Operational Excellence Lead

Recidiviz•Oakland, CA

6d•$135,000 - $155,000

About The Position

The Operational Excellence Lead connects the organization’s long-term, cross-functional, and external-facing strategy with internal execution. The role builds the operating cadence, information flow, and forums needed to run performance-versus-plan at every level, and owns follow-through to keep decisions and strategy connected across the organization. The role ensures leaders understand changes in core impact metrics and how to respond; establishes clear ownership, decisions, and metrics in forums at team and leadership levels; improves reporting and decision-making through operational systems; and supports data-driven resourcing decisions with ongoing ROI tracking. The Lead initially focuses on the Impact organization and Engineering leadership team, working closely with functional and technical leads as well as data and systems teams. As the scope expands, the role will also work with leaders in marketing, business development, finance, and people operations. The position reports to the Chief Administrative Officer.

Requirements

Strong analytical skills and comfort with data, including the ability to conduct analyses using tools such as Looker and make credible, data-driven cases.
High emotional intelligence and ability to work with senior, strong-willed leaders and encourage ownership without dictating.
Excellent synthesis and written communication skills, including the ability to manage concurrent threads, clearly restate strategy, and drive prompt, high-quality follow-up.
A bias toward clarity and simplification, including willingness to reduce the number of participants in decisions or meetings.
Comfort constructively challenging partners and leaders and stress-testing their thinking.
Composure and steadiness under pressure amid interpersonal complexity.
Ability to operate with significant seniority and scope from the outset; this is a senior hire, not an entry point into strategy work.
Experience in government, public-sector, or B2G contexts, or in mission-driven and nonprofit organizations.
Experience running OKR or performance-versus-plan processes at scale.

Nice To Haves

Background in product management, product operations, or program management.
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.

Responsibilities

Own the connective layer between long-term organizational vision and strategy and functional leads’ near-term execution.
Run organization-wide performance-versus-plan and OKR processes, working with leads to define outcomes, metrics, and reporting cadence.
Own planning cycles end to end, including calendars, templates, and cross-team dependencies.
Consolidate fragmented ownership and make ownership, decision-making, and escalation paths explicit.
Facilitate cross-functional reviews that connect to organizational strategy; ask probing questions, capture action items with owners and dates, and time-box discussions.
Own the Impact Monthly meeting, including building the update deck and coordinating case studies and highlights from teams across the organization.
Partner with the Director of Talent to create an organization-wide communications calendar and content based on critical happenings.
Ensure the organization has trustworthy, accessible data for performance-versus-plan, unit-economics analysis, and resourcing decisions.
Support business cases for strategic initiatives, including headcount, RFP, and resourcing requests, using business cases, OKRs, or other appropriate value frameworks.
Conduct analyses, including in tools such as Looker, to diagnose factors affecting core metrics such as transitions, usage, CSAT, and launch momentum.
Improve decision-making, organizational design, and operating orientation using data-driven insights.
Work alongside individual leaders on strategic challenges, strengthening their output and diagnosing whether gaps relate to skills, structure, or hiring.
Inform performance management and promotions with impact data.
Maintain a view of the critical-path portfolio, distinguishing funded work from unfunded work to inform planning and resourcing.
Continuously improve the operational excellence function’s methods, templates, tools, and processes, and share effective practices across teams.
Design systems to capture and improve unit economics.
Help define requirements for and implement a revenue operations system.
Help the organization assess ROI from emerging AI and tooling.
Define requirements for measuring cloud or personnel costs by state and partner with an internal engineer or data partner to build a dashboard.