Director of Operational Excellence

At Toast, we are passionate about creating raving fans and delivering an unparalleled customer experience — and we know that means eliminating friction and failure at the source, not just reacting to it. As we continue to grow, scaling how we operate across teams, products, and systems has never been more important. 

As the Director of Operational Excellence, you'll lead a function that redesigns critical processes and resolves the systemic issues that undermine them - building the operational backbone that enables Toast to deliver faster, more consistent, and more scalable outcomes for customers and employees alike.

This high-impact role reports to the VP of Customer Success and Operations and will serve as a key leader in Toast's next phase of customer and operational transformation.

Build and scale Toast's Process Engineering & Continuous Improvement program, establishing the strategy, roadmap, and operating model for how Toast designs, improves, and continuously optimizes its most critical cross-functional processes.

Lead end-to-end process redesign across the customer lifecycle, partnering with Sales, Marketing, Finance, Legal, and Customer Success to map, analyze, and optimize high-impact workflows (e.g. renewals, downsells, cancellations, change of ownership).

Uncover and permanently resolve systemic issues that drive recurring customer frustration and operational inefficiency. Design a structured, repeatable CI operating model — from intake and prioritization through investigation, fix ownership, and closed-loop validation — so that root cause resolution is rigorous and sustained.

Leverage AI and automation to scale operations: Identify opportunities to apply AI, automation, and emerging technologies to streamline workflows, reduce manual effort, and improve both customer and employee experiences.

Identify and eliminate operational waste that drives up cost-to-serve and creates customer friction: redundant steps, manual work, handoff errors, and cycle time drag. Use structured methodologies (Lean, Six Sigma, DMAIC, value stream analysis) to deliver measurable improvements.

Define and own enterprise-wide process KPIs, including cycle time reduction, handoff error rates, process capacity, recurrence rates, and cost-to-serve — tracking and communicating measurable impact to executive and cross-functional stakeholders.

Establish governance and accountability frameworks that move issues from analysis to action: review cadences, fix tracking mechanisms, and validation processes that ensure improvements hold.

Embed a culture of continuous improvement across the organization — coaching teams and leaders on structured problem-solving, making root cause thinking the norm, and building frameworks that balance operational efficiency with customer impact.

Lead and develop a high-performing team, bringing clarity, influence, and accountability to a complex, matrixed environment.

• 10+ years in process engineering, operations, continuous improvement, or transformation leadership, with a proven track record of designing, scaling, and sustaining enterprise-wide process improvements.
• Proven track record of deploying AI and automation solutions in production environments to improve efficiency and scale operational processes
• Deep expertise in process improvement and problem-solving methodologies — process mapping, value stream analysis, root cause analysis (5 Whys, Fishbone, DMAIC, A3), and workflow optimization. Lean/Six Sigma Black Belt certification strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to drive measurable, sustained impact: faster resolution times, lower cost-to-serve, reduced error and recurrence rates, and improved customer satisfaction (NPS/CSAT).
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional investigations and redesigns — securing commitments from senior leaders, holding teams accountable to timelines and deliverables, and driving accountability even without direct authority.
• Strong analytical and systems-thinking mindset, with a bias for diagnosing root causes over applying band-aids, and comfort working with operational data to surface patterns, quantify impact, and validate fixes.
• Excellent communication and storytelling ability — able to translate complex process and investigation work into clear, compelling narratives for execution teams and executives alike.
• Skilled at building governance structures and operating models where none previously existed, with a high tolerance for ambiguity and a disciplined focus on results.
• Growth-oriented leader with experience building and scaling teams, fostering a culture of accountability, curiosity, and continuous learning.
  

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