Director Operations Manager Startup Jobs in Illinois

As an Operations Manager, you play a pivotal role in the ongoing performance of your sector and its transformation into a regionally elite operating team as Airspace matures and grows. On several of the sector's biggest calls, you'll partner closely with your Senior Manager today, building toward full ownership of that scope as you grow into the role.

The role sits at the intersection of Operations and nearly everything else at Airspace: Revenue, Network, Finance, R&D, and Quality Assurance all depend on you and your Senior Manager to represent your sector accurately and to bring their priorities back to your team. Because your sector's customers and partners may span regions and time zones, you'll need to be just as effective coaching and leading when you're not in the room as when you are.

Must be able to understand all responsibilities included in the Ops Expert job description and perform all responsibilities in the Supervisor job description, in addition to the following:

Own Sector Performance and Escalations

• Get hands-on with the sector team when needed to support the frontline and protect service levels
• Act as the highest escalation point for day-to-day frontline operations within your sector — the first point of contact before an issue needs to go to your Senior Manager or Director
• Monitor sector performance trends daily, weekly, and monthly, using coaching and feedback to resolve KPI issues and drive account-level process improvement.
• Partner with your sector leadership to define sector-specific Standard Work, KPI benchmarks, and the reporting cadence for leadership (e.g., quarterly executive operations reviews, leadership summits).

Represent Operations Externally and Cross-Functionally

This is an area you'll grow into leading over time. Today, you're the hands-on thought partner to your Senior Manager across the following:

• Support your sector leadership in representing your sector during major customer milestone meetings and deployment calls (onboarding, QBRs, escalations, expansion opportunities, etc.).
• Partner with Revenue, Network, R&D, and Finance to shape SOPs, support high-value revenue motions, and scope customer-specific solutions that fall outside the normal scope.
• Partner with Quality Assurance on live-operational support, shipment reviews, and corrective action plans, ensuring corrective actions are effective and in place

Partner on Staffing and Team Composition

• Partner with your Senior Manager on team headcount decisions, hiring, and compensation/leveling decisions for your reporting sector(s)
• Partner with sector Directors and the People team on the recruiting pipeline, interview process, and assessment framework
• Partner with sector leadership to plan and facilitate new hire onboarding, ensuring systems, hardware, certifications, and introductions are ready
• Maintain a coverage schedule that provides sufficient operations coverage 24/7/365 and accounts for the supply needs of your service lines

Own Training and Enablement

• Own management of the training platform (WorkRamp) and its associated modules for your sector — keeping content current, assignments on track, and completion visible to leadership
• Support new hire training by helping plan the training schedule and stepping in to help deliver content as needed

Coach and Develop Your Leaders

• Define and manage a rhythm of the business - routine touchpoints with supervisors, priority-setting, and progress tracking against KPIs- that keeps your team's leaders aligned, including regular cadences with Driver Operations and Network.
• Conduct regular skip-level 1:1s with frontline operators (Specialists, Experts) to stay connected to on-the-ground performance and surface issues before they escalate
• Partner with your Senior Manager on Semi-Annual Review (SAR) prep — building promotion and merit increase cases, preparing supporting documents, and scheduling and running SAR meetings
• Define personal performance goals and coach individual contributors (Specialists, Experts) and personnel leaders (Supervisors) on technical, operational, and communication skills through individual conversations and structured training.
• Hold regular meeting cadences with Driver Operations and Network to align on the needs, requirements, and support your sector requires from those teams

Drive Continuous Improvement

• Scope, lead, or supervise initiatives supporting company OKRs, sector performance gaps, or new capability requirements — as the primary responsible party, end to end
• Build roll-out plans for new processes and lead supervisors and leads to drive high adoption
• Proactively identify where new services, capabilities, or certifications would benefit the sector, and drive execution — including work plans and resourcing — with Operations Leadership approval
• Maintain a regular pulse on operational efficiency and service quality, proactively solving for both rather than trading one off against the other

• Proven experience managing high-performing operations teams, ideally in time-critical logistics, marketplace, or supply chain environments
• Demonstrated ownership mindset — comfortable driving outcomes and taking accountability for your decisions, including partnering on hiring, firing, and compensation calls for your team
• Strong cross-functional influence, with a track record of aligning Revenue, Network, Finance, R&D, and Quality Assurance without formal authority over those teams
• Experience managing distributed teams across time zones and schedules, including maintaining 24/7/365 coverage models
• Comfort partnering on KPI definition and owning the follow-through — translating performance trends into coaching, process changes, or escalations
• Strong coaching and people-development skills, with experience developing both individual contributors and people managers
• Grace under pressure — a track record of navigating and resolving high-stakes, high-visibility situations
• Bachelor's degree in a related field, or equivalent practical experience

In your first 90 days, build relationships across your sector team and cross-functional partners (Revenue, Network, Finance, QA), develop fluency in your sector's performance and key accounts, and shadow your sector leadership on cross-functional representation and SAR prep. By 180 days, you're independently managing day-to-day escalations and staffing coordination, taking a growing lead in cross-functional conversations, running your first new-hire training cycle, and co-owning SAR prep and delivery with your sector leadership.

• Salary range: $80,000 - $85,000 / year
• Bonuses based on sector performance
• High-quality health, vision, and dental care plan options
• 401K company contribution program
• Professional learning and training reimbursements