Vice President Operations

Position Summary :

Dispatch Goods is a female-founded climate-tech company. We are on a mission to eliminate waste by designing and building the circular supply chains of tomorrow.

We partner with many large meal and grocery delivery companies (CookUnity, Misfits Market, Thistle, and HelloFresh), caterers, brands, and other organizations to unlock a returnable packaging program by facilitating logistics, cleaning and processing, QA, inventory tracking, and procurement.

We are backed by strong investors in the climate and traditional venture space.

Reporting to the CEO, Dispatch Goods’ VP of Operations’ (will also consider COO as title, commensurate with experience) will be responsible for overseeing physical operations at a multi-market circular economy start-up, while also managing the operations of each market area.

Business critical responsibilities include ensuring an efficient, cost effective processing / manufacturing operations and associated supply chain, inventory availability that aligns with sales and financial objectives, operations team and labor management, and timely reliable fulfillment operations.

This person must have experience with building and scaling a physical manufacturing infrastructure . Project examples include working with contractors to create automation floor plans and running cost-benefit analysis and creating a multi-market system for throughput reporting by working directly with production managers, the hourly workforce, and product / engineering teams.

We are looking for a motivated operations leader with an Olympian mindset who wants to grow with our company and who is excited about a hands-on management role at a fast growing early-stage stage startup positioned to disrupt the linear waste stream.

We are a team of doers and thinkers that are scaling our company to the next stage.

Experience with scaling the operations at startups, including; manufacturing / production, inventory planning, distribution, procurement, logistics, and team management, are a must.

Responsibilities :

• Develop and implement strategic operational plans to ensure efficiency and scalability.
• Oversee the end-to-end circular supply chain operations from retrieving the returnable products from our customers, through processing, preparing, inventory, releasing, and shipping the products back to our customers.
• Standardize best practices across multiple markets.
• Understand common financial metrics, such as COGS, Direct Labor, and Expense Budget; and be able to overlay fiscal considerations with management decisions and recommendations.
• Have mastery of unit economics, cost drivers, and opportunities to implement automation.
• Ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations.
• Be a change-agent who can successfully spark new ways of thinking while gaining the buy-in from others to implement and sustain improvements.
• Build strong relationships with stakeholders including internal teams, customers and suppliers.
• Implement strategies to minimize disruption in processing operations.
• Collaborate with the product development team to ensure new product introductions and product modifications are able to be seamlessly integrated as a commercial product and processed efficiently, as well as share perspectives on largest opportunities for impact.
• Define, measure and set goals for key operational metrics. Drive improvement in these over time.
• Root cause, quantify, assess impact of and resolve quality issues.
• Negotiate supply chain business relationships including pricing and contracts.
• Work with cross-functional teams and Business Development / Sales to achieve business and production goals.
• Lead supplier evaluation processes.
• Manage forecasts and production plans to ensure capacity needs are planned and achieved.
• Monitor performance to ensure delivery schedule cost targets are consistently met or exceeded.
• Drive and deliver strategic business initiatives as needed.
• Attend board meetings and represent the operator’s perspective and strategy.

Required Qualifications

• BS / BA / BE degree as a minimum.
• Supply chain, mechanical / industrial / manufacturing engineering or operations research areas of study, or equivalent operations, supply chain, and / or production management experiences.
• 10+ years supervisory experience as a Director or VP of Operations or equivalent in food processing, manufacturing or related disciplines.
• Demonstrated experience and successes building and scaling supply chains.
• Advanced quantitative skills, proficiency with excel and data analysis concepts.
• Demonstrated ability to analyze data (both qualitative and quantitative) and build a structured approach to strategic decision making.
• Ability to work collaboratively in a dynamic startup environment.
• Superb interpersonal and written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to balance short-term execution needs with long-term strategic goals.
• Exceptional ability to problem solve, develop creative solutions, and demonstrate. resourcefulness, while maintaining acute attention to detail.
• Outstanding leadership skills, with a track record of recruiting, developing and motivating talent.

Preferred Qualifications

• MBA or Master’s in Operations, Logistics, or Related Engineering Field
• Exposure to / Experience with VC Financing
• Experience Presenting to a Board
• Experience in an early-stage start-up
• Six Sigma

On site in Hayward with the ability to travel to other locations on the East and West Coasts.