Director of Business & People Operations

About this role

We're hiring a Director of Business & People Operations to own the company’s operating infrastructure. That includes utilization and capacity planning, workforce planning, the operational inputs to margin, the delivery operating system, people operations, tool governance, and the AI systems that will run much of it on autopilot.

What you’ll walk into: We’re a bootstrapped, profitable 30-person agency on track for 76% revenue growth in 2026 and targeting 60% growth in 2027. We need an experienced operator to diagnose gaps, bring rigor, build systems, and fully own the function as we scale.

You'll report to the CEO, join the leadership team, and manage a Senior Recruiter and Business Operations Manager. You'll collaborate closely with the Financial Controller, Chief Growth Officer, Chief Customer Officer, and Client Success Directors.

AI is not a side project. We use ourselves as our own test client for AI-first workflows, and we expect this function to run on systems you build rather than hours people spend. We're looking for someone who has already done this inside an organization, not someone who has only explored or tinkered with it. More on that below.

We require this role to be based in US Eastern or Central Time.

Your responsibilities

• Own team utilization, capacity planning, and billability. Maintain the resource model tracking team capacity and hiring needs. Forecast capacity, flag staffing risks early, and automate routine reporting.

• Build and manage the workforce planning model. Serve as the central resource for headcount strategy, hiring schedules, progression paths, pay bands, and team economics to guide leadership's hiring, restructuring, and promotion decisions.

• Own the operational inputs to every financial conversation. Service line margin, staffing cost, time tracking accuracy, and project profitability run through you in partnership with our Financial Controller. Build the tooling that surfaces margin anomalies and flags scope creep while it's still fixable, and compress the reporting cycle from days to hours.

• Design and own the delivery operating system. SOPs, handoffs, onboarding, quality gates, and the Asana build for client work visibility. Document, own, and optimize all repeatable processes, and scope AI workflows to automate them.

• Own people operations. Onboarding, ramp design, performance management, compensation strategy, multi-country logistics, org structure, and underlying systems. While the Senior Recruiter handles sourcing and candidate pipelines, you build and manage the employee onboarding and retention programs.

• Own the tool stack and vendor ecosystem. Time tracking, project management, CRM, AI tools, file storage, and integrations across tooling. You decide what we use, how we use it, and when to consolidate or cut.

• Manage operating cadence. Lead weekly reviews, monthly check-ins, and drive quarterly and annual planning, ensuring the leadership team makes data-informed decisions.

• Drive AI and automation adoption across operations. Identify manual bottlenecks and deploy systems to eliminate them. You own the roadmap, prioritization, build-vs-buy decisions, and adoption tracking.

What success looks like

• Month 1: You know how work flows from signed SOW to staffed project to invoiced hour. You've audited the tool stack, time tracking data, and existing SOPs, and delivered a written assessment of what's broken, what needs improvement, and a 6-month roadmap for your role with stack-ranked priorities.

• Month 2: Utilization and billability reporting are rebuilt and accurate. You own the weekly operating cadence. Leadership trusts the numbers and is acting on them.

• Month 3: Utilization and billability reporting that leadership uses weekly. A documented diagnosis of the five operational problems costing the company the most in time and money, each with a dollar impact and proposed solution(s).

• Month 6: A workforce planning model leadership makes hiring, promotion, and restructuring decisions from. At least two AI workflows are deployed and adopted by the organization.

Who you are

• 5 to 8 years of operations experience, with at least 3 years in agency, consulting, or professional services. You've seen a services business that works and one that doesn't, and you know the difference.

• You've managed people. You've directly managed ops coordinators, analysts, or managers, and you know how to coach, set expectations, give hard feedback, and hold people accountable without micromanaging. This is required.

• You've owned utilization and gross margin reporting. You can tell us what gross margin a services business at our stage should run, what moves it in each direction, and which levers a leadership team actually pulls versus the ones that sound good in a deck.

• You've shipped AI into an organization and it stuck. Not a pilot, not a sandbox, not a course. You can name a workflow you built that is still in production today, tell us who uses it, what it replaced, and how it improved operations.

• You're systems-minded. You spot the bottleneck the first time you watch a process run, and your instinct is to document, automate, and delete before adding headcount.

• You communicate clearly and concisely. You can take a messy operational reality and turn it into a memo that leadership can act on. You can get buy-in and drive change at an organizational level.

• You're comfortable in ambiguity. The mandate is clear. The specifics of how you own it will change as you learn the business, and you find that energizing rather than frustrating.

• You're meticulous. You read the whole document before you respond, and details don't slip past you. (The passcode is opsleverage2026.)

• You're not an asshole. We spend a lot of our days engaging with team members and clients. There's no room for assholes. You're friendly, eager to jump in and take ownership, and love to work as a team to be successful.

Why you should work with us

We're here to help you do great work and grow personally and professionally.

• Real impact: You'll have a massive impact on a growing company rather than being another cog in a machine.

• Remote flexibility: We're a 100% remote company, so you can work from anywhere.

• Real growth path: Manager, Operations today. Senior Manager, Operations in 18 to 24 months if you hit your outcomes. Associate Director or Director of Operations in 3 to 5 years as the function scales. Real promotion steps tied to real outcomes, not title inflation.

• Direct CEO access: You report to the CEO and sit in the leadership conversations where real decisions happen.

• Coaching: We'll coach you up toward becoming world-class at your function.

• Team trips: We take team trips each year to places like Boston, Austin, Costa Rica, and Belgrade to get some time together in person.

Benefits

We're fortunate to offer competitive salaries and benefits, and we strive to create an environment that allows you to do your best work, develop your skills, and grow your career.

• Health insurance - 90% of medical, dental, and vision insurance premiums paid for employees in the US

• 401k with employer match - We'll match 100% of your contributions up to the first 3% of pay. Then match 50% of your contributions on the next 2% of pay.

• Profit share - Opportunity to participate in quarterly profit share program after 1 year of employment.

• Unlimited vacation - We trust you to take care of your work and communicate when you need time off. We recommend taking a minimum of 14 days a year.

• Learning and development stipend - $2,000 to spend on professional development after 1 year of employment.

• Free books program - We'll cover the cost of a Kindle and 1 Kindle book a month.

• Networking stipend - $50 per month to spend on coffee or lunch for professional networking.

• 100% remote flexibility - Work from wherever you want.

• Annual team offsites - We organize an annual team trip to get time together in person. Cities and countries we've been to include Boston, Austin, Chicago, San Diego, Costa Rica, Mexico City, and Belgrade, Serbia.