Strategy & Operations Manager

About the role

This role exists to make strategic acquisitions and organic growth in the Industrial Training platform happen. It involves managing deal diligence, post-acquisition integration, driving operational excellence, leading growth initiatives, and overseeing strategic projects.

What You'll Actually Do

• Diligence and Integration Leadership:
  • Manage deal diligence and see acquisitions through to completion
  • Drive integration efficiency and create a self-improving playbook
  • Create and manage relationships with new teams, identify what to keep vs. change, and manage cultural integration
  • Build playbooks for integration to improve and speed up the process with each deal
• Operational Excellence:
  • Drive process improvements across quote-to-cash, customer onboarding, trainer scheduling, and other core workflows
  • Build and refine operating systems as we scale
• Growth & Go-to-Market:
  • Own our growth initiatives
  • Identify underperforming market segments and launch new training programs
  • Work with sales, marketing, and ops to identify new customer segments, refine messaging, and scale what’s working
• Strategic Projects:
  • Lead high-impact projects like curriculum modernization, new service development, and operational improvements
  • Decide how to approach these projects, who needs to be involved, and what success looks like

Who Thrives In This Role

• Strong with people: Building trust and influencing outcomes with business owners, experienced instructors, and prospective customers
• Owner mentality: Significant autonomy means making judgment calls about priorities and trade-offs
• Builders: Energized by creating new systems and fixing what's broken rather than maintaining existing operations
• Comfortable with ambiguity: Solving problems with incomplete information
• Intellectually honest: Willing to surface problems early, admit gaps in knowledge, and own mistakes quickly

Background That Typically Works

• 2-4 years of professional experience owning outcomes, not just executing tasks
• Experience in operations, strategy, consulting, M&A, business development, or cross-functional project leadership
• Background in industrial, manufacturing, training, or education sectors is helpful but not necessary
• Track record of solving ambiguous problems

Why This Role Matters

In 3 years, we could be the dominant industrial training platform in the country. Or we could be a company that made a few acquisitions that never really took off. The difference will come down to execution; integrating well, growing intelligently, and building systems that scale. This role will be critical to the success of the business, and we expect this role to become a key leader in the Steel River family.

Compensation & Growth

• Salary range: $90,000 - $100,000
• Equity/ownership opportunity as we grow
• Reporting directly to CEO