Senior Director, Business System Office

Viasat, Inc. • Carlsbad, CA

8d

About The Position

The Senior Director, Business System Office leads the strategy, culture, and implementation of Viasat’s enterprise continuous-improvement system. The role owns the Viasat Business System, an integrated framework connecting strategy deployment, operational excellence, performance improvement, and capability development. It establishes the common methods, tools, standard work, and operating cadence used across business areas and corporate functions to set direction, solve problems, and improve performance.

Working closely with executive leadership, the Senior Director translates strategic priorities into measurable outcomes, strengthens cross-functional execution, and removes organizational barriers. The role directs the Strategy Deployment Process, supports executive OKR setting, leads high-impact improvement events, and builds internal practitioner and leadership capability. It is a hands-on leadership position accountable for developing a self-sustaining improvement culture, reducing reliance on external consultants, and establishing the governance and coaching disciplines needed to sustain results.

The position integrates digital technologies, workflow automation, analytics, and AI into process redesign and improvement work, with the goal of improving productivity, quality, employee experience, and business performance. Success is measured through enterprise performance, execution of strategic priorities, organizational capability, finance-validated results, adoption and maturity of the Viasat Business System, and the organization’s ability to improve independently of external resources. The role has direct people-management responsibility and enterprise-wide scope.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, operations, business, or a related field.
• 12 to 15 years of progressive experience in continuous improvement, operational excellence, or business system leadership, including 5 or more years at enterprise or multi-business-unit scope.
• Personally facilitated 20 or more improvement events, such as Kaizen, rapid improvement, value stream, or transactional process improvement events.
• Experience designing curriculum, training and certifying practitioners, and building a self-sustaining internal capability bench.
• Experience deploying Strategy Deployment or Hoshin Kanri at enterprise level, including facilitating executive-level planning sessions.
• 5 or more years of people leadership experience, including leading experienced professionals and coaching senior leaders.
• Track record of sustained improvement work with measurable, finance-validated financial impact.
• Deep hands-on command of Lean and continuous improvement methods, including Kaizen, value stream mapping, standard work, daily management, 5S, error proofing, pull and flow, and transactional process improvement.
• Structured problem-solving discipline, such as A3, 8D, PDCA, or DMAIC, and ability to teach these methods.
• Knowledge of Strategy Deployment and Hoshin methods, including X-matrix construction, catchball, breakthrough objective selection, and countermeasure management.
• Fluency with OKR frameworks, leading and lagging indicators, Bowler reporting, SQDICP boards, Obeya, and visual management.
• Financial acumen to build and defend benefit cases with FP&A, including cost structure analysis, benefit modeling, and sustainment validation.
• Practical experience applying digital tools, analytics, and AI to improvement work and reducing the administrative burden of the business system.
• Ability to drive change adoption, leadership engagement, capability transfer, and behavioral and cultural change.
• Ability to influence adoption and behavior across functions and business areas without direct authority.
• Executive presence and ability to present to C-suite and board-level audiences and coach P&L owners while maintaining trust.
• Teaching orientation, systems thinking, comfort with ambiguity, facilitation and conflict-resolution skills, and ability to sustain commitment through leadership changes and business cycles.
• Strong written communication skills, including concise decision-ready materials and clear practitioner standard work.

Nice To Haves

• Advanced degree.
• Direct experience within a mature, named business system environment, such as Danaher DBS, Fortive FBS, Roper, Ingersoll Rand, Honeywell HOS, Toyota Production System lineage, or equivalent.
• Experience transitioning improvement work from external consultants to internal ownership.
• Familiarity with satcom, space networks, defense technology, or a comparably complex engineering and services environment.
• Lean or Six Sigma Black Belt, Master Black Belt, or equivalent business system certification.

Responsibilities

• Direct the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of the enterprise Strategy Deployment Process, including alignment, action planning, resource sequencing, countermeasures, and review cadence.
• Facilitate annual and mid-year strategy deployment sessions with executive leadership, business area presidents, and corporate function leaders.
• Build coaching capability so business leaders can run their own Strategy Deployment Process cycles with decreasing central support.
• Define, document, maintain, and evolve the Viasat Business System toolset, standards, templates, playbooks, and event kits.
• Assess organizational maturity against a business system maturity model and drive targeted capability building.
• Personally lead high-impact improvement events and establish standards for scoping, preparation, facilitation, follow-through, and results validation.
• Establish guidance for selecting appropriate business system tools and adapt the toolset to engineering, software, services, supply chain, and corporate functions.
• Govern the business system’s naming, branding, and internal identity, and communicate its purpose and value across the company.
• Advise executive leadership on organizational effectiveness and performance improvement opportunities.
• Partner with senior executives to translate strategic priorities into aligned OKRs with clear ownership and measurable outcomes, and help remove cross-functional bottlenecks.
• Establish governance to align business priorities and improvement initiatives with enterprise strategy and financial commitments.
• Lead cross-functional improvement work, broker trade-offs, and foster accountability through visible commitments, regular reviews, and countermeasures.
• Partner with the Director, Enterprise Performance & Reporting on OKR traceability, metric definitions, Bowler reporting, and connection to the financial plan.
• Build and own the internal certification model for business system practitioners, including curriculum, criteria, assessment, event requirements, and recertification.
• Recruit, train, coach, and certify practitioners embedded in business units, and develop leader-level improvement training.
• Cultivate a culture of ambitious goal setting, structured problem solving, curiosity, and high performance through recognition, results, and leader standard work.
• Integrate digital and AI-enabled transformation into the operating model, improvement toolset, and performance reporting.
• Identify automation, analytics, and AI opportunities that eliminate work, and establish standards for evaluating them.
• Lead enterprise transformations involving process redesign, organizational workflow changes, and system enablement.
• Benchmark against recognized business system companies and adapt relevant practices for Viasat.
• Own the replication mechanism for spreading proven improvements across sites, functions, and business areas.
• Ensure improvement work addresses real business problems with quantified, finance-validated benefit targets.
• Partner with FP&A and the Director, Enterprise Performance & Reporting on benefit validation and savings validation against forecasts.
• Set sustainment standards, including control plans, ownership handoff, and audit cadence.
• Report business system results, maturity, and practitioner bench depth to the executive leadership team on a defined cadence.
• Communicate the business system’s purpose, methods, and results to audiences from executive leadership to individual contributors.
• Represent Viasat’s business system externally where appropriate and maintain an internal narrative that supports sustained commitment.
• Lead professional staff and influence a distributed practitioner network that does not report directly to the role.

Benefits

• Medical, financial, and other benefits are mentioned; specific benefit offerings are not listed in the posting.
• Additional cash or stock incentives may be provided as part of the compensation package.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior