Sr. Manager/ Director/ Head of Strategic Operations, Collective
$190-250k
+ equity
Back-office platform for self-employed people
Be an early applicant
Back-office platform for self-employed people
201-500 employees
Be an early applicant
$190-250k
+ equity
201-500 employees
Company mission
To empower Businesses-of-One to succeed for the life of their business and beyond.
Role
Who you are
- 10+ years in operations strategy, applied operations research, industrial process engineering, or ops management at a high-volume service business. Financial services, fintech, marketplace, or logistics backgrounds are particularly well-aligned
- A management-science mindset: throughput, utilization, queuing, variance, cycle time, and first-pass yield are your native vocabulary
- Deep SQL and data modeling skill (BigQuery preferred). You write the queries and design the schemas yourself
- Hands-on fluency with low-code and AI-assisted application development (AppSheet, Retool, Bolt, Cursor, Claude Code, or similar). You ship working tools yourself and expect the same of your team
- Workflow and process design experience, including BPMN or equivalent. You think about operations as a flow, not a list of tasks
- Strong analytics chops across SPC, root cause, capacity modeling, and variance analysis
- A clear point of view on scaffolding vs. product. You know when to build a quick instrument, when to lobby for a roadmap item, and when to retire a tool you built last quarter. You ship operating reality, not abstract designs
- Strong cross-functional communicator. You can translate "throughput is leaking on Tuesday afternoons" into a PRD Engineering will accept
What the job involves
- The AI in an AI-native financial services firm is only as good as the operation it learns from, and the operation is only as good as the team that designs and tests it. That's Strategic Operations, and as Head of the function you own it
- You'll report to the Head of Member Operations and partner closely with Product Operations (who owns the standards) and Service Operations (who runs the floor)
- Strategic Operations is the design layer in between: the applied operations research function with the technical muscle to model, prototype, and instrument the operation directly
- You'll lead a small, high-leverage team designing the workflows of a self-driving financial back office, at the leading edge of an industry being rebuilt around outcomes rather than tools
- Own the design of every Member Operations workflow as a productized funnel: structured inputs, orchestrated execution, automated feedback loops, measurable quality, SLA-bound delivery
- Own the Operations Intelligence Warehouse, the data layer that makes throughput, quality, variance, and capacity inspectable and decision-ready
- Implement statistical process control across all production workflows, replacing anecdote with evidence
- Build queuing and capacity models that drive staffing decisions and surface bottlenecks before they break the operation
- Encode standards into Policy-as-Code: automated enforcement of bookkeeping quality gates, tax scorecards, and AI exception logic
- Lead the prototype-to-Engineering handoff. Use low-code and AI-assisted development to ship working operating models in days or weeks, validate them with floor data, and graduate stable designs to Engineering. Build bridge tools, not forever tools
- Build and lead a small team of operations analysts, process architects, and tool builders. Hire generalists who can model, design, and prototype
Our take
Collective is tapping into the quickly growing freelance and self employed workforce with a back office platform which provides full support for accounting, tax, bookkeeping and other financial admin, essentially removing the burden from the business owner entirely.
Launched in 2020, Collective didn’t take long to receive major backing from General Catalyst as well as Ashton Kutcher’s VC fund Sound Ventures. It’s put it to great use too, with an employee headcount now in the hundreds, showing just how fast the startup is growing.
Interestingly, Collective isn’t available for any and all subscribers. Rather, it only allows applicants to become members if Collective’s advisors know they can offer real value. It may seem a counter-intuitive move, but it keeps the company’s success rate high.
The company's latest funding round, raised in 2023, supports the accelerated implementation of AI across its operations as well as expanded onboarding efforts. Collective also continues to broaden the value of its offering, for example wit the launch of an AI accounting platform for one-person operations.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
44% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Jul 2023
$50m
EARLY VC
May 2021
$20m
SERIES A
Total funding: $78.7m
Company benefits
- Flex work setup
- Flexible PTO
- 14 paid holidays
- Paid parental leave (16 weeks)
- Health, dental, and vision
- Additional medical coverage
- 401k plan
- Equity
Company HQ
SoMa, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Hooman Radfar
(CEO & Co-Founder)Previously co-founded and was CEO of AddThis (acquired by Oracle), and was a founding partner at early stage startup accelerator Expa.
Ugur Kaner
(Board Member & Co-Founder)Was CPO before taking on an Advisor role. Joined YC startup in 2015 MBX as VP of Product Design, building multi-brand beauty and personal care startup Memebox. Helped to build the now public Udemy, and has worked with Google, Angry Birds, and Nokia.
Bugra Akcay
(Board Member & Co-Founder)Co-founded and was CTO of Hike, an accounting and tax platform for freelancers which preluded Collective. Was also the co-founder and CTO of Cici Meze, an enterprise food informatics company.
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