Sr. Director, Product Operations

About the role

Job Overview: The Sr. Director, Product Operations is a strategic, detail oriented leader responsible for orchestrating how product strategy and roadmaps are successfully executed across the portfolio. This role oversees both the Project Management and a new Product Investment Analytics function, including project staffing and capacity/productivity reporting, timekeeping & budget analytics, project/program management, and strategic investment decision support. The ideal candidate will improve predictability and visibility in how product investments are allocated, establish alignment of investments with bookings-based returns, increase velocity in our development and release cadences, and demonstrate quantifiable value realization via transparent data analyses and exceptional cross-functional alignment. Core Competencies: Strategic Thinking & Systems Orientation: Connects portfolio strategy to execution; designs scalable operating models. Operational Excellence: Builds efficient, repeatable processes; drives the use of data and metrics to improve performance. Data-Driven Decision Making: Analyses and applies evidence to inform and shape priorities, trade-offs, and investments. Leadership & Influence: Leads through clarity and influence; coaches and grows people and teams. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Orchestrates alignment across diverse groups; thrives on team wins. Customer-Centricity: Elevates educator and learner insights to guide design and delivery quality. Job Responsibilities: Product Operations Leadership (Staffing, Timekeeping, Budget Analytics): Timekeeping & Effort Categorization: Implement and continually refine timekeeping compliance and reporting; ensure accurate project timekeeping and effort categorization for portfolio insights. Budget Analytics: Forecast, track, and report portfolio budgets; lead variance analysis, scenario planning, and product margin reviews in partnership with Product Leadership and Finance. Operational Performance: Establish operational KPIs, dashboards, and OKRs that illuminate throughput, quality, customer value, and financial performance. Productivity Tracking: Articulate and document baseline levels of productivity across product organizations, support teams in implementing tools for scaling work efficiently, track and report productivity increases in alignment with industry standard expectations Staffing & Capacity: Own the product staffing model, capacity planning, and allocations across product lines; set utilization targets and coverage plans for critical initiatives. Process Optimization & Continuous Improvement: Systematize & Automate: Optimize systems and processes that enhance efficiency, quality, and cycle time across product development; track and report on the implementation of AI-based tools for productivity enhancements across teams Portfolio Retrospectives: Establish a cadence for portfolio-level retrospectives with the goals of identifying churn, removing bottlenecks, and scaling repeatable patterns Delivery Practices: Refine and enforce best practices for project management, design, and development; ensuring consistent definitions of acceptance criteria and release cadences Project Management (Operational & Agile): Project Management Ownership: Oversee the project and program management practices; standardize intake, planning, execution, and delivery across teams with clear stage gates and artifacts. Agile Maturity: Drive Scaled Agile practices with pragmatic governance across the portfolio segments - implementing streamlined ceremonies, cadences, and metrics that balance flexibility with accountability. Portfolio Visibility: Assist in implementing tooling and processes for transparent roadmaps, dependencies, risks, milestones, and cross-functional communication. Delivery Assurance: Monitor progress and proactively address delivery risks, scope changes, and impediments; communicate status and recovery plans. Team Leadership & Talent Development: Engineering Partnership: Ensure tight collaboration with Engineering, Architecture, Data/Infrastructure, and Security; champion feasibility, scalability, performance, and reliability. Technical Standards: Establish consistent practices for technical documentation, integration specs, contract management; promote testability, observability, and operational readiness. Decision Support & Insights: Evidence-Based Decisions: Provide data-driven insights that influence prioritization, trade-offs, and investment decisions; embed analytics into operating rhythms. Dashboards & Reporting: Collaborate with Research & Analytics and the Business Data Analytics group to build dashboards (e.g., velocity, predictability, adoption, cost-to-serve, utilization) and performance reports. Customer Voice: Create clear pathways to assist Product Managers in amplifying customer feedback from users, research, support, and sales into backlogs and multi-quarter plans. Stakeholder Management & Cross-Functional Coordination: Ce