Vice President of Operations

The roleWe are looking for a VP of Operations who combines operational leadership with engineering judgment, deep product understanding, and practical experience applying AI.You will be the company’s operational backbone: connecting strategy, people, products, processes, and systems so the business delivers consistently. You will translate ambitious goals into clear ownership, measurable KPIs, reliable workflows, and disciplined execution.This is a hands-on leadership role. You should be equally comfortable reviewing business performance, understanding a product’s technical dependencies, redesigning a workflow, and challenging how an automation should work.Key responsibilitiesOwn operational performance and KPIsTranslate company objectives into departmental and cross-functional KPIs with clear definitions, owners, baselines, targets, and review schedules.Establish dashboards that connect operational activity to customer outcomes, product performance, and financial results.Identify performance gaps early, investigate root causes, and drive corrective actions through to measurable improvement.Run business reviews focused on decisions, accountability, and follow-through.Build The Company’s Operating BackboneEstablish clear processes, responsibilities, decision rights, and escalation paths across teams.Connect product, engineering, commercial, finance, and customer-facing functions around shared priorities.Anticipate capacity constraints, resolve dependencies, and remove recurring execution bottlenecks.Build repeatable systems that allow teams to operate independently while maintaining visibility and accountability.Own operational planning, resource allocation, and cost discipline within the agreed scope.Lead automation and practical AI adoptionIdentify opportunities to eliminate unnecessary work and automate repetitive, error-prone processes.Prioritize automation based on business impact, implementation effort, reliability, and measurable return.Apply AI to workflows such as reporting, knowledge retrieval, customer operations, quality reviews, and internal decision support.Partner with engineering to connect systems through APIs, integrations, and dependable data flows.Establish ownership, evaluation criteria, monitoring, and appropriate human review for automated and AI-assisted workflows.Measure success through adoption, time saved, lower costs, improved quality, and better outcomes.Bring engineering judgment to operationsUnderstand system architecture, data models, integrations, and technical dependencies well enough to make informed operational decisions.Translate business problems into clear requirements, process designs, and acceptance criteria.Work closely with engineering leaders to assess feasibility, reliability, scalability, and maintenance costs.Investigate problems across both processes and systems, using evidence to distinguish symptoms from root causes.Understand the product and manage lifecycle readinessDevelop a deep understanding of the product, its users, value proposition, capabilities, limitations, and commercial model.Connect operational planning to the full product lifecycle: discovery, development, testing, launch, adoption, ongoing improvement, and retirement.Partner with product and engineering on delivery dependencies, launch readiness, support preparation, and post-launch performance.Ensure customer feedback, support trends, and operational insights inform product priorities.Maintain clear handoffs and accountability as products move between lifecycle stages.Build a culture of ownershipHire, coach, and develop capable operational leaders and teams.Set clear expectations and address underperformance promptly.Create a working culture where commitments are explicit, problems surface early, and improvements are sustained.How success will be measuredThe VP will establish baselines and agree targets with leadership for measures including: Execution: Delivery predictability, milestone completion, and dependency resolution time. Efficiency: Process cycle time, throughput, cost per transaction or service delivered, and capacity utilization. Quality: Error rates, rework, service-level attainment, and recurring operational incidents. Automation and AI: Adoption, verified hours saved, net financial benefit, output quality, and workflow reliability. Product lifecycle: Launch readiness, time to operational readiness, adoption, and post-launch issue resolution. Organizational effectiveness: Clear KPI ownership, timely corrective actions, and reduced reliance on leadership intervention.What you bringDemonstrated experience leading operations in a technology-driven or product-led business.An engineering background or equivalent technical depth gained through hands-on work.A record of building KPI frameworks and using them to improve business performance.Experience implementing automation, system integrations, and AI-enabled workflows with measurable results.Strong product understanding and experience working across the product lifecycle.Financial and analytical judgment, including resource planning and evaluating investment trade-offs.The ability to move between company-level priorities and detailed operational problems.Clear communication, sound judgment, and the ability to hold teams accountable while earning their trust.First 90 daysUnderstand the business, product, systems, and team; establish a baseline of operational performance; agree the core KPI framework; clarify ownership of critical workflows; and deliver initial improvements to the highest-impact bottlenecks. Present a prioritized operating and automation roadmap with expected outcomes, owners, costs, and delivery milestones.