Director of Operations, New Museum Openings

Museum of Ice Cream•New York, NY

20h•$160,000 - $180,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Museum of Ice Cream is seeking a Director of Operations, New Museum Openings to lead the process of bringing new locations to life. This role involves managing everything from lease signing through design, build, opening day, and stabilization. It requires a hands-on operator with a strong systems orientation and experience in multi-site openings, design, construction, and development. The Director will partner with relevant teams to ensure operational needs are met during the planning stages and will own the opening playbook from readiness and training to soft launch and go-live, ensuring a smooth handover to Regional Directors of Operations. The ideal candidate believes in play, human connection, and hospitality, understanding that the created spaces are stages for joy and wonder. They take pride in delivering well-prepared museums on day one and continuously improving the opening process through lessons learned. This role demands leadership through ambiguity, pressure, and complexity with calm and focus.

Requirements

7 to 10+ years of operations experience in multi-site hospitality, entertainment, experiential retail, food and beverage, or high-volume guest-facing environments.
Proven end-to-end openings experience (multiple openings strongly preferred).
Experience partnering with Development, Design, and Construction teams during the design phase of new locations.
Demonstrated partnership with People, HR, and Talent functions on hiring, onboarding, and training readiness for new sites.
Strong field operations background with a deep understanding of how strategy translates into daily execution.
Deep working knowledge of staffing, training, guest flow, labor planning, BOH operations, safety, inventory, systems, and site-level readiness.
Ability to build clear operating tools, SOPs, launch plans, checklists, and scalable processes.
Strong business acumen to assess performance, identify gaps, and drive improvement.
Calm, hands-on leadership in ambiguity and pressure.
Strong written and verbal communication, organization, follow-through, and stakeholder management skills.
High ownership mindset with a strong bias toward action and accountability.
Ability to travel up to 70%, with surge to 85%+ during active opening windows.
Temporary relocation may be required during opening periods.

Nice To Haves

F&B operations background
Experience opening experiential, attractions, or multi-unit consumer brand locations
Bilingual Spanish
Familiarity with Slack, Google Suite, and ADP
A love of ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Responsibilities

Lead the full opening lifecycle of every new MOIC location, from design-phase partnership through pre-opening readiness, soft launch, go-live, and stabilization.
Align Development, Design, Construction, Facilities, Supply Chain, People, Training, Marketing, Ticketing, and Finance to deliver openings that are on time, on brand, and operationally ready.
Build and evolve the opening playbook to improve each subsequent opening.
Partner with Development, Design, and Construction from lease signing to integrate operational inputs into the design process, including guest flow, BOH layout, F&B and retail footprints, staffing zones, storage, cleaning paths, accessibility, and life safety.
Review architectural and design decisions against the labor model and collaborate on capacity, throughput, and safety implications.
Translate concept and brand intent into practical site-level operating plans and establish a repeatable operational design review process.
Own the opening operating plan, including timeline, readiness checklist, cross-functional workstreams, escalation paths, soft opening plan, and go-live readiness review.
Ensure new locations are ready in terms of staffing, training, facilities, BOH, inventory, F&B, retail, ticketing, technology, guest flow, safety, and site leadership.
Lead pre-opening walkthroughs, operational audits, mock service, and soft-launch execution, identifying and resolving operational risks.
Co-own the pre-opening people plan with People, Talent Acquisition, and L&D teams, covering leadership hiring, staffing plans, onboarding, training calendars, and certification standards.
Ensure the GM, AGM, and site leadership team are hired, onboarded, and certified before go-live.
Champion a field-first opening culture.
Lead the post-opening stabilization window with a 30/60/90 plan and exit criteria.
Partner with Regional Directors of Operations for a clean handoff, including open-issue logs, training gaps, SOP variances, and performance trajectory.
Track post-handoff performance to validate stabilization quality and feed lessons back into the playbook.
Serve as the central operational leader across opening workstreams, aligning various departments.
Drive clear ownership, timelines, decisions, and accountability across all opening stakeholders.
Act as a key escalation point for risks to opening quality, timeline, budget, or guest experience.
Build and evolve the MOIC opening playbook, including SOPs, checklists, templates, training frameworks, and readiness scorecards.
Lead post-opening retrospectives and convert lessons into stronger playbooks.
Partner with HQ Operations and Regional Directors of Operations to ensure opening improvements are integrated into the steady-state operating model and vice versa.