Director, Customer Operations

Our Mission and Opportunity

Early education is one of the most important determinants of childhood outcomes, a critical support for working families, and a $175B market that remains underserved by modern technology. Brightwheel is the largest, fastest growing, and most loved platform in early ed, trusted by millions of educators and families every day. We are a three-time Cloud 100 company, backed by top investors including Addition, Bessemer, Emerson Collective, Lowercase Capital, Notable Capital, and Mark Cuban.

Our Team

Our team is passionate, talented, and customer-focused. We embody our Leadership Principles in our work and culture. We are a distributed team with remote employees across every US time zone, as well as select offices in the US and internationally.

Who You Are

• You are an operator at your core—you don’t just set direction, you execute and drive outcomes

• You bring a strong AI-first mindset and are excited to fundamentally redesign how support operates using AI, not just incrementally improve it

• You have a track record of owning and transforming complex, customer-facing functions, especially in ambiguous or fast-changing environments

• You think in systems—able to diagnose problems, identify root causes, and redesign workflows for scale and efficiency

• You operate with high agency and ownership, proactively identifying opportunities and driving change without waiting for direction

• You are analytical and metrics-driven, comfortable owning business outcomes like CSAT, cost efficiency, resolution time, and fraud/risk performance

• You are a strong cross-functional leader, able to partner effectively across Product, Engineering, Operations, Finance, and GTM

• You are comfortable navigating ambiguity and making high-quality decisions quickly, balancing speed with sound judgment

• You are not limited by traditional definitions of support—you are motivated by the opportunity to build and evolve a business function

What You’ll Do

• Own the performance of a global Customer Support organization (~50 people including BPO) serving tens of thousands of customers

• Own Payments Operations performance, including fraud, risk, and dispute management, through the team’s leadership layer

• Define and execute an AI-first support strategy, embedding AI deeply into workflows to improve both customer experience and efficiency

• Drive step-function improvements in support operations, including tooling, processes, staffing model, and performance management

• Deliver against key business metrics including CSAT, SLAs, time to resolution, handle time, cost reduction, dispute win rate, and chargeback/charge-off reduction

• Operate as a hands-on leader—diagnosing issues, setting direction, and executing alongside the team

• Partner cross-functionally to ensure support and payments operations are aligned with broader product, engineering, and business priorities

• Build and lead a high-performing, globally distributed team, setting a high bar for execution, accountability, and continuous improvement

• Identify opportunities to expand scope and impact over time, contributing to broader business and operational leadership

What You Bring

• 8-10+ years of relevant operating experience at high-growth organizations

• Led and scaled customer-facing or operational teams in high-growth, fast-paced environments, including managing through managers

• Owned business-critical metrics (e.g., customer experience, cost efficiency, operational performance, or risk/fraud outcomes) at a leadership level

• Demonstrated the ability to transform a function or system, not just manage existing processes

• Applied AI, automation, or technology to meaningfully improve workflows, efficiency, or customer experience

• Successfully navigated ambiguous or “messy” environments, bringing structure, clarity, and results

• Built or improved operational systems and processes that scaled with business growth

• Partnered cross-functionally to drive outcomes across teams and influence company-level decisions

• (Nice to have) Experience with payments, fraud, risk, or dispute operations

• (Nice to have) Experience in Customer Support or Service environments

This role isn’t a fit if:

• You’re primarily a people manager who prefers directing layers vs. personally diagnosing problems and driving change

• You’re looking to run an org that is already a stable well-running machine rather than transform, upgrade and evolve from first principles

• You think of Customer Support as a service function to optimize incrementally, rather than a system to fundamentally redesign with AI and automation, both for customers and the company

• You’ve used AI tools for productivity, but haven’t applied AI to redesign workflows or deliver step-function improvements

• You prefer steady, defined scope, structure, and stable environments over ambiguity, evolving mandates, and fast-changing priorities

• You’re uncomfortable owning end-to-end business outcomes (e.g., cost, efficiency, CX, risk) and being accountable for results—not just inputs

• You want a pure domain/functional role (e.g., Head of Support or Payments specialist) rather than a generalist operator role with expanding scope

• You optimize for perfection over speed, or prefer long planning cycles over rapid iteration and execution

Brightwheel is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive work environment and is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.

Protecting Our Applicants: Please be aware of recruiting scams impersonating Brightwheel. All legitimate communications come from @mybrightwheel.com addresses, and we never ask for payment or sensitive personal data as part of our hiring process. If you suspect fraudulent contact, reach out to [email protected]. Thank you for helping us keep our applicant community safe.