Partnerships Operations Manager

Ridwell•Portland, OR

2d•$85,000 - $110,000•Onsite

About The Position

Ridwell is seeking a Partnerships Operations Manager to oversee the daily execution of material flow from Ridwell warehouses to their final disposition. This role is crucial for managing the movement, processing, storage, and transportation of materials, directly impacting warehouse capacity, labor productivity, partner relationships, and overall costs. The manager will collaborate closely with the Partnerships team, which manages recycling, reuse, and commodity relationships, and will be responsible for monitoring processes related to material processing, warehouse capacity, freight, partner performance, and financial reporting. The ideal candidate will be adept at tracking material movement, identifying issues and opportunities for improvement, and ensuring efficient operations. This is an onsite role with occasional travel required.

Requirements

Highly operational and financially minded.
Comfortable working across Operations, Partnerships, and Finance.
Strong analytical skills and ability to translate data into operating decisions.
Experienced with logistics, transportation, warehousing, or material flow.
Comfortable managing external vendors, carriers, and business partners.
Able to negotiate rates and challenge unnecessary costs.
Understands ROI, payback, and basic business-case development.
Curious and willing to get into the warehouse to understand how the work actually happens.
Comfortable building processes where structure does not yet exist.
Strong sense of ownership and accountability.
Able to balance cost, service, capacity, and sustainability.
Excellent collaborator who can work across teams without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.

Responsibilities

Own material flow and timely disposition, ensuring a consistent process for moving materials from Ridwell warehouses to recycling, reuse, and commodity partners.
Execute quality standards and auditing processes to ensure accurate material processing and disposition.
Monitor material aging and warehouse capacity to prevent unnecessary inventory accumulation.
Establish visibility into material weight, pallet location, age, and disposition status.
Collaborate with market Operations teams and Partnerships to anticipate and address capacity constraints.
Manage service expectations and operating cadence with material partners.
Own freight and logistics execution, including scheduling and transportation associated with material disposition.
Coordinate with brokers and carriers, monitoring rates, lanes, and service performance.
Identify unnecessary brokerage premiums and explore opportunities for direct-carrier relationships to improve economics.
Develop visibility into freight cost-per-pound and cost-per-lane.
Ensure transportation decisions balance cost, service, material volume, and warehouse capacity.
Track the cost of processing materials using warehouse job codes and material weight data.
Develop visibility into labor hours, cost per pound, and incremental disposal expense.
Partner with Finance and Operations to track contribution and total cost by material stream.
Use analysis to evaluate existing and new material programs.
Help determine the operational and financial viability of new material programs before broad launch.
Build financial discipline around new materials and processes by completing ROI and payback analysis for equipment purchases and process changes.
Include labor savings, throughput improvement, disposal cost, freight impact, utilization, and expected useful life when evaluating investments.
Establish clear assumptions before investment approval and measure results post-implementation.
Use a repeatable framework for evaluating future equipment and process investments.
Partner effectively with Partnerships by providing operational and financial input before new material programs or partner commitments are finalized.
Translate partner requirements into executable warehouse, transportation, and disposition plans.
Identify operational requirements, costs, and constraints early in the process.
Maintain clear accountability between relationship development and operational execution.
Create visibility and accountability by maintaining a focused set of operating metrics for material performance across markets.
Establish regular reporting around material processing cost per pound, freight cost per pound, inventory weight by material, material aging, warehouse capacity utilization, disposition cycle time, partner service performance, disposal and incremental handling fees, and equipment ROI and payback.
Use data to identify problems, improve processes, and support better decision-making.