Principal, Business Operations

At Instructure, we believe in the power of people to grow and succeed throughout their lives. Our goal is to amplify that power by creating intuitive products that simplify learning and personal development, facilitate meaningful relationships, and inspire people to go further in their education and careers.

We do this by giving smart, creative, passionate people opportunities to create awesome. And that's where you come in:

The Role

As Principal, Business Operations, you will lead high-impact initiatives that cut across functions, shaping how the company sets priorities, allocates resources, and measures progress. You’ll oversee strategic planning, execution governance (OKRs, QBRs, operating rhythm), and the enterprise initiative portfolio. You’ll also mentor and lead BizOps talent, ensuring the function matures from reactive problem-solving to predictive, insight-driven operations.

What You’ll Do

• Lead Enterprise Strategy & Planning: Own the annual strategy and planning cycle — from long-range vision to yearly investment allocation.

• Drive Strategic Execution: Govern the company’s OKR and business review process to ensure accountability and measurable progress toward strategy.

• Oversee Strategic Initiative Portfolio: Manage cross-functional initiatives that advance Instructure’s strategic priorities; align resources and resolve execution bottlenecks.

• Operationalize Visibility: Build and continuously evolve the enterprise “Strategy Scorecard” and shared dashboards to quantify progress and impact.

• Build Organizational Maturity: Establish consistent systems, processes, and decision-rights frameworks to move the company from reactive to managed to strategic.

• Coach & Influence: Serve as a trusted advisor to senior leadership; lead, mentor, and scale the BizOps team; drive cultural adoption of data-informed, strategy-driven execution.

What you will need to know/have:

• 5+ years of experience in management consulting, corporate strategy, or business operations at a high-growth SaaS company.

• Proven success leading large-scale cross-functional programs with executive visibility.

• Analytical and structured problem solver who can convert insight into action.

• Highly skilled communicator able to influence at the executive level.

• Track record of building operational systems and governance models at scale.

• Comfortable balancing enterprise strategic thinking with hands-on execution.