Strategic Business Operations Manager

Key Responsibilities

• Translate annual and multi-year strategic priorities into clear operating plans, milestones, and review cadences that connect leadership intent to measurable outcomes.
• Structure executive and leadership discussions, including OKR and priority-setting forums, to surface tradeoffs, drive decisions, and ensure commitments are documented and followed through.
• Own and continuously improve the company’s enterprise operating rhythm, including executive planning sessions, leadership offsites, All Hands, and quarterly and annual business reviews.
• Maintain enterprise-level visibility into critical initiatives, dependencies, risks, and outcomes, surfacing issues early and aligning leaders on mitigation and course correction.
• Design and maintain KPI frameworks, dashboards, and reporting mechanisms that inform executive decision-making and reinforce accountability.
• Develop executive-ready insights, recommendations, and materials for senior leadership consumption.
• Contribute to competitive and market analyses in support of decision-making, partnering with relevant internal teams and Rakuten international as needed.
• Use Claude and similar AI tools to produce first-pass drafts of executive materials and rapid competitive scans; build simple, repeatable prompt/agent workflows to standardize outputs and reduce cycle time for exec cadence.

Qualifications

• Proven ability to operate independently in highly ambiguous environments with limited precedent.
• Demonstrated experience partnering directly with senior executives and influencing outcomes without formal authority.
• Strong executive presence with the ability to adapt communication style and persuade diverse stakeholders.
• Experience shaping enterprise operating models, planning processes, or decision frameworks.
• Highly analytical, with the ability to synthesize complex information into clear, executive-ready insights.
• Motivated by improving how an organization runs rather than owning a single function or team.
• Experience utilizing generative AI tools (e.g., Claude, ChatGPT, Bard) for content creation and workflow automation in a professional setting.