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ChiefTasteOfficer
Space (sp-ce.co) · Remote · Full-time
TL;DR
- —Space, an AI-native brand agency, is hiring a Chief Taste Officer: one named owner of the standard behind everything the company ships, publishes, hires, and turns down.
- —The machines carry production and approve anything that clears spec; the CTO owns the bar that sits above spec, and every no comes with a written reason.
- —The role runs the no list as an institution, calibrates humans and agents against the same standard, and raises it as the machines improve.
- —Applying is three questions in a short form: one piece you shipped and now hate, the best idea you ever cut, and one thing in culture that makes you jealous.
01
About Space
Space is an AI-native brand agency. Three always-on leaders, 82 on-demand specialists, zero juniors. 127 agents, 362 agentic workflows, 14 tools we built ourselves. We ship brand identities, websites, campaigns, and products for funded companies in weeks: Validere got strategy, a full rebrand, and a new site in 8 weeks, lifted inbound 31%, and closed a $43M Series B on the story. We grow entirely by word of mouth, and we publish our AI rules, our hiring bar, and our pricing logic at sp-ce.co/notes, because an agency that won't tell you where AI stops is telling you it doesn't know.
02
The job
Every company gave its most technical acronym to the person who runs the servers. We're giving it to the scarcer thing. Our machines make competence infinite: a hundred correct directions before lunch, every one of them on-palette, on-grid, on-brief, on-time, and every one of them merely fine. Spec was never the point. Somewhere above correct sits the thing that makes a stranger stop scrolling, and no metric we've built can see it coming. Fine is now free, which makes the bar above fine the most valuable real estate in the building, and this role owns it.
You'll hold the standard for everything that leaves Space: client work, the notes we publish, the outputs our own tools produce, the engagements we accept, and the ones we decline. The Creative Director holds the verdict inside each engagement. You hold the bar around all of them, including over that Creative Director, including over the founders, including over this posting.
03
What you'll do
Set the bar for everything that ships, and write it down so it's legible instead of mystical.
Run the no list as an institution: every no across the company, with the reason, on the record.
Calibrate humans and agents against the same standard, and raise it every time the machines close the gap.
Argue with the Creative Director as a peer. They own the verdict per engagement; you own what the verdict answers to.
Say no to revenue when the work would embarrass the roster, and put your name on the no.
Publish the reasoning. Our standard is a public argument, and you're its author.
04
What you won't do
Chair a taste committee. There isn't one. The bar has one owner, because consensus has never once had taste.
Defend a call with "I know it when I see it." Here, every no comes with a reason a client could read.
Manage juniors. There are none. Nobody learns the craft on a client's budget here.
Sit in status meetings, log timesheets, or build spec work for pitches. The machines and the model retired all three.
Let a dashboard outvote your stomach. Data informs the call. It never gets to make it alone.
05
Who you are
A career of yes and no with receipts: work you championed that moved numbers, and work you turned down that would have embarrassed everyone.
Level 4 or above on our published AI Fluency Ladder, because you can't judge what you can't operate.
Able to write the reason down. Your taste survives translation into sentences.
Immune to both hype and nostalgia: you judge a generated image and a hand-built one by the same bar, and you've praised and rejected both.
Comfortable being wrong in public, because the no list keeps score either way.
06
Who you aren't
A vibes oracle. If the reason can't be written down, it isn't a standard, it's a mood.
Someone whose taste is a moodboard of other people's decisions.
A consensus builder. The role exists so that decisions stop being averages.
Level 2 on the ladder: someone who ships whatever the model returns. That's worse than not using AI at all, and we said so in print.
07 · No resume required
How to apply
No cover letter. No 90-page portfolio PDF. No resume upload, even. The application is three questions:
One piece of work you shipped and now hate, with the reason. Two hundred words max.
The best idea you ever cut, and why it was right to cut it.
One thing in culture right now that makes you jealous.
Use AI to answer if you like; we do. We'll be able to tell whether you reviewed it.
Comeargue.
Yes, this job description was drafted with AI. A named human rewrote it, cut a third of it, and will defend every line on a call. That's the entire model, and it's hiring.
Frequently asked questions
It was, back when technology was the scarce thing. Our stack is 127 agents and 14 tools that improve monthly on someone else's research budget. Taste doesn't improve on anyone's schedule. The acronym follows the scarcity.
The Creative Director holds the verdict inside client engagements. The Chief Taste Officer owns the standard those verdicts answer to, across client work, published writing, tools, and the client roster itself.
Both, unapologetically. The role is real and open; the posting argues the model, because the model is the job.
Because the seat is sized to the person in it. You'll hear a real range in the first conversation, before you've invested anything beyond the three answers.
A named human reads all three answers. If they're real, we call you.