Last updated 10 October 2026

Head of Operations, People, and Process

Apply for this role. Reading the page is not applying. The application is the only way to be considered, and it is the whole first step.

Why this role exists

We need someone to oversee these items:

• Every client communication is replied to within 24 hours.
• Every person on the team knows what they are doing today, because the work is planned and given out before the day starts.
• Every job the firm does has a written SOP, and the SOP matches what people do.
• Every new client is set up completely in their first week, and every client who leaves has a clean exit.
• Every person is hired, onboarded, offboarded, and reviewed on a set date, and the date holds.
• The Interim CEO reads one report each week showing what the firm produced and where the time went.

Logistics

• Company stage: Small, growing accounting firm with a lean leadership bench.
• Start: As soon as possible.
• Location: Remote.
• Reports to: the Interim CEO.
• Direct reports: None today. You build the operations team as the firm grows.
• Video: On for every team call.
• Stability standard: we want someone who plans to stay with the same company for at least three years.
• This is not a work when you want role. We all work at the same time, in different places.
• Contract: Contractor. The template agreement shows every term before you get to the end.

Work hours

Our clients are in the United States, so this role runs on US Central time. That is not negotiable. Read this part twice before you apply.

• Full time is 7 am to 4 pm Austin time.
• That is 2 pm to 11 pm in Warsaw, Belgrade, and Skopje.
• Monday through Friday, year round.

Full time here

You are passionate about your work. Full time here means 8 to 10 hours a day, because you want to see things through to finished.

Who we want here

• Women. We want more of them here.
• Autistic people. The rules are written down. Nobody has to read a room.
• Direct communicators.
• People who think in systems. When something breaks, they look for what caused it instead of fixing only the part they can see.
• People who are optimistic about the outcome when they are under stress or facing a challenge.
• People who move fast and get a lot done.
• People who are all in.
• People who want the company to grow and are excited to help make that happen.
• People who, when they are stressed, notice what they are feeling, then say what they need and write it down. Stopping at the feeling, with nothing written down, is not a fit here.

Who should not apply

This is not the role for you if you:

1. Wait for somebody else to pick a thing up, or need the work handed to you tidy and already decided.
2. Report a problem and stop there.
3. Try somebody once, get no answer, and give up.
4. Go quiet when something needs raising, or find telling the truth consistently hard.
5. Read hidden meanings and office politics instead of the plain words.
6. Overstate what you can do, or are different before you are hired and after.
7. Have changed jobs every year or two, or want short projects and a work whenever schedule.

Who this role is for

1. You like creating smooth running operations that do not need your daily oversight, by putting system wide solutions in place.
2. You take a messy pile of notes or a voice message and turn it into a clean checklist or a table.
3. When you find a problem, you see what it is connected to ahead of it, behind it and beside it, and you find out why it happened so it does not happen again.
4. You often see what is coming days or weeks before other people do, and they cannot work out how.
5. You have built automations or AI agents for yourself, at home or at work.
6. You get bored when you are paid to do nothing.
7. You are so focused on the outcome that people sometimes think you are too serious.
8. You are strong at the player coach model: at first you are the department. As we grow, you hire a team to support you.
9. You plan to be in this role for three years.

The technology you need to work here

The setup is the same for every role here. The technology you need to work here lists the computer, the internet, the power backup, the audio and the workspace.

How your results are measured

• Client work is delivered on time and meets internal SLAs.
• The weekly KPI report is delivered each Tuesday for the previous week.
• Your direct reports average 4 out of 5 on one question: if you had a friend with the skills this firm needs, would you recommend they work here?
• You support the firm's growth targets.

These four are measured from your first month:

1. Percentage of client messages answered within 24 hours.
2. Percentage of jobs with a current SOP.
3. Utilization rate.
4. Days from hire to fully productive.

The rest of the KPIs are agreed after you are hired.

Role summary

• Three things sit with you: the operations, the people, and the process.
• Using systems thinking to build processes that let the firm scale.
• Nobody reports to you on your first day. You do the work yourself, and you build the operations team as the firm grows.
• You work straight with the Interim CEO, who approves the money and the hires.
• Everything else about how the firm runs is yours.

What you own

Operations, the work getting through

• Teaching the team to plan the week and the day, so every person knows what they are doing before the day starts.
• Raising a bottleneck in the work early, so it is fixed before a client ever sees it.
• Keeping the client record current, so anybody can open it and see where the work is.
• Building the weekly report the Interim CEO reads, from the numbers rather than from a feeling.
• Being reachable on Google Chat within 5 minutes during your work hours.

Clients, from the first day to the last

• Onboarding a new client: the engagement letter, the jobs, and the client record in Canopy, all set up in their first week.
• Every deadline on a new client's work is on the calendar before the first piece of work starts.
• Offboarding a client who leaves: the final work delivered, the records closed out, access removed, and the client record marked closed.
• Supporting billing creation, so what was sold is what gets billed.

People

• Onboarding a new person.
• Offboarding a person who leaves: knowledge given to whoever picks the work up, the SOPs handed over, every access removed the day the person goes, and an exit interview held.
• Developing and managing the performance review process.
• Tracking PTO accumulation and usage.
• Running payroll.
• Managing the HR department.
• Identifying when a role needs another person, and saying so with the numbers behind it.
• Getting the leadership team's sign off on the role description before anybody is approached.

Process

• Every job the firm does has an SOP, written in plain words that somebody can follow on their first day.
• Keeping the SOPs updated and easy to find.
• Recording a Loom video for every key SOP, so the team can watch the work being done as well as read it.
• Mailing the team when an SOP is new or changed, the way a large firm's people team does.
• Every quarter, one demonstrable improvement to how AI is used for people and operations.

Your own time entries

• Name the client or the work, and what came out of it, on every entry.
• Five minute increments.
• Do not use increments smaller than five minutes.
• Only logged time counts as work for the firm.

What this role does not do

• Bookkeeping, tax returns, and month end close sit with the delivery team.
• Deciding who joins the firm and who leaves.
• Approving a payment.
• Setting prices.

How SMB Numbers works

We move fast, and we do not do chaos. We do consistency. We are becoming a firm that runs on systems thinking.

How we work together

• We work at the same hours most of the time, and some of the work is done asynchronously. You will not always have somebody online to ask, so you write things down and you keep going.
• Written, asynchronous communication is modeled as part of the company's culture. Things are read in writing before a live call is requested, and writing is used to prevent the need for calls.
• Trust through Truth. If you do not tell the truth, we do not trust you.
• We are a low context company. Direct talk is how trust gets built here. Vague, high context, or indirect language erodes trust.
• Tell the truth early. If something is late, stuck, or going wrong, say it early and clearly.
• Be proactive.
• Keep records clean enough that someone else can step in, so you can take time off.
• Protect client information and handle sensitive material carefully.
• Track your time correctly and on time.
• When you see a repeat problem, fix the system.

Software we use

• Canopy, for the client record, calls logged against it, and time.
• A hosted remote desktop, which is how you reach our systems.
• Google Workspace, for mail, chat, and documents.
• Our internal site, for the SOPs and daily priorities.
• Your own sandbox, which is your own copy of the internal site. You change a page there, check it works, and send it for approval.
• Loom, for recording how a job is done.
• Zoom phone

What we need from you

• You have run operations for a team before, and the team reported to you.
• You have written SOPs that somebody else followed without asking you a question.
• You have set a new client up from the signed agreement through to the first piece of work.
• You have worked with people in more than one country and more than one time zone.
• You are a great player and coach.
• All firm work happens in our software. Your own tools stay out of it, with no exceptions.

Pay

How pay works here. The parts, how each one grows, the coverage bonus and sales commission.

Career growth

• Tell us what you want over the next three years. We will help.
• You book a career conversation with your manager every quarter. It's your meeting to run, and it's where we plan what you learn next.

Every step of our process, in order

Every step of our process, in order. Read it before you apply, so you know what is coming and when.

How to apply

Fill in the application. It is the whole first step.

It asks for a web address for a short video recording answering both of these questions. Put the video anywhere we can open without an account, and paste the address into the application.

1. What do you do when you get a task/project you do not understand?
2. From a logistics standpoint, when is the earliest that you could start full time if you were to be accepted?

Apply now. If you have read this far and it sounds like you, send it. We read every one.

Tax and accounting career levels, the levels used across the firm.