Director, Operational Excellence

We’re looking for a Director of Operational Excellence to build and lead a centralized Product & Engineering Operations team.

This team owns the operating system that connects Product and Engineering across discovery, planning, execution, release readiness, and post-release learning. Its mission is to create scalable structure, clear workflows, consistent standards, and strong operating rhythms that help teams move faster with greater clarity- without adding unnecessary red tape.

In this role, you will lead the Operational Excellence team as both a people leader and systems builder: coaching and developing a high-performing team, designing practical processes people actually want to use, and partnering closely with Product and Engineering leadership to solve real operating problems, improve decision quality, and help Gong make better tradeoffs as the business scales.

• Team Leadership: Lead, coach, and develop a centralized Product & Engineering Operations team, setting clear expectations and raising the bar for operational excellence.
• Process & Operating System Design: Design, build, and continuously evolve the Product & Engineering operating system, including workflows, governance, planning cadences, lifecycle standards, decision frameworks, templates, and handoffs. Create processes that are simple, scalable, widely adopted, and designed to enable speed — not bureaucracy.
• Portfolio & Planning Operations: Create the structure for strong portfolio planning, capacity visibility, cross-pillar alignment, executive visibility, and leadership tradeoff discussions across product, infrastructure, reliability, security, and customer-driven work.
• AI, Tools & Enablement: Use AI, automation, tooling standards, dashboards, templates, and knowledge systems to reduce friction, improve visibility, and make the operating system easier for teams to adopt.

• Scale Without Bureaucracy: How do we introduce the right level of structure and consistency while preserving speed, ownership, and team autonomy?
• Real Operating Problems: How do we identify the root causes of recurring friction, including unclear ownership, weak handoffs, decision delays, duplicated work, and planning gaps, and design practical solutions that stick?
• Business Tradeoffs: How do we help Product and Engineering leaders make clearer tradeoff decisions across customer value, product innovation, reliability, infrastructure, security, quality, and speed?
• Operational Signal Flow: How do we ensure customer, field, support, reliability, quality, and post-release insights consistently inform planning and prioritization?

• Organizational Clarity: Create consistent operating rhythms, decision rights, workflows, and standards that help Product and Engineering work together more effectively.
• Better Business Decisions: Improve Gong’s ability to make clear, timely, and well-informed tradeoff decisions as priorities, dependencies, and constraints become more complex.
• Scalable Product Development: Build the systems, tools, templates, and governance needed for Gong to scale without losing speed or accountability.
• AI-Enabled Productivity: Embed AI and automation into day-to-day operating workflows, helping teams reduce manual effort and focus more time on high-value work.

• An Experienced Operational Excellence Leader: A senior leader with 10+ years in Product Operations, Engineering Operations, Business Operations, Strategy & Operations, or Operational Excellence in SaaS, product, or R&D-heavy environments.
• A Strong People Manager: Someone with experience managing and developing high-performing teams, with a proven ability to coach, structure, and raise the bar for operational talent.
• An Excellent Process Designer: Someone who knows how to design processes end to end: diagnosing the real problem, mapping stakeholders and handoffs, simplifying complexity, defining clear roles and decision points, creating templates and tools, driving adoption, and iterating based on feedback and outcomes.
• A Business-Minded Problem Solver: Someone who understands that operations is not process for process’s sake, but about solving business problems, improving decision quality, and helping leaders make thoughtful tradeoffs.
• AI & Tech Savvy: Someone who naturally looks for ways to use AI, automation, data, and modern tools to improve how teams plan, communicate, execute, and learn.
• A Collaborative Peer: Most importantly, a person who enjoys working closely with exceptionally strong peers and can influence senior stakeholders without direct authority.

We operate in a flexible hybrid work model.

What makes the Product & Engineering Operations function at Gong unique?

Here at Gong, we trust and empower our employees with ownership to solve complex problems, make the right decisions, and build the best products that create a radical impact. We call this “Own. Solve. Impact.”

This is an opportunity to build the operating system for how Product and Engineering work at scale — creating the structure, standards, tools, and rhythms that help teams move faster, make better decisions, and deliver measurable outcomes. If you’re excited to build clarity without bureaucracy and use AI and technology to improve how modern teams work, we’d love to meet you!

We encourage our employees to express their personality and identity (whether gender, ethnic, religious, or sexual), and we ensure fairness and equal opportunities. We follow a hybrid working model that combines working from home, on the go, or at the office. This allows us: flexibility, autonomy, positive work relationships, and effective work habits. If these considerations are important to you when choosing a workplace, we'd love to see you with us. To review Gong's privacy policy, visit www.gong.io/privacy-policy/ for more details.

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