Technical Operations Lead

Description The Technical Operations Lead will define and implement workflows that ensure the accuracy, consistency, and reliability of our AI and data-driven products across customer configurations, validation cycles, and internal processes. As our first operations-focused hire, you’ll work side-by-side with engineers and product to scale these workflows, making complex processes simple, repeatable, and reliable. This is a hands-on, high-impact role where your work will directly shape how we deliver AI to our customers. Flexible: 20–35+ hours/week Core Responsibilities - Customer Launch Coordination - Oversee setup of new customer configurations for product launches, line-of-business expansions, and sales demos. - Lead planning, tracking, and execution of validation efforts across internal teams and customers. - Serve as a customer-facing contact for customer configuration updates. - Operational Metrics & Continuous Improvement - Define and document key internal operational metrics (e.g., validation turnaround, onboarding cycle time, accuracy rate). - Work with Product & Engineering to instrument and automate metric tracking in dashboards or monitoring tools. - Review metrics regularly to identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and improvement opportunities. - Process Development & Documentation - Establish and maintain process documentation, templates, and checklists for repeatable execution of validation, configuration, and delivery workflows. - Contribute to internal operational playbooks and cross-functional onboarding materials. - Propose and drive process or tooling enhancements to improve speed, quality, and visibility. - Incident & Issue Management - Serve as a customer-facing contact for operational incidents or configuration issues impacting validation or customer environments. - Coordinate triage and resolution across product, engineering, and QA teams. - Maintain an incident log to track root causes, timelines, and follow-up actions. - Communicate incident status, timelines, and resolutions to stakeholders and customers. - Organize post-incident reviews to capture lessons learned and process improvements. Required Skills & Experience - 4–7 years of professional experience in technical operations or program management. - Strong organizational and project-tracking skills with the ability to manage multiple concurrent workstreams. - Familiarity with software or data pipelines, validation workflows, and customer onboarding processes. - Proficiency with project tracking and documentation tools (e.g., Jira, Confluence, etc). - Ability to interpret and work with technical artifacts such as JSON schemas, configuration files, or pipeline logs. - Experience defining and monitoring operational metrics and translating data into process improvements. - Excellent written and verbal communication skills; comfortable interfacing with both engineers and external stakeholders. - Highly detail-oriented with a process-driven mindset and bias for follow-through. - Comfortable leveraging AI tools to augment and optimize day-to-day tasks. - Comfortable working in small, fast-moving technical teams. Ideal Candidate Traits - Hands-on and detail-oriented, with the ability to thrive in a fast-moving startup environment. - A “get it done” attitude and proven track record of taking ownership over workstreams. - Comfortable managing priorities across multiple operational responsibilities. - Collaborative and able to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Nice to Haves - Experience in AI, ML, or data-centric software organizations. - Exposure to customer delivery or onboarding processes in SaaS or AI pipeline contexts. - Familiarity with CI/CD concepts, data validation frameworks, or release management. - Prior experience helping scale or formalize technical operations in a growing startup or consulting environment. Originally posted on Himalayas