes nothing, • Hold a high professional bar on deadlines, communication, and the quality of what leaves the door, • Address slips when they happen. Understanding why something slipped and accepting that it slipped are different responses. You are the boss, • 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, • Be the counterweight. The CEO is warm, casual, and optimistic, and knows the company needs someone who is warm and firm at the same timeRecruiting 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 warm bench of vetted candidates ahead of the pipeline, contractors and potential full time hires, instead of scrambling once a project is signed. The bench is how we grow without slowing down, • Benchmark contractor rates across markets, Latam included, and negotiate accordingly, optimized for the long term health of the company, • 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 portfolioProfitability, • 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, with the assistant supplying the numbers, and improve it over time, • 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, • Keep the spread between what we bill and what we pay healthy, with contractor hours approved before billing, • Invoices go out on schedule without a reminder, and receivables get chased while still recentSystems and growth, • Improve our SOWs and terms so scope, revisions, timelines, and payment triggers are unambiguous before a project starts, • Sharpen the processes we run and retire the ones that stop earning their place, • Step into projects that go sideways, stabilize them, and hand them back. Deliver bad news early with a plan attachedWho we are looking for Must haves. We screen hard on these. • Three or more years managing teams, full time and contract, ideally in a digital, web, or creative agency or studio. 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, • A real, current AI user. You can show us something you personally use or built that changed how you or your team works, and talk about it concretely, including what did not work, • Recruits well, having sourced, tested, and onboarded people yourself, with an eye for temperament as much as portfolio. You can spot BS in an interview, • 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, • Fluent English. It does not need to be perfect, since the role is not client facing, but the whole company runs in English, • Available to start within roughly four weeks The temperament • 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, • Naturally impatient about finishing. You take people out of their comfort zone so projects carry urgency, without wearing them down, • 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, • 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 yearsA 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. 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 or a compatible timezone, fully remote by default. Your working day should comfortably cover roughly 11:00 to 19:00 CET, so there is real overlap with US East Coast mornings, • 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, contractor agreement, with an employment setup possible depending on your country, • Three to four weeks of paid vacation, plus sick days, • 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
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