Sr. Director of Operational Excellence

Location: Phoenix, AZ or NY/NJ area | Hybrid

Compensation: $200-225K+ Base + Bonus

About the Opportunity

We are conducting a search for a Director of Operational Excellence to join a growing, established organization with complex, high-volume distribution and fulfillment operations.

This is a highly visible leadership position responsible for shaping operational strategy, improving performance across multiple facilities, and building scalable processes that support continued growth. The ideal candidate combines large-scale operations leadership with continuous improvement, industrial engineering, automation, and program execution experience.

This role is ideal for a leader who can operate strategically while remaining close enough to the operation to understand what is happening on the floor and translate those insights into meaningful improvements.

What You'll Do

• Develop and execute a long-term operational excellence strategy and roadmap across distribution and fulfillment operations.
• Drive improvements across inbound, outbound, inventory flow, fulfillment, productivity, throughput, quality, cost, and customer experience.
• Partner with Operations, Industrial Engineering, Maintenance, Transportation, Finance, and other cross-functional teams to identify and implement improvements.
• Lead large-scale continuous improvement and transformation initiatives across multiple facilities.
• Evaluate capacity, labor utilization, workflow, equipment, and process performance to identify opportunities for greater efficiency and scalability.
• Provide leadership and direction for industrial engineering, maintenance/reliability, and operational excellence initiatives.
• Support automation, material-handling, robotics, and technology initiatives from operational design through implementation and optimization.
• Establish KPIs and performance-management processes that translate operational data into actionable improvements.
• Lead complex programs involving multiple stakeholders, facilities, timelines, and business priorities.
• Build strong relationships with site leadership and frontline teams to ensure new processes and initiatives are successfully adopted and sustained.

What We're Looking For

• Significant leadership experience within high-volume distribution, fulfillment, logistics, e-commerce, retail distribution, or similarly complex operations.
• Demonstrated experience leading operations or operational excellence initiatives across multiple facilities or a large-scale distribution network.
• Strong understanding of inbound and outbound operations, inventory management, labor planning, capacity planning, productivity, and throughput.
• Experience leading or partnering closely with Industrial Engineering and Maintenance/Facilities teams.
• Proven success implementing Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen, or other continuous improvement methodologies.
• Experience with automation, material-handling systems, robotics, WMS, or other distribution technologies.
• Track record of delivering measurable improvements in productivity, cost, service, quality, safety, or EBITDA.
• Experience leading large teams and influencing senior leaders across multiple functional areas.
• Ability to balance long-term strategic planning with hands-on operational execution.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education and relevant leadership experience.

What Makes This Opportunity Compelling

This is an opportunity to have a meaningful impact on the future of a complex and evolving operation. You'll have the ability to influence how facilities operate, how technology and automation are deployed, how teams work, and how the overall network scales for future growth.

The organization is looking for more than someone who can manage today's operation. They are seeking a leader who can identify what the operation needs to look like several years from now and build the roadmap to get there.

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