Sr Director, Product Operations and Analytics

Our Product Operations discipline is a key part of our Product organization and supports our 400+ member R&D team. We are looking for a Sr / Director, Product Operations & Analytics who will be part of the global R&D leadership team, leading the product operations and product analytics functions. This role will play a critical role in establishing, driving usage and optimization, and measuring ongoing health and performance of the products we build and the processes, tools, and structures we use to prioritize, plan, build, communicate and release products. 

As the operations leader of the Product team, you will lead a small operations team and be accountable for the health and maturity of our product processes, tools, and the effectiveness of the communication of the work being done to both internal and external stakeholders. Success of the role will be measured on our ability to effectively plan, execute, adjust and communicate our R&D plans, priorities deliveries, key metrics and OKRs for internal & external stakeholders, as well as on the satisfaction (NPS) of key cross-functional stakeholders.

In this role, you will help unify information and communication that cuts across our product and sector level plans, reporting dashboards, and roadmaps in close partnership with our Delivery Management and Center of Excellence functions. In partnership with the other leaders in R&D, you will also be a key contributor to the annual strategic, product line and budget planning processes – preparing, executing, and reporting and communicating, including crafting board-ready presentations.

Responsibilities:

• Managing the structures, tooling, and processes of information intake as it relates to new ideas, customer feedback, issues, sales/rfp needs, community feedback to shape R&D opportunity identification and priorities
• Supporting the Center of Excellence’s regular ‘rhythm of the business’ calendar, including regular review of projects and progress against OKRs
• Managing the communication of our roadmaps, releases, experiments - partnering with the relevant organizational stakeholders to understand optimal lead times, comms cadences and formats, and navigating changes to established plans
• With Delivery Management and Customer teams, driving the annual and quarterly planning processes and share-outs
• Defining, socializing, operating, and evolving R&D team’s operational practices, cadences, documents – including strategic planning, budgeting, and discovery in close partnership with R&D leadership
• Strategically lead and guide our team of product analysts in the intake, design and creation of impactful, data-forward stories that inform R&D leadership of our biggest opportunities—in partnership with our customer and support teams
• In partnership with Engineering Delivery Management, progress delivery processes to maturation realizing consistent accuracy in reporting our fulfillment of commitments and associated performance outcomes—easily accessible and ubiquitously understood
• Optimize Product Opportunity planning including fully developed business cases, inclusive of potential value unlocked, and simplified prioritization of what’s most important to our users, our enterprise, and our shareholders

What you need to know/have:

• Experience developing SaaS at large scale, balancing the R&D and GTM competing priorities
• Leadership experience with process, operations, and change management in a SaaS R&D team with a proven record of driving cross-functional collaboration and communication across R&D & GTM teams, creating predictability and goal accomplishment
• Ability to take initiative and lead resiliently through ambiguity - you’ll often be blazing new trails in uncharted territory, yet you must inspire confidence in the teams you lead and with whom you partner
• Bias toward simplicity and action, applying only an absolutely necessary minimum of structure and process, keeping the end R&D user experience in mind
• Strength in developing collaborative relationships with diverse stakeholders - R&D individual contributors, to Go-To-Market teams, to Executives - inspiring confidence, providing clarity, and leading without formal authority
• Effective and persuasive change management practices, particularly in communications as this role will be tasked with defining and implementing new ways of doing things, that every relevant participant needs to understand, internalize and implement
• Skilled at setting the pace of and nurturing change across a matrixed organization—balancing speed, instruction, care, and celebration well
• Incredible attention to detail to ensure results are achieved, information is communicated and effectively understood, with no detail too small, and no concept to large to handle for you and the team you lead
• Unassailable responsibility – you accomplish/complete what you say you will, you can anticipate and respond to needs/concerns, and you have a history of coaching teams to deliver on plan
• Synthesis skills, able to process multiple inputs at varying levels of depth and granularity, articulate complex issues/concepts to meet the informational level of varying audiences, and effectively communicating in long-form written form (one-pagers, confluence docs), as well as digestible chunks (slides, short videos)
• Deep understanding of product development methodologies and agile environments to effectively define processes and tools that just work for R&D teams
• Strong emotional intelligence—actively listen to understand, independent of agreement or motivation, and courageously solicit and give feedback
• Deep understanding and experience in managing operations and analysts roles, and leading a psychologically safe and high-functioning team in a matrixed, globally-remote environment
• Empathy with the unique and sometimes conflicting needs of the various stakeholders, to ensure that change is implemented and managed thoughtfully, and that requests and structures take into account the daily work practices of the various stakeholders

What will help you get further, faster:

• Experience in a RevOps, FP&A, GTM team, or other metrics-based high-accountability environments
• Experience with implementing Silicon Valley Product Group, “Zone To Win”, OKR ideas and frameworks
• Data gathering, analysis, and visualization skills with tools beyond spreadsheets - we use Snowflake and Tableau; but experience in anything similar is great

Get in on all the awesome of Instructure:

• Competitive salary, equity and 401k.
• Medical, dental, disability, and life insurance.
• HSA program, vision, voluntary life, and AD&D.
• Tuition reimbursement.
• Paid time off, 11 paid holidays, and flexible work schedules.
• LifeStyle Spending Account.

We’ve always believed in hiring the most awesome people and treating them right. We know that the more diverse we are, the more diverse our ideas will be and when we openly welcome those ideas, our environment is better and our business is stronger.

At Instructure we participate in E-Verify and yes, in case you didn't catch it from the above, we are an Equal Opportunity Employer.

All Instructure employees are required to successfully pass a background check upon being hired.