Director, Product Development Operations

Job Title: Director, Product Development Operations

Department: Product Development

About the Role: 

As the Director, Product Development Operations, you will lead the operational engine behind our Product, Engineering, and Design organizations. This is a people-leadership role responsible for building and scaling the teams, systems, and processes that enable Product, Engineering, Design, and Data teams to plan, build, and ship high-impact, user-centric solutions efficiently and predictably.

You will set the strategic direction for product and engineering operations, spanning release management, tooling and workflow governance, product analytics enablement, and research operations, while directly managing and developing a small product operations team that includes the Senior Product Operations Manager and the UX Design team. You are equally comfortable setting multi-quarter strategy and rolling up your sleeves to solve in-the-weeds operational or design-resourcing problems, and you know how to lead both through direct authority and influence.

What You'll Do:

Team Leadership & Organizational Development

• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing Product Development Operations team, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and career growth.
• Directly manage the UX Design team, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development, ensuring designers are well supported and grow in their craft.
• Set team priorities and allocate resources so the team operates as a force multiplier across Product and Engineering.
• Serve as a mentor and escalation point for operational challenges across product lines, and as a thought partner to Product and Engineering leadership.

Operational Strategy & Leadership

• Define and own the operational framework for the Product and Engineering organizations, including processes for planning, prioritization, and execution.
• Develop KPIs and define leadership-level reporting to track performance, velocity, predictability, and impact across teams.
• Facilitate cross-functional collaboration and alignment across Product, Design, Engineering, Data, Marketing, and customer-facing teams.

Release Management

• Own release management strategy end-to-end across all products, ensuring consistent, high-quality, and predictable delivery.
• Oversee release planning and execution, managing cross-team dependencies, risks, and timelines.
• Manage release calendars, release notes, stakeholder communications, and post-release retrospectives.

Tooling, Workflow & Systems Governance

• Develop subject matter expertise and support administration of enterprise tools such as Jira, Airfocus, Pendo, and related systems, ensuring streamlined workflows, accurate reporting, and consistent usage across Product and Engineering.
• Define and govern ticket hygiene standards, workflow configurations, and automations that support agile practices at scale.
• Monitor enterprise-wide compliance across the ticket ecosystem and analyze KPIs to measure adherence, data quality, and process effectiveness.
• Oversee Pendo administration and tagging strategy, ensuring product usage data is reliable for downstream reporting, adoption analysis, and user behavior insights.

Product Analytics Enablement

• Partner with Data and Product Development leadership to design product analytics tools and frameworks that support reporting on business objectives across product lines.
• Drive organization-wide adoption of analytics tools and frameworks to improve data-informed decision-making.

Design Leadership & User Research Operations

• Own design operations for the UX Design team, including workflow, critique cadence, design system governance, and tooling.
• Set the bar for design quality and craft, and ensure design work is appropriately scoped, resourced, and integrated into product and engineering roadmaps.
• Support Design and UX Research functions by operationalizing research roadmaps, tooling, recruiting, and repository management.
• Ensure research insights and design outputs are easily accessible and actionable across product teams.

Strategic Planning & OKR Alignment

• Lead Product Development's quarterly and annual planning cycles and OKR alignment process.
• Facilitate backlog hygiene, sprint planning cadence, and roadmap transparency across the organization.

Best Practices & Continuous Improvement

• Continuously evaluate, evolve, and scale product and engineering operations best practices as the organization grows.
• Assess and lead the deployment of new tools across the product organization (e.g., portfolio, roadmapping, or reporting & dashboarding tools).

You’re a great fit for this role if:

• 8+ years of experience in product operations, engineering operations, program management, or a similar role, including experience in a technology organization.
• 2+ years of experience directly managing and developing a team.
• Proven leadership managing cross-functional teams and driving operational improvements at scale.
• Deep understanding of the product development lifecycle, agile methodologies, and release management.
• Experience owning and administering Jira, Confluence, Airfocus, and similar tools across a product and engineering organization.
• Experience administering Pendo or a similar product experience/analytics platform.
• Strong grasp of user research and product analytics best practices.
• Experience conceiving, developing, deploying, and owning new processes across a product and engineering org, with strong change management skills.
• Excellent communication, facilitation, and stakeholder management skills; able to lead through both direct authority and influence.
• Data-driven mindset with the ability to develop and act on meaningful insights.
• Prior experience in SaaS, consumer tech, or enterprise software preferred.

Our Mission:

Unite Us’ mission is to unlock the potential of every community. Our co-founders started Unite Us in 2013 to serve the people they served with. They witnessed firsthand the barriers and inefficiencies in trying to navigate health and social services, and set out to improve that experience for veterans and their families. Unite Us quickly expanded to serving all people who need connections to care across our country. Through Unite Us’ national network and software, community-based organizations, government agencies, and healthcare organizations are all connected to better collaborate to meet the needs of the individuals in their communities. We drive the collaboration to predict, deliver, and pay for services that impact whole-person health. If you want to do well and do good, join Unite Us.

Environmental Job Requirements and Working Conditions:

• This position is remote, U.S. based. 
• The target pay range for this role is: $150,000 - 175,000. This salary range represents our target hiring range for this role. The proposed salary will be dependent on the candidate's skills, experience, and competencies, as well as location.
• All team members will be required to pass a background check which includes criminal, employment, and education verification 

Benefits provided by Unite Us:

Medical, Dental, and Vision

We offer insurance to team members and eligible partners and dependents, including unlimited virtual mental health and acute medical visits.

Wellness

Mental health benefits, such as the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and wellness platform subscription, are available to all team members.

Flexible Time Off

Take what you need, including volunteer days and mental health days. We also offer 14 paid, company-wide holidays.
Paid Parental Leave

Adoptive parents are included.

Employee Resource Groups

Join our ERGs to connect and engage with colleagues, like Military Veterans

Spending Accounts

We offer tax-advantaged health savings accounts (HSAs), flexible spending accounts (FSAs), and commuter benefits.

401(k) + Employer Match

Enjoy matching, immediate vesting and financial wellness resources

Additional Benefits

Life and AD&D - a company paid benefit, with the option to purchase additional coverage for yourself and your dependents

Disability Coverage

Accident Insurance

Pet Insurance

As part of this work at home job, we will provide you with all the necessary equipment to perform your duties, including a computer, mouse, keyboard as well as other items on our approved list of WFH supplies.

Unite Us is committed to building a diverse team and fostering an inclusive culture, and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We embrace and encourage our employees' differences in race, religion, color, national origin, gender, family status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, veteran status, disability, pregnancy, medical conditions, and other characteristics. If you require assistance in applying for open positions due to a disability please email us at [email protected] to request an accommodation.

#LI-Remote