10th St. Talent

Job Title: VP of Operations

Location: South Central Texas (On-Site, 5 days/week), relocation assistance available

Travel: Limited

Compensation: Competitive base + performance bonus + profit-sharing tied to the company's growth (commensurate with experience and level)

One of the fastest-growing precious metals depositories in the country is scaling from a storage-and-retail business into a capital-markets custody operation, and it needs a senior operations leader to run it. The person who built and ran the depository's operations is moving into a Chief of Staff role, opening the seat for someone to build on that foundation, run the operation on solid systems and standard work, and carry its operating discipline into the next phase.

The company custodies physical gold and silver at scale. It was recently approved as a COMEX depository, one of the largest insured facilities of its kind, and it's now the custodian behind physical precious-metals ETFs, with more large-scale products launching early next year. Growth has outpaced the operation. Right now a loyal, capable team keeps the operation running on effort and long hours. What's missing for this phase of growth is the person who sees the bottleneck coming and designs it out before the volume hits.

You’d step in to lead a bench of directors across depository, logistics, and security. You inherit a team that's earned its stripes and knows the work, so the opportunity is to earn their trust, set the standard, and give them systems they can run without you. You report to the President and partner closely with the Chief of Staff.

The Goal

Within 12 months, the depository, logistics, and security functions run to a defined standard every day. Daily ETF reporting ships on time without escalating to senior leadership, physical inventory and digital records reconcile without exception, and your directors solve process problems on their own while you set the bar.

Outcomes You'll Be Responsible For

• Daily operating discipline: Stand up leader standard work, a clear KPI set, and a daily management rhythm across all three functions. Anticipate and design out the bottlenecks the team currently absorbs with overtime.
• Custody, reconciliation, and audit readiness at scale: Own chain-of-custody and reconciliation for allocated, individually numbered bars, and carry the depository through COMEX inspection, ETF custodian audits, and insurance review with no material findings.
• A stronger director bench: Assess, develop, and hold your directors accountable. Scale the team through the growth ramp, keep your key people, and get senior leadership out of day-to-day escalations.
• Capacity ahead of demand: Take over the build-out already underway, from racking and software setup to pallet consolidation, and run a recurring cadence of continuous-improvement events that free up space and throughput.

Skills Needed to Apply

• 10+ years leading a high-volume, high-throughput physical operation (warehouse, distribution, logistics, or fulfillment) with full-facility ownership of receiving, inventory control, fulfillment, and shipping. The industry matters far less than the scale and the daily operating rhythm. We'll weigh strong operators from any high-volume environment.
• Formal Lean or continuous-improvement leadership: value-stream mapping, kaizen events, standard work, 5S, root-cause problem solving, and leader standard work, applied inside a defined business system you can teach.
• A track record as a leader of leaders. You've developed managers and directors, driven results through durable systems rather than personal heroics, and built and kept a team through a growth ramp.
• The range to connect with a long-tenured, blue-collar floor team and hold credibility with executives and institutional partners. Warmth paired with accountability.
• Proof you spot inefficiency, chase down the root cause, and design the simple fix before the problem lands.
• Comfortable with the rudimentary accounting that keeps physical inventory and digital records reconciling, so information flows cleanly between systems as volume and complexity grow.

Nice to Have

• Chain-of-custody or inventory-integrity experience with high-value or regulated goods: precious metals, cash or bullion logistics, aerospace, or pharma.
• Hands-on fluency with warehouse-management and ERP systems, including driving the configuration and roadmap yourself rather than deferring to IT.
• Exposure to COMEX, ETF or fund custody, exchange inspections, or institutional counterparties.
• Comfort owning security, OSHA, and insurance relationships at a high-value site. The insurance piece here is an audit and inspection function tied to depository limits, not ownership of the full property-and-casualty portfolio.

Qualities That Will Make You Successful

• Anticipates: Sees a recurring backlog as a design flaw to engineer out, long before it turns into weekend overtime.
• Solves simply: Reaches for the fix that clears the constraint rather than the one that impresses the room.
• Earns permission first: Invests in people personally and lets that credibility carry the change.
• Holds the line without friction: Comfortable being disliked for a decision without becoming disliked as a person, and holds the standard either way.
• Translates both directions: Carries strategy to the floor in plain language and brings ground truth back up.
• Steady under pressure: When it gets tight, diagnoses the process instead of assigning fault.
• Fits the place: Wants to live and work in a small-town South-Central Texas community and genuinely thrives there.