Operations-Lead-Job-Description

Job Description: Operations Lead (PeopleOps + Recruiting)

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This role owns quality and standards for how Brainforge hires and operates as a team. Your job is not to execute every recruiting task yourself: it’s to ensure we have a repeatable system that scales before we 2× the team. You take the founders’ vision for who we should be and translate it into:

• Recruiting standards that separate great fits from good résumés
• Evaluation criteria that are consistent, defensible, and reusable
• Pipeline design that moves candidates quickly and never leaves them in limbo
• Onboarding and org health foundations that work before things break at scale

What You’ll Be Doing

• Establishing recruiting standards and evaluation criteria
  • Define “what good looks like” for each role family (delivery, platform, GTM, ops)
  • Create scorecards, interview rubrics, and calibration processes
  • Pressure-test and iterate based on who succeeds (and who doesn’t) post-hire
• Designing a repeatable, scalable recruiting pipeline
  • Map and document the full candidate journey (inbound → offer)
  • Set SLAs for response times (e.g., 72 hours from application to initial screen)
  • Ensure 100% pipeline freshness—no candidate left without a clear next step
• Helping us define who we should hire (and who we shouldn’t)
  • Work with founders and hiring managers to codify role requirements
  • Distinguish “must-have” from “nice-to-have” so we don’t over-index on credentials
  • Build a hiring philosophy document that guides future role creation
• Building the foundation for onboarding, org health, and internal operating cadence
  • Design and pilot the “New Team Member Integration Program”
  • Establish feedback loops (1:1s, team health checks, retrospectives)
  • Document operating rhythms (stand-ups, planning cycles, AOR ownership) before we outgrow informal systems

What This Role Is

This role is:

• Standards-setting for recruiting quality and candidate experience
• Pipeline architecture—designing the system, not just running it
• Strategic partner to founders on “who to hire next” and org design
• Proactive builder of onboarding and org health before pain points emerge

This role is not:

• Full-time execution of every screen, interview, and offer
• BizOps / finance / legal / tooling ownership (that lives elsewhere or with existing ops staff)
• Line management of delivery or client-facing teams
• Commercial sales, renewals, or client success ownership

Core Mandate

You are accountable for ensuring Brainforge can scale hiring and org health without breaking

• Role clarity → Clear evaluation criteria for every hire
• Evaluation criteria → Consistent, repeatable pipeline that moves fast
• Pipeline → Candidate experience that wins talent in a competitive market
• Onboarding + cadence → New hires effective quickly; team rhythms documented before 2× size

Your work drives hiring quality, speed, and org readiness, not just headcount.

Tenet #1: Standards Exist to Drive Decisions

Recruiting without standards is guesswork.

Every hire must:

• Be evaluated against documented criteria (role fit, values fit, skills fit)
• Have a clear path through the pipeline with defined decision points
• Leave candidates with a definitive outcome—no ghosts, no limbo

You will:

• Pressure-test every role for clarity: “What would cause us to say no?”
• Create scorecards and rubrics so interviewers calibrate, not improvise
• Kill or rework processes that don’t improve quality or speed
• If there’s no clear “hire vs. no-hire” signal, the system isn’t ready.

Tenet #2: Build Before It Breaks

Your output is not “a filled role” or “a happy candidate.” Your output is systems that work at 2× team size.

• Tier 1 (High Impact): Onboarding program ships, recruiting pipeline runs with 72-hour SLA, org cadence documented and adopted
• Tier 2 (Signal): Standards exist, pipeline is repeatable, feedback loops in place
• Tier 3 (Noise): One-off hires, ad hoc processes, founders still doing the heavy lifting

You contribute to org readiness before scaling pain hits. You identify where things will break and build the guardrails now.

You design work to create Tier 1 or Tier 2 impact. If it doesn’t, you recommend changes or deprioritize it.

Tenet #3: Documentation and Repeatability Are Non-Negotiable

Nothing is “done” until it’s documented and reusable.

You will:

• Ensure clean, audit-ready documentation (Notion, pipeline boards, role profiles)
• Build and improve templates: scorecards, job descriptions, onboarding checklists
• Extract patterns: “What made our best hires great?” → codify into criteria
• Review recruiting outputs for consistency and quality before offers go out

At Brainforge, hiring that doesn’t improve the system is considered incomplete.

Tenet #4: Bridge Founders → Scalable Ops

You sit at the boundary between:

• Founders’ intuition about culture and fit
• Hiring managers’ needs for specific roles
• Candidates’ experience and market expectations

Your responsibility is to ensure:

• Founder preferences are translated into defensible, reusable criteria
• Hiring managers have clear role briefs and evaluation frameworks
• The team uses tools (ATS, scheduling, scorecards) pragmatically—simple and adopted beats complex and unused

You work closely with founders and hiring managers to understand:

• What gets hired vs. rejected (and why)
• What confuses candidates vs. creates trust
• What creates scaling leverage vs. founder bottleneck

You adjust standards and provide feedback based on these signals.

What You Own End-to-End

You own, within your allocated scope:

• Recruiting standards and evaluation criteria for each role family
• Pipeline design and SLAs (e.g., 72-hour first response; 100% pipeline freshness weekly)
• “Who we hire” definition—role profiles, must-haves, red flags, calibration
• Onboarding program design and pilot—New Team Member Integration
• Org health foundations—feedback loops, operating cadence, AOR clarity
• Documentation—job descriptions, scorecards, playbooks, retrospectives

You do not own:

• Day-to-day execution of every screen and interview (you leverage the team)
• BizOps, finance, legal, tooling stack, or spend optimization
• Delivery team staffing, client engagements, or commercial decisions
• Line management of delivery or GTM teams

How Success Is Judged

You are evaluated on:

• Hiring quality: Do we hire people who succeed? (measured by retention, performance, cultural fit over time)
• Pipeline health: Do candidates move through with clear next steps? (72-hour SLA, 100% freshness, 70% screened→clear outcome)
• Standardization: Do we have repeatable criteria and processes that reduce founder dependency?
• Onboarding impact: Do new hires ramp faster? (measured by feedback, time-to-productivity)
• Org readiness: Is the foundation in place before we 2× the team? (cadence documented, feedback loops live)

Situational Overview

Category	Current State
Business Model	AI-powered data & analytics consulting—foundation building, scale-up execution, platform work for startups and scale-ups ($10M–$100M ARR)
Key Challenge	Scaling team while maintaining quality and culture; founders currently own recruiting and org design; need systems before 2× growth
Hiring Focus	Delivery (analysts, engineers, technical PMs), Platform (AI/engineering), GTM, Ops
Recruiting Infrastructure	ATS in use; pipeline managed with varying consistency; 72-hour response target; no formal scorecards or calibration
Onboarding	Ad hoc; no formal “New Team Member Integration” program; role clarity and AOR documentation in progress
Org Cadence	Stand-ups, planning cycles, AOR ownership defined in parts; not yet systematized for scale
Key Stakeholders	Founders (strategic alignment, hiring philosophy), Hiring Managers (role needs, evaluation), Ops Staff (execution support)

Onboarding 10/30/60/90 Day Plan

Timeframe	Milestone	Objective	Key Deliverables
First 10 Days	Context & Current State	Understand how recruiting and org operations work today; identify gaps and quick wins.	1) Audit current recruiting pipeline (stages, SLAs, tools, bottlenecks). 2) Map existing onboarding flow and document what new hires experience today. 3) Complete 1:1s with founders and key ops/hiring stakeholders. 4) Review recent hires: who succeeded, who didn’t, and why.
30 Days	Standards & Pipeline Design	Establish recruiting standards and a repeatable pipeline; eliminate candidate limbo.	1) Publish evaluation criteria/scorecards for 1–2 priority role families. 2) Document pipeline stages, SLAs, and ownership. 3) Achieve 72-hour application→first screen for all new candidates. 4) Draft “Hiring Philosophy” document (who we hire, who we don’t, why).
60 Days	Onboarding & Org Health	Launch onboarding program and org health foundations.	Pilot “New Team Member Integration” program (1–2 new hires): Day 1 checklist (equipment, access, intro Slack), first-week buddy/system assignment, 30-day check-in with hiring manager, clear “first 90 days” expectations per role type. Onboarding feedback loop: Survey at Day 7, Day 30, and Day 90; questions on clarity of expectations, access to tools/knowledge, feeling of belonging; synthesize learnings and update program in real time. Cadence documentation: Document stand-up rhythm (who, when, format), planning cycles (weekly vs. quarterly), AOR ownership (who owns what, escalation paths), and decision-making norms; socialize with team and iterate based on feedback. Pipeline metrics: 70% screened→clear outcome (accept/reject) within 1 week; 100% weekly pipeline freshness (no candidate without next step).
90 Days	Scalable Foundation	Full ownership—recruiting and org health run as a reliable system without founder dependency.	Sustained SLAs: 72-hour application→first screen, 100% pipeline freshness weekly, 70% screened→clear outcome; track and report weekly; escalate and fix when missed. Hiring playbook published: Role profiles for each family (delivery, platform, GTM, ops) with must-haves, red flags, and sample questions; scorecards and calibration process; “Hiring Philosophy” doc (who we hire, who we don’t, why); interview kit for hiring managers. Onboarding program codified: Final structure, checklists, and feedback surveys; handoff to ops for ongoing execution; documented improvement cadence (quarterly review). Org design recommendations: Hiring priorities for next 6–12 months; role sequencing (what to hire when); draft org structure for 2× team size; identify gaps in feedback loops, AOR coverage, or operating rhythms before we scale.