VP of Operations (Remote, Tampa)

About the role

Blacksmith Agency Operations Full time Remote (USA or Canada)

Blacksmith Agency is a remote agency building websites and running paid and organic programs for US clients. As VP of Operations you run the company day to day. Sales, recruiting, delivery and marketing all report to this seat. Today that work sits on the founder's desk, which is the whole reason it is open. This is the integrator seat. If you run on EOS you know the shape already: the founder is the visionary and owns where the business goes, and you are the one who makes it happen, on a date, with the people we actually have. Each department lead knows their function better than you will. You are accountable for all four of them together, and for the profit number underneath.

Responsibilities

• Own four department leads: their numbers, their development, their reviews, and the call when one of them is not going to get there.
• Own the week: meeting rhythm, this quarter's priorities, and what gets cut when two of them collide.
• Own profit, measured on attainment rather than activity; margin on delivery, the real cost of a hire, which business we take and which we turn down.
• Handle commercial conversations: client contracts and the redlines that come back on them, vendor terms, and what we will and will not agree to.
• Build strong operators into actual leaders; several of them have never been coached as one.
• Make decisions that wait on the founder today, made the same day instead.

Requirements

• More than one function reporting to you, where their numbers, their hiring and the decision when a leader was not working out were yours to make.
• Experience running a large team inside a single function is a different job.
• Joined a company at one size and left it three or four times bigger (e.g., forty people to a hundred and forty).
• Expect to be asked for the headcount the day you arrived, the day you left, and what you put in place to make the second number survivable.
• A profit number you personally carried; margin, not revenue somebody else sold and not a budget you were handed to spend.
• Real negotiation experience, on contracts and with people.
• Strong communicator: clear with four leaders and one founder about what is true right now.
• Please do not apply if: nobody has ever reported to you, or you have never owned someone's review or had to performance‑manage a leader.
• Please do not apply if: you have only ever led inside one function.
• Please do not apply if: the company you point to for growth was already large when you arrived.
• Please do not apply if: what you want is the visionary seat (that one is taken, and this is explicitly the other one).

Process: Three conversations, then a decision. A thirty minute screen with our recruiter, a first round with the founder this seat reports to, and a final. No take-home project and no panel interview.

How To Apply: Four fields at the link, then a short 6 minute Predictive Index assessment. Use the same email throughout. No cover letter.