Vice President, Operations
About the role
Murad is a leading prestige skincare brand with a science-backed heritage spanning more than 30 years. As part of Unilever Prestige, Murad operates within a portfolio of high-growth, premium beauty brands distributed globally across direct-to-consumer, professional, specialty retail, and international channels. The company is headquartered in El Segundo, California, and operates within a complex, fast-moving environment that demands operational rigor, cross-functional partnership, and supply chain excellence at scale.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Supply Chain Leadership: Define and execute Murad's end-to-end global supply chain strategy in alignment with company growth objectives, brand priorities, financial targets, customer service expectations, and international expansion plans to ensure Supply Chain capabilities scale ahead of business demand. Establish and continuously improve the operating model, governance cadence, KPI framework, and cross-functional ways of working across the full supply chain function with a focus on lean, agile, and technology-enabled processes.
Lead the transformation of the operations organization into a lean, agile, technology-enabled team — significantly improve efficiency and productivity relative to today’s ~15-person structure, benchmarking against best-in-class skincare peers; own organizational design, succession planning, talent development, and capability building throughout.
Drive operational excellence across service, cost, quality, inventory, speed-to-market, compliance, and business continuity simultaneously, using process automation, digital tools, and analytics to structurally lower cost-to-serve and reduce manual workload.
Procurement: Own procurement strategy across finished goods, components, raw materials, contract manufacturing, packaging, logistics services, and indirect spend, with a mandate to fundamentally redesign Murad’s global value chain around Asia as a priority market. Lead supplier relationship management, vendor performance governance, cost improvement initiatives, and supply risk mitigation at scale. Partner with Product Development, Packaging, Quality, and Finance to support new product launches, reformulations, supplier transitions, and value engineering programs. Drive vendor scorecards, supplier business reviews, savings tracking, risk assessments, and business continuity planning across critical supply partners. Leverage Unilever Prestige and cross-brand procurement relationships to identify leverage opportunities, supplier synergies, and shared-service efficiencies. Evaluate and build Asia-based OEM/ODM and contract manufacturing options to localize production closer to priority Asian markets, shorten the supply chain, and improve landed cost, speed, and responsiveness. Optimize the sourcing footprint to improve production agility and structurally reduce production lead times.
Logistics, Warehousing & Transportation: Lead Murad's logistics, warehousing, 3PL management, freight, transportation, distribution, and fulfillment operations across domestic and international channels. Own operational performance across warehousing accuracy, outbound service levels, transportation execution, cost management, inventory movement, customer compliance, and fulfillment reliability. Manage strategic relationships with 3PLs, freight forwarders, carriers, and distribution partners; hold partners accountable to SLA and cost commitments. Drive continuous improvement across warehouse operations, freight optimization, service performance, capacity planning, and cost-to-serve. Lead logistics network strategy including distribution footprint, storage requirements, channel support, regional expansion, and global fulfillment evolution. Support international shipping execution, import/export requirements, tariff considerations, and operational feasibility for global market expansion.
Order Management: Oversee order management operations across wholesale, retail, professional, international, e-commerce, distributor, and internal business channels. Ensure accurate and timely order processing, allocation, fulfillment coordination, issue resolution, and customer service support across all trade channels. Partner with Sales, Commercial, Finance, Planning, and Logistics to improve order flow, fill rates, service levels, and customer compliance performance.
Quality: Lead the Quality function across finished goods, components, contract manufacturers, customer complaints, non-conformances, investigations, and quality systems governance. Ensure quality processes support regulatory compliance, product safety, brand standards, customer expectations, and operational readiness across all channels. Oversee quality governance including SOP management, deviation handling, CAPA, supplier quality, complaints management, audit readiness, and mock recall programs. Drive continuous improvement in quality performance through root cause analysis, trend monitoring, process controls, and supplier accountability. Ensure quality considerations are integrated into launch readiness, reformulation activity, supplier changes, packaging changes, and international market expansion.
Supply Planning: Lead supply planning across finished goods, components, raw materials, contract manufacturers, and distribution requirements to ensure continuous product availability. Ensure supply plans support demand requirements, launch timelines, inventory targets, customer service expectations, and working capital objectives. Partner with Demand Planning, Procurement, Product Development, Commercial, Finance, and external manufacturers to manage production schedules, capacity, lead times, constraints, and supply risks. Lead escalation and recovery planning for material shortages, supplier delays, production constraints, quality holds, and customer-impacting supply disruptions. Establish supply planning KPIs including service level, production adherence, supply risk, inventory coverage, launch readiness, and supplier delivery performance.
Demand Planning & S&OP: Lead demand planning processes that translate commercial forecasts, sales trends, marketing plans, launch assumptions, and customer inputs into an aligned demand signal across all channels, with particular focus on improving forecast accuracy and responsiveness for a highly volatile, e-commerce-driven demand profile. Own the S&OP / IBP process design, governance structure, cadence, and executive alignment mechanism for Murad. Partner with Sales, Commercial, Marketing, Finance, International, and Executive Leadership to improve forecast accuracy, bias management, risk visibility, and executive trade-off decision-making. Establish and maintain forecast performance metrics including MAPE, bias, forecast value-add, lag-based accuracy, and forecast attainment. Improve demand governance across promotional planning, channel assumptions, customer inputs, new product forecasting, discontinuation planning, and international demand visibility.
Inventory Control: Own inventory governance across finished goods, components, raw materials, work-in-process, obsolete inventory, excess inventory, cycle counts, adjustments, and inventory accuracy. Partner with Finance to support inventory valuation, E&O reserves, reconciliation, standard cost accuracy, and month-end / quarter-end inventory close processes. Lead inventory optimization initiatives that balance service levels, working capital efficiency, supply risk, launch support, and operational flexibility. Establish and monitor inventory KPIs including days on hand, excess and obsolete inventory, stockouts, cycle count accuracy, and inventory adjustments.
Transformation & Strategic Projects: Lead strategic supply chain and operational transformation initiatives that improve scalability, cost, service, quality, visibility, and business resilience. Drive large-scale projects including 3PL transitions, supplier diversification, contract manufacturing strategy, systems implementations, planning process improvements, and operational governance redesign. Build rigorous project governance including cross-functional workstreams, timelines, risk logs, escalation paths, and executive reporting mechanisms. Partner with IT and Finance on systems and data initiatives that improve master data quality, planning accuracy, reporting, inventory visibility, and operational decision-making.
Cross-Brand & Global Operations: Partner with Unilever Prestige and central cross-brand teams to identify shared capabilities, operational leverage, supplier synergies, and best practice adoption across the Prestige Beauty Group. Represent Murad's operational priorities in cross-brand forums, balancing Murad-specific business needs with group-level operating models and governance expectations. Lead operational readiness for international growth with a priority focus on Asia, including regional strategies and execution plans.
Qualifications
The ideal candidate is a decisive, commercially-oriented operator with a track record of building lean, high-performing teams, redesigning global value chains, and elevating supply chain as a competitive advantage within a premium consumer goods or beauty environment. Critically, this leader must have a proven record of driving structural change — reengineering ways of working, deploying technology and automation to eliminate manual effort, and building an organization that delivers more with a materially leaner footprint. This is a transformation mandate, not a caretaker role.
Benefits
This role offers direct executive visibility, meaningful transformation scope, and the ability to build lasting operational infrastructure in a brand with genuine growth momentum. Occasional domestic and international travel required.
Pay
Competitive compensation package including base salary, bonus, and equity.
Schedule
Hybrid role with remote work from home for the rest of the week, occasional domestic and international travel required.