Head of Operations

Job description

Sauce is a premier restaurant technology platform that helps businesses grow with our Commission-Free Delivery & Pickup structure and proprietary delivery optimization technology. We are serving a 105 billion dollar US local restaurant business. Headquartered in NYC and Tel-Aviv, Sauce wants restaurants to fulfill their highest potential, this means giving local establishments everything they need to connect directly with their customers. The Sauce team pools together decades of restaurant tech experience, along with seasoned tech, sales, marketing, product and operations executives who produce an industry-changing delivery system for successful local restaurants and chains. Sauce powers ordering, delivery, and operations for a growing base of restaurant partners. As we have scaled, our product has matured, more restaurants have onboarded, and B2C order volume has climbed — but our operational and go-to-market engine has grown without the structure, tooling, or clear ownership needed to keep pace. Today, complex cross-functional work is carried by a small number of exceptional individuals operating in constant firefighting mode. This is not repeatable or scalable. We are hiring a Director-level Head of Operations — a Swiss knife operator who can be cross-functional and effective across every domain. One day it's legal ops, one day it's finance ops, one day it's product ops, one day it's delivery. There is no fixed lane. If there is no clear owner for an operational problem, this person is the owner. Their job is to take it, own it, solve it — and if it's recurring, build the system so it never catches the company off guard again. This is a builder's role. You will inherit talented people and messy, high-volume problems. Your mandate is to turn that into a structured, measurable, scalable operation that runs without depending on any single hero — and where the default solution to a repeatable problem is an automated process or agent, not a new hire. ### What You'll Do: ### ***Core scope from day one:*** - **Internal escalation layer —** Serve as the single accountable owner for any operational issue that crosses two or more functions or reaches an executive level. Own the escalation path end-to-end: triage → assign → drive to resolution → confirm root cause is fixed and QA'd. Delegation is fine. Accountability passing is not. - **Organizing dispersed functions —** Consolidate today's scattered operational activities into coherent teams with clear charters, hand-offs, and accountability. Build playbooks, runbooks, and tooling that replace institutional knowledge held by individuals. - **B2B escalations function —** Own the centralized intake, routing, and resolution of restaurant escalations, with clear owners and SLAs, so that Customer Success can refocus on growth, sales, and retention. - **Strategic operational initiatives —** Own the implementation of cross-functional, project-based operational initiatives that move the needle at a company level. - **Product operations —** Run the operational layer that sits between product/engineering and the field, ensuring releases land cleanly with restaurants. ### ***Step two (as the operating model matures):*** - **Delivery operations —** Own day-to-day execution and issue resolution for delivery across partners. - **Customer support —** Absorb and structure the support function once the foundation above is in place. You will be the single point of contact for all operational matters — internally for product, engineering, and GTM teams, and externally as the operational owner restaurant partners can rely on when needed. This is primarily an internal function; external-facing involvement happens as needed, not as a default. ### Key Responsibilities: This role is deliberately focused on building structured, repeatable operations. A separate 0-to-1 operator will continue to own unstructured, exploratory work — e-payments, delivery partnerships, and new market/product launches — where ambiguity is high and the process does not yet exist. Onboarding is also out of scope at this stage. As functions mature and become repeatable, they move into this organization. The explicit goal is to build an operational engine that is structured, documented, and not dependent on any individual — and where the team this person builds is, wherever possible, a team of agents and automated workflows rather than headcount. - **Incident ownership and command —** Be the single accountable owner for any operational issue that crosses two or more functions. Run the escalation path end-to-end. Delegation of hands-on work is fine; accountability passing is not. This role owns the outcome. - **Root-cause elimination, not ticket-clearing —** Maintain a live registry of recurring issues with root-cause status. Hold functional leads (Engineering, CS, Dispatch, Finance, Product) accountable for permanent fixes on a defined SLA. The authority to set and enforce those SLAs is part of the role. Kill the top recurring issues each quarter; measure recurrence, not volume handled. - **Build with agents first —** When a process is repeatable, the default solution is automation: bots, AI agents, and workflows. Headcount is the last resort, not the first. - **Stand up clear, documented processes and SLAs —** Across all operational workflows, replacing ad-hoc, person-dependent firefighting with measurable systems. - **Turn field signals into facts —** Build a structured intake methodology that converts frontline input into evidence-based case studies and long-term, resolution-oriented processes. - **Operate with influence, not just authority —** Manage cross-functional work across Finance, Legal, CS, Product, and R&D without necessarily having direct reports. Think product manager, not department head. - **Establish operational metrics and reporting —** Track resolution time, SLA attainment, escalation volume, and drive continuous improvement. - **Remove the operational bottleneck —** Between product/engineering releases and the field, so the company can ship and grow faster. - **Codify institutional knowledge —** Currently held by key individuals into playbooks, runbooks, and tooling. - **Partner with Product, Engineering, Customer Success, and GTM —** As the single operational point of contact, reducing executive cognitive load and coordination overhead. ### Who You Are: - 6+ years in operations leadership at a real operational company — ideally a high-growth marketplace, logistics, food-tech, fintech, or B2B SaaS serving SMB customers. Candidates should come from a company with a recognizable growth story: we want to see that you've scaled something, not just managed it. - On-demand delivery or restaurant-tech experience is a strong plus. - Bachelor's degree or higher. - Proven track record building operational functions from scratch or from chaos — with evidence: playbooks, systems, metrics, before-and-after. Not just "I led ops." - Experience owning cross-functional operations across multiple domains simultaneously (legal, finance, support, product ops, delivery). - Strong systems and process thinking; comfortable defining SLAs, metrics, and accountability models and holding others to them. - Hands-on SQL knowledge — you read the data yourself, you don't wait for someone to pull it. - Demonstrated agent and automation building — you can show something you've built: a bot, a workflow, an AI-powered process. Not theoretical interest; actual output. - Thrives in chaos — you operate effectively when priorities shift daily, problems are ambiguous, and pressure is high. You don't firefight indefinitely; you turn recurring chaos into documented systems. - A service mindset — operational companies are pulled toward serving customers. You build engines that deliver that service at scale. - Excellent stakeholder management; credible as the single point of contact for executives, partners, and internal teams. - Experience working with Israeli startup culture, or a clear demonstrated ability to operate in a fast-moving, direct, low-hierarchy environment. - Based in NYC or Miami. ### Why Join Sauce: Operational noise is constant in any company that serves real businesses — restaurants need solutions, not just software. Every morning something new creates noise: a delivery issue, a legal question, a finance escalation, a product rollout problem. The difference between a company that scales and one that stalls is whether that noise flows through a structured engine with a clear owner, or through a handful of overloaded individuals. **You will build that engine. And in doing so, you'll unlock the company's next phase of growth.** ### What We Offer: - *Strong & Competitive Compensation Package* - *Company-Sponsored Insurance Package (Health, Dental, Vision, Mental Health)* - *Paid Parental Leave* - *Flexible Work Environment* - *Responsible Paid Time Off Policy*