Director of Operations Design & Strategy

About Mainstay

Mainstay is the leading market intelligence platform purpose built for buying, managing, and selling homes in the single family rental industry. As an AI native company, we turn complex data into clarity that helps the industry move forward with confidence. Founded within Opendoor, Mainstay launched as an independent company in 2024 and recently raised a Series A round led by Khosla Ventures.

Ready to shape the future of real estate with AI? Join mainstay and help us redefine what’s possible in the single family rental space. If you thrive on solving complex problems and want to make a tangible impact in a fast-growing industry, we’d love to hear from you - apply now and let’s move the industry forward, together!

About the role

We’re hiring a Director of Operations Design & Strategy to build and scale the operating system for one of Mainstay’s business lines. You’ll report to the COO, lead a small team, and partner with Fulfillment, Product, Engineering, Analytics, and Revenue to turn strategy into shipped outcomes. You’ll mature new processes and tools to repeatability, then move on to the next priority, staying close to institutional customers and converting their needs into product and operational improvements.

In this role you will:

• Own outcomes for one business line, including KPIs such as cost per unit, cycle time, forecast accuracy, and NPS; set targets and publish variance drivers monthly.

• Work cross functionally w/ departmental leaders to own the P&L performance of the business line

• Run the operating cycle end to end: annual/quarterly planning, resource prioritization, OKRs, risk register, and executive readouts.

• Stand up standard work and SOPs across markets; roll out workflow/BI/LLM-assisted tooling with training and adoption plans.
  Define the experimentation framework: success criteria, guardrails/sample sizes, decision gates, and how wins graduate to BAU.

• Build the analytics backbone with Data: metric definitions, lineage, access controls, and a single source of truth.

• Create mechanisms that scale: intake and triage, change management, incident playbooks, and weekly business reviews with owners and due dates.

• Partner with Product and Engineering on roadmap trade-offs; write decision briefs with options, risks, and decision owners to secure alignment fast.

• Lead and develop a small BizOps team; run hiring loops, calibrations, and growth plans tied to observable behaviors.

• Meet with institutional customers regularly and convert structured insights into prioritized backlog items with owners and timelines.

What we’re looking for

• 8-12 years in strategy/operations (or comparable experience) with 3+ years leading managers and ICs.

• Proven business-line ownership with clear KPI accountability and real trade-offs managed.

• Systems thinker who simplifies complexity into a few durable mechanisms and retires what no longer serves.

• Strong judgment in uncertainty: fast on reversible calls, rigorous on irreversible ones.

• Inclusive people leader who hires thoughtfully, sets unambiguous expectations, and develops talent.

• Change driver with adoption at scale across teams or markets, not just pilots.

• Data-literate decision maker; comfortable modeling in Sheets/Excel and partnering with Analytics/BI. SQL is required.

• Executive-ready communicator who aligns Product, Engineering, Revenue, Fulfillment, and Finance.

• Customer mindset that turns qualitative signal into prioritized outcomes.

• Nice to have: experience in SFR/real estate, fintech, or logistics-heavy operations.
  
  

This role is a great fit if:

• You enjoy designing the “operating system” for a business line: planning cadence, OKRs, dashboards, postmortems, and decision frameworks.

• You can turn messy inputs into clear choices, then mobilize cross-functional teams to deliver outcomes on time.

• You thrive in ambiguity, move fast with judgment, and prefer lightweight mechanisms over bureaucracy.

• You like developing talent and creating leverage through simple standards and clear ownership.

• You’re energized by direct exposure to customers and translating signal into product and process improvements.
  
  

Not a great fit if:

• You prefer maintaining existing processes rather than building net-new and retiring what no longer serves the business.

• You need rigid structure and detailed instructions to get started.

• You’re uncomfortable with data-driven trade-offs or making decisions under imperfect information.

• You avoid hard prioritization conversations across senior stakeholders or prefer a purely IC role.

  
  

#LI-AW

Mainstay Built on Trust

At Mainstay, trust is at the core of everything we do. We build trust with everyone -- from candidates to employees to partners. We believe in fairness and openness throughout our hiring process, evaluating candidates based on qualifications without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, gender, marital status, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other protected status. Our privacy practices describe how we handle applicant information, you can find the policy details for California residents here.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, religious beliefs, or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you require assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please contact us at [email protected]