Director, Product Development Operations

About this role

Job Title: Director, Product Development Operations

Department: Product Development

About the Role :

As the Director, Product Development Operations, you will lead the operational engine behind our Product, Engineering, and Design organizations. This is a people-leadership role responsible for building and scaling the teams, systems, and processes that enable Product, Engineering, Design, and Data teams to plan, build, and ship high-impact, user-centric solutions efficiently and predictably.

You will set the strategic direction for product and engineering operations, spanning release management, tooling and workflow governance, product analytics enablement, and research operations, while directly managing and developing a small product operations team that includes the Senior Product Operations Manager and the UX Design team. You are equally comfortable setting multi-quarter strategy and rolling up your sleeves to solve in-the-weeds operational or design-resourcing problems, and you know how to lead both through direct authority and influence.

What You'll Do :

Team Leadership & Organizational Development

• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing Product Development Operations team, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and career growth.

• Directly manage the UX Design team, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development, ensuring designers are well supported and grow in their craft.

• Set team priorities and allocate resources so the team operates as a force multiplier across Product and Engineering.

• Serve as a mentor and escalation point for operational challenges across product lines, and as a thought partner to Product and Engineering leadership.

Operational Strategy & Leadership

• Define and own the operational framework for the Product and Engineering organizations, including processes for planning, prioritization, and execution.

• Develop KPIs and define leadership-level reporting to track performance, velocity, predictability, and impact across teams.

• Facilitate cross-functional collaboration and alignment across Product, Design, Engineering, Data, Marketing, and customer-facing teams.

Release Management

• Own release management strategy end-to-end across all products, ensuring consistent, high-quality, and predictable delivery.

• Oversee release planning and execution, managing cross-team dependencies, risks, and timelines.

• Manage release calendars, release notes, stakeholder communications, and post-release retrospectives.

Tooling, Workflow & Systems Governance

• Develop subject matter expertise and support administration of enterprise tools such as Jira, Airfocus, Pendo, and related systems, ensuring streamlined workflows, accurate reporting, and consistent usage across Product and Engineering.

• Define and govern ticket hygiene standards, workflow configurations, and automations that support agile practices at scale.

• Monitor enterprise-wide compliance across the ticket ecosystem and analyze KPIs to measure adherence, data quality, and process effectiveness.

• Oversee Pendo administration and tagging strategy, ensuring product usage data is reliable for downstream reporting, adoption analysis, and user behavior insights.

Product Analytics Enablement

• Partner with Data and Product Development leadership to design product analytics tools and frameworks that support reporting on business objectives across product lines.

• Drive organization-wide adoption of analytics tools and frameworks to improve data-informed decision-making.

Design Leadership & User Research Operations

• Own design operations for the UX Design team, including workflow, critique cadence, design system governance, and tooling.

• Set the bar for design quality and craft, and ensure design work is appropriately scoped, resourced, and integrated into product and engineering roadmaps.

• Support Design and UX Research functions by operationalizing research roadmaps, tooling, recruiting, and repository management.

• Ensure research insights and design outputs are easily accessible and actionable across product teams.

Strategic Planning & OKR Alignment

• Lead Product Development's quarterly and annual planning cycles and OKR alignment process.

• Facilitate backlog hygiene, sprint planning cadence, and roadmap transparency across the organization.

Best Practices & Continuous Improvement

• Continuously evaluate, evolve, and scale product and engineering operations best practices as the organization grows.

• Assess and lead the deployment of new tools across the product organization (e.g., portfolio, roadmapping, or reporting & dashboarding tools).

You’re a great fit for this role if :

• 8+ years of experience in product operations, engineering operations, program management, or a similar role, including experience in a technology organization.

• 2+ years of experience directly managing and developing a team.

• Proven leadership managing cross-functional teams and driving operational improvements at scale.

• Deep understanding of the product development lifecycle, agile methodologies, and release management.

• Experience owning and administering Jira, Confluence, Airfocus, and similar tools across a product and engineering organization.

• Experience administering Pendo or a similar product experience/analytics platform.

• Strong grasp of user research and product analytics best practices.

• Experience conceiving, developing, deploying, and owning new processes across a product and engineering org, with strong change management skills.

• Excellent communication, facilitation, and stakeholder management skills; able to lead through both direct authority and influence.

• Data-driven mindset with the ability to develop and act on meaningful insights.

• Prior experience in SaaS, consumer tech, or enterprise software preferred.

Our Mission:

Unite Us’ mission is to unlock the potential of every community. Our co-founders sta

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