Director, Operations
At InStride, we’re pioneering a new approach to workforce education. Our mission is to enable employers to provide life-changing education to their employees in partnership with the highest-quality global academic institutions. We unlock business and social impact to transform companies and people for the future.
We believe that a company’s richest resource is their employees, and that investments in people yield the highest returns for individuals, businesses, and society as a whole. That’s why every InStride employee is eligible to enroll in 1,700+ online certificate and degree programs through our Step Forward program. Unlike traditional tuition reimbursement programs, InStride covers your tuition upfront, regardless of your course of study, degree type, or school. The Step Forward program, along with InStride’s best-in-class employee benefits, are available to all employees from the day they join InStride.
Read further to see how you can be part of the movement to drive businesses and society forward through life-changing, best-in-class workforce education.
Role Overview
InStride is seeking a Director, Operations reporting directly to the Chief Operating Officer to driving operational excellence across the Operations team. This role is crucial to the success of InStride to enable us to grow efficiently and effectively, ensuring not only what we do, but how we do it, is a growing competitive advantage. Successful candidates are curious, proactive, collaborative, systematic, detail and process-oriented problem solvers who can dig deep into how things work, develop improvements with the team, and ensure the team implements those improvements.
Responsibilities
- Develop and manage operational cadence: work closely with the leadership across the Operations Team (Corporate Partnerships, Academic Partnerships, Learner Engagement, Implementation, Product, Technology) to establish the appropriate mechanisms for cross-functional collaboration, accountability, and innovation, and manage that process on an ongoing basis in alignment with our cultural values
- Drive operational improvements: identify, prioritize, and implement operational improvements across the organization to reduce friction, enable scale, and increase empowerment by understanding root causes and developing solutions to address
- Lead operational planning efforts: work across the operations team to understand the severity and urgency of constraints and develop recommendations to address
- Identifying and measuring KPIs: ensure we have aligned performance indicators across the organization and that we have transparency and accountability to deliver against them
Ideal Profile
- 7+ years of experience managing initiatives and driving results in strategy, operations, consulting, or a related field
- Bachelor's degree
- Self-starter that can identify a problem, structure problem-solving approach, bring a group together to discuss options, formulate a recommendation, drive execution, and track results
- Significant experience working with product and tech organizations, ideally within a tech company, to understand development cycles and bridge knowledge gaps between technical and non-technical teams
- Strong strategic and tactical problem-solving and structuring skills - analyzing a process from end-to-end at the high-level, strategic view and break the process down into the detailed actions required
- Extensive background in organizational change to drive documentation and lead the adoption of new products, processes, and protocols across the organization
- Excellent meeting facilitation skills to ensure delivery of work, remove blockers, and maintain alignment across teams; including keeping leadership informed
- Ability to operate at the speed of a startup, demonstrating flexibility and initiative to move ideas into action while continually optimizing for efficiency and experience.
- High degree of comfort in working with Salesforce, Jira, Confluence, Zendesk and other CRM, process mapping, and project management technologies
- Demonstrate the highest level of integrity with outstanding interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills
- Passion for education and the impact education can have
- High EQ, comfort with ambiguity, and a “no job too small” startup mentality
InStride is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, ethnicity, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, medical condition, or any other category protected by applicable federal and state law, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance relating to an applicant's criminal history.
We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided a reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform crucial job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please discuss your requested accommodation with our HRBP.
Effective November 1, 2021, all new hires must be fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus unless they have been granted a reasonable accommodation. If you are offered employment, this requirement must be met by your date of hire, unless a reasonable accommodation is approved by the People & Talent team in writing.