Senior Director, Clinician Operations

Pearl Talent connects top global candidates with leading startups in the US and EU. Our clients, backed by investors like OpenAI, a16z, and Founders Fund, have collectively raised over $5 billion.

About the Role

This Senior Director, Clinician Operations role at a US-based telehealth mental health practice focuses on non-clinical operations supporting therapists from hire through onboarding, caseload growth, and offboarding. The practice operates fully online with 100+ clinicians delivering around 7,000 therapy sessions monthly and is scaling toward 300+ clinicians while expanding into new states and services.

The role involves building systems, teams, and scorecards to enable growth without maintaining existing operations. Key responsibilities include:

Core Responsibilities

Clinician Lifecycle Operations

• Oversee the entire clinician journey, from post-hire handoff to onboarding, caseload ramp, ongoing support, and offboarding.
• Optimize workflows to reduce time-to-first-session and time-to-full-caseload.
• Develop scalable onboarding playbooks and SOPs for teams exceeding 300 clinicians.
• Collaborate with recruiting and credentialing teams to ensure seamless handoffs and readiness.

Support & Escalation Management

• Manage high-volume clinician support functions, including intake, triage, and escalation workflows.
• Set and enforce SLAs for response and resolution times.
• Monitor backlog and aging metrics to maintain target service levels.
• Resolve recurring handoff issues between operations, scheduling, and clinical leadership.

Performance & Metrics Ownership

• Track operational KPIs such as service levels, resolution times, productivity, and clinician retention.
• Build and maintain scorecards for the operations team and its functions.
• Conduct capacity planning and staffing forecasts aligned with session volume growth.
• Perform root-cause analysis on service misses and implement corrective actions.

Team Building & Leadership

• Hire, structure, and manage the clinician operations team as it scales.
• Set performance standards and enforce accountability cycles for direct reports and managers.
• Allocate resources across support, onboarding, and lifecycle workstreams.

Systems, Data & Automation

• Standardize workflows within ticketing and operational platforms.
• Develop executive dashboards and reporting tools.
• Eliminate manual processes through automation and tool rollouts.
• Lead UAT and change management for new systems and workflows.

Requirements

Must-Have

• 7+ years of progressive operations leadership, including managing managers or multi-person teams.
• Direct ownership of operational KPIs, including service levels, resolution times, capacity planning, backlog reduction, team productivity, and retention metrics.
• Experience in high-volume support operations covering intake, triage, escalation management, SLA management, and ticketing/workflow systems.
• Documented process improvements such as reduced onboarding time, fewer escalations, improved service levels, or eliminated manual processes through SOP creation, workflow redesign, and playbook development.
• Workforce planning and staffing forecasting for distributed or remote operational teams.
• Hands-on experience with operational reporting and workflow platforms like Salesforce, Zendesk, HubSpot, Monday.com, Asana, Airtable, Looker, Power BI, or Tableau to build dashboards and KPI scorecards.
• C1+ English proficiency for executive-level communication with US-based leadership.

Nice-to-Have

• Operations experience in healthcare, behavioral health, telehealth, or related fields.
• Exposure to provider onboarding, credentialing, intake operations, or revenue cycle collaboration.
• Track record scaling a provider/clinician network from ~100 to 300+.
• Experience rolling out automation or AI tools into non-technical workflows.
• Multi-state licensure operations or insurance-based care delivery experience.