VP Strategic Operations & Transformation

Position: Vice President of Operations & Transformation 

Status: Full-Time / Permanent / Exempt
Reports To: Chief Operating Officer
Location: Remote + Travel
Travel Required: 25% Ongoing (with heavier travel anticipated during ramp up/initial training)
Salary: $200,000-$225,000 Per Year
Incentives: Annual Bonus + Equity

Position Overview

SavATree is entering a critical phase of scale, where disciplined execution, operational consistency, workforce productivity, and profitable growth across a large, distributed field organization directly impact results. 

The Vice President, Strategic Operations & Transformation will lead enterprise efforts to identify, quantify, and execute opportunities to improve operational performance across SavATree's markets and service lines. This leader will sit at the intersection of operations strategy, workforce and labor analytics, continuous improvement, financial performance, and enterprise transformation.

Rather than directly managing a geographic field organization, this role will partner with the COO, President, Regional VPs, District Managers, Market Leaders, Finance, Data & Analytics, HR, and other functional leaders to understand operational performance, develop analytical models and business cases, and translate insights into scalable improvements.

The ideal candidate combines deep analytical and financial capability with practical operational judgment. This person will be equally comfortable getting into complex operational data, presenting recommendations to executive leadership, and working alongside field leaders to move initiatives from analysis through implementation and sustained adoption.

Core Mandate 

Operations Strategy & Workforce Optimization

• Develop and evolve enterprise frameworks for evaluating operational performance across markets, branches, and service lines.
• Lead the development of an enterprise labor and workforce model, connecting demand, service mix, seasonality, capacity, staffing, productivity, utilization, scheduling, and labor cost.
• Develop analytical approaches to workforce planning, capacity modeling, crew design, routing strategy, scheduling optimization, labor productivity, technician utilization, and service-delivery economics.
• Partner with Finance and field leadership to understand performance variation across markets and identify opportunities to improve revenue, margin, productivity, and resource allocation.
• Build models and business cases to quantify operational opportunities and inform decisions around staffing, capacity, process changes, investments, and resource deployment.
• Support annual operating planning through analysis of volume, pricing, labor, materials, productivity, and capacity requirements by service line and market.
• Identify trends, operational headwinds and tailwinds, and emerging performance issues through structured analysis and reporting.
• Partner with field and functional leaders to test recommendations in the business, measure results, refine approaches, and scale successful practices.

Continuous Improvement / Project Management

• Lead high-impact, cross-functional initiatives from problem identification and analysis through implementation and sustained adoption.
• Build and embed a continuous-improvement culture and scalable best practices across branches, districts, and regions.
• Own and evolve business standard work, including Lean principles, Daily Management, Leader Standard Work, and Monthly and Quarterly Operating Reviews.
• Create visibility and accountability through structured reporting, governance, clear KPIs, and defined initiative ownership.
• Facilitate the ideation, development, prioritization, and acceleration of core business transformation initiatives, remaining hands-on enough to move critical work forward while providing enterprise-level strategic leadership.
• Apply structured problem-solving and root-cause analysis to identify underlying drivers of operational performance rather than treating symptoms.
• Standardize where consistency creates enterprise value while preserving appropriate flexibility for differences in market, service mix, seasonality, and local operating conditions.

Key Responsibilities

Operational Performance & Financial Analysis

• Analyze operational and financial performance across field operations and specialty service lines to identify opportunities for profitable growth and greater efficiency.
• Develop models connecting operational drivers to financial outcomes, including revenue-per-hour, job costing, labor productivity, utilization, capacity, and margin.
• Partner with Finance and field leadership on budgets, forecasts, operating plans, and performance improvement opportunities.
• Develop scenario analyses and business cases to quantify potential investments, process changes, labor strategies, and transformation initiatives.
• Evaluate production standards, crew configurations, route density, hours-per-job benchmarks, and other operational drivers using field and financial data.
• Develop approaches to seasonal capacity planning that account for differences in service demand, weather, geography, service mix, and other operating variables.
• Identify performance variation across locations and determine root causes, opportunities for standardization, and appropriate interventions.
• Establish baselines and measurable financial and operational outcomes for major improvement initiatives.

Enterprise Transformation & Continuous Improvement

• Develop and evolve an enterprise continuous-improvement framework tailored to a large, distributed field-service organization.
• Identify and prioritize transformation opportunities based on operational impact, financial value, feasibility, and organizational readiness.
• Lead complex enterprise initiatives through analysis, business-case development, pilot design, implementation, measurement, and scale.
• Develop and maintain standard work and scalable best practices in partnership with relevant functional and field leaders.
• Improve consistency in operations, execution, and analytics usage while recognizing legitimate differences across markets and service lines.
• Partner with IT and Data & Analytics to improve the digital operating model, including routing, scheduling, forecasting, mobile execution tools, AI-enabled workforce optimization, and operational analytics.
• Support integration and standardization initiatives associated with continued organizational growth and acquisition.

Strategic Initiative & Change Leadership

• Lead large-scale initiatives such as shared services, specialization/centralization, cost-reduction programs, productivity initiatives, and operating-model improvements through clearly defined workstreams, owners, timelines, and deliverables.
• Identify risks early and manage cross-functional dependencies to ensure initiatives move from planning into execution and sustained adoption.
• Build compelling, data-backed cases for change and translate complex analysis into clear recommendations for executive and field leadership.
• Lead practical change-management efforts, including rollout strategies, communication, training, measurement, and direct resolution of resistance.
• Partner closely with field operators throughout design and implementation to ensure solutions are operationally practical and scalable.
• Establish post-implementation reviews to determine whether initiatives delivered their intended operational and financial impact.
• Adjust and refine initiatives based on results, field feedback, and changing business conditions.

Data, Reporting & Performance Management

• Define KPIs and leadership scorecards tied to operational and initiative performance; partner with Data & Analytics on dashboards that provide timely, actionable visibility.
• Establish analytical frameworks that help leadership understand what is happening, why it is happening, the financial impact, and what action should be taken.
• Own and evolve enterprise operational performance metrics, including:
  • Labor productivity
  • Revenue per hour (RPH)
  • Crew utilization
  • Capacity utilization
  • Route density
  • Travel time
  • Gross margin
  • Scheduling efficiency
  • Overtime and labor-cost efficiency
  • Service-line attachment rate
  • Customer retention
  • Forecast accuracy
  • Initiative ROI
• Develop executive-level reporting and recommendations that translate operational complexity into clear decisions and priorities.
• Ensure major initiatives have defined baselines, ROI metrics, targets, and post-implementation measurement.
• Drive transparency around what is working, what is not, why performance varies, and where leadership intervention is required.
• Increase organizational capability to use data and analytics consistently in operational decision-making.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Serve as a strategic partner to the COO and executive leadership on operational performance, productivity, and enterprise transformation.
• Partner across Operations, Finance, HR, Sales, Marketing, IT, and Data & Analytics to develop and execute enterprise improvement initiatives.
• Build credibility with field leadership by combining rigorous analysis with a practical understanding of frontline operations.
• Act as a neutral enterprise leader who breaks down silos, challenges assumptions, and drives decisions based on measurable business outcomes.
• Lead and develop team members supporting continuous improvement and related operational initiatives.
• Influence effectively across a decentralized organization where successful transformation depends on alignment rather than direct authority.

Success Metrics

• Measurable improvement in labor productivity, workforce utilization, capacity, and operational efficiency.
• Quantified revenue, margin, and cost improvements resulting from transformation and continuous-improvement initiatives.
• Development and adoption of scalable workforce and operational-performance models.
• On-time, on-budget delivery of high-value strategic initiatives.
• Speed and consistency of execution across markets.
• Adoption and sustainability of new processes, operating practices, and systems.
• Increased visibility into operational performance through actionable KPIs, reporting, and executive insights.
• Demonstrated ROI and sustained results from major transformation initiatives.
• Strong partnership and adoption across field and functional leadership.

Qualifications

Required

• 10+ years of progressive experience in operations strategy, workforce/labor analytics, operational excellence, continuous improvement, strategic finance, business transformation, or related disciplines.
• Demonstrated experience developing analytical models or frameworks used to improve operational performance.
• Experience with labor productivity, workforce planning, capacity planning, staffing, utilization, forecasting, scheduling optimization, or related workforce economics.
• Proven ability to analyze complex operational and financial data, identify root causes and opportunities, and translate findings into actionable business recommendations.
• Strong financial acumen, including experience developing business cases, scenario analyses, ROI assessments, or financially grounded recommendations.
• Proven track record leading large-scale, cross-functional initiatives from concept and analysis through implementation, measurement, and sustained adoption.
• Experience working within a large, distributed, multi-location, or labor-intensive organization.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate complex analysis clearly to executive leadership and influence decisions across a decentralized organization.
• Bachelor's degree required.

Preferred

• Experience in a distributed field-service, route-based, retail, healthcare services, logistics, hospitality, facilities services, home services, or similarly labor-intensive operating environment.
• Experience within a private equity-backed, acquisitive, or high-growth organization.
• Familiarity with Lean, Six Sigma, or similar continuous-improvement methodologies.
• Experience with business intelligence, visualization, and analytical tools used to evaluate operational performance.
• Experience developing or implementing enterprise labor/workforce models.
• MBA or other relevant advanced degree.

Leadership Profile

• Analytically curious: naturally digs beneath topline results to understand the underlying drivers of performance.
• Hands-on problem solver: willing and able to work directly with data, models, and operational details rather than solely directing work through others.
• Financially grounded: connects operational decisions to measurable revenue, margin, productivity, and ROI outcomes.
• Builder mentality: comfortable creating frameworks, models, processes, and operating disciplines where mature infrastructure may not yet exist.
• Executive communicator: distills complex information into clear insights, recommendations, and decisions.
• Credible with operators: understands that analytical solutions only create value when they work in the real world.
• Change leader: challenges the status quo while building the relationships and organizational alignment required for adoption.
• Pragmatic: balances enterprise standardization with legitimate differences across markets, service lines, and operating environments.
• High ownership: brings structure to ambiguity and drives work from initial diagnosis through measurable results.