How to hire a Head of Operations

• You have 15+ employees and cross-functional work is falling through gaps.
• The founder is doing HR, finance, and legal admin in evenings.
• You can commit to giving them budget and hire authority.

• Own finance operations: cash flow, forecast, monthly close with the accountant.
• Own people operations: hiring pipeline, onboarding, comp bands, benefits.
• Own legal and compliance workflow: contracts, DPAs, insurance.
• Own the tooling stack and internal projects that cross functions.

• Ran ops at a similar-stage company or was employee #3-#20 with a broad remit.
• Comfortable in a spreadsheet, a contract, and a hiring pipeline in the same day.
• Track record of hires or vendors they replaced with better ones.

• CPA, CIPD, or paralegal background alongside operating experience.

• Wants to build a big ops org on day one.
• Only worked at companies past 100 people.
• Cannot describe a hard vendor conversation they won.

• Early ops hires at companies one stage ahead.
• COO/BizOps of small, disciplined businesses.
• Warm intros from other founders who have hired their first ops leader.

1. Founder chat on the current mess.
2. Written 30-60-90 plan against your real gaps.
3. Live case: they walk you through a real vendor decision.
4. References from a founder they worked with and a hire they made.

**Head of Operations at [Company]**

[Company] is [context]. We are hiring our first Head of Ops to own the machinery that lets the rest of the team ship.

**What you will own**
- Finance operations, forecasting, and monthly close.
- People operations: pipeline, onboarding, comp, benefits.
- Legal and compliance workflow.
- The tooling stack and cross-functional projects.

**About you**
- Ran ops at a similar-stage company or were early with broad remit.
- Comfortable in a spreadsheet, a contract, and a hiring pipeline in the same day.
- Track record of hires and vendors you replaced with better ones.

**Comp**
[Base] + [equity]. Real leverage on the whole business.