[Hiring] Operational Excellence Lead @Recidiviz

Role Description

The Operational Excellence Lead will connect the organization's long-horizon, cross-functional, and external-facing strategy with internal execution. They will build the operating cadence, information flow, and forums that let the organization run performance-versus-plan at every level, and own the follow-through that keeps decisions and strategy connected across altitudes.

What Success Looks Like

• Leaders know where and why core impact metrics are moving, and how to intervene.
• Forums at every altitude (team level, functional leads, leads review) run with clear owners, decisions, and metrics.
• Operational systems drive high-quality, consistent reporting and better decision-making.
• Resourcing decisions are data-driven, and ROI is tracked over time.

Key Responsibilities

• Organizational Strategy & Operating Cadence
  • Own the connective layer between long-term vision and strategy, and functional leads' near-term execution.
  • Run performance-versus-plan and OKR processes across the organization, working with leads to define outcomes, metrics, and reporting cadence.
  • Own core planning cycles (e.g., H2 planning) end to end — the calendar, the templates, and the cross-team dependencies.
  • Consolidate fragmented ownership, and make ownership, decision-making, and escalation paths explicit.
  • Facilitate cross-functional reviews that ladder up into organizational strategy; ask sharp questions, capture action items with clear owners and dates, and enforce time-boxing.
  • Communicate internally about our impact metric progress by owning the Impact Monthly meeting: build the update deck, and work with teams across the org to source the case studies and highlights.
  • Partner with the Director of Talent to create org-wide communications calendar and content based on critical happenings.
• Data & Financial Analysis
  • Ensures the organization has trustworthy, accessible data to run performance-versus-plan, understand unit economics and make resourcing decisions.
  • Support the business case for strategic initiatives such as headcount requests, RFPs, or resourcing requests.
  • Pull and build your own analyses (e.g., in Looker) to diagnose what's driving or blocking core metrics.
  • Use data and diagnosis, not authority, to earn the trust of a highly analytical engineering and impact organization.
• Continuous Improvement
  • Drive better decision making, organizational design and operating orientation using data-driven insights.
  • Pair alongside individual leaders on specific strategic challenges.
  • Inform performance management and promotions with impact data.
  • Maintain a clear view of the organization's critical-path portfolio.
  • Continuously improve the operational excellence function's own methodology.
• Systems Management
  • Designs systems to capture and improve our unit economics.
  • Help define requirements for and implement a revenue operations system.
  • Help the organization answer emerging questions about AI and tooling ROI.
  • Define clear requirements for measuring cloud costs or personnel costs by state.

Who You'll Work With

You’ll report to the Chief Administrative Officer. Your initial focus is the Impact organization and the Engineering leadership team, together the “core impact apparatus.” You’ll work closely with functional and technical leads across Impact and Engineering and with data and systems teams. Over time, as the role’s scope expands, you’ll also work with leaders in marketing, business development, finance, and people operations.

What We're Looking For

• A senior operator — likely from a product management, product operations or program management background.
• Strong analytical skills and genuine comfort with data.
• High emotional intelligence: able to work with senior, strong-willed leaders.
• Excellent synthesis and written communication skills.
• A bias toward clarity and simplification.
• Comfortable constructively challenging partners and leaders.
• Steady under pressure; this role sits amid a lot of interpersonal complexity.
• Comfortable operating with significant seniority and scope from day one.
• Experience in government, public-sector, or B2G contexts, or with mission-driven and nonprofit organizations.
• Experience running OKR or performance-versus-plan processes at scale.