Manager, Operations

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About Us :

CALSTART is a mission-driven industry organization focused on transportation decarbonization and clean air for all.

For over 30 years, it’s been CALSTART ’s mission to develop, assess, and implement large-scale, zero-emission transportation solutions to mitigate climate change and support economic growth. CALSTART works with businesses, organizations, governments, and communities to create real-life impact toward clean air and equitable access to clean transportation for all. CALSTART provides scientific, technical and policy support for regulatory development and clean technology and infrastructure acceleration.

About the Role:

The Head of Operations runs several concurrent workstreams at once - systems and platform initiatives, cross-functional projects, and day-to-day department operations. This role exists to turn that workload into real, well-structured projects and run them to completion: standing up project plans in Monday.com, sequencing dependencies and milestones, and managing execution without needing to be told what's next.

This is a hands-on project and program management role, not a strategy or governance role. The right person takes a project, a program, or an ambiguous ask and runs it to done - scoping it, building the plan, managing dependencies, and driving it through execution - without needing it managed for them. This role is funded as an internal operations function, but the skills required are the same skills CALSTART deploys on billable client programs. Depending on organizational need, this person may be temporarily disbursed onto programs to support billable project or program management work, so real program management experience - or a strong working knowledge of how CALSTART 's programs are structured and delivered — is essential, not a nice-to-have.

What You'll Own:

Project Execution & Tracking:

- Take ownership of assigned internal projects and programs from intake through close-out, keeping each one moving without daily direction

- Translate the Head of Operations' initiatives into fully structured Monday.com projects - defined phases, tasks, owners, dependencies, and milestones — not just status trackers

- Break ambiguous or loosely defined asks into clear tasks, owners, and deadlines

- Map dependencies and identify critical-path milestones so plans reflect how the work actually has to sequence, not just a task list

- Flag risks, blockers, and dependencies early, and know what belongs in the tracker versus what needs to be raised immediately

Keeping the Head of Operations Organized:

- Support with meeting prep, recaps, and follow-through on action items

- Consolidate the status of multiple in-flight projects into a clear, regularly updated view

- Keep all operations projects tracked in Monday.com and connected to the operations dashboard

- Draft correspondence, meeting agendas, status updates, and internal communications as needed

- Keep Microsoft Teams and shared workspaces organized — channels, files, and follow-ups — so nothing gets lost between meetings

- Support with the new Operations SharePoint site creation and keep the information continuously up to date

- Support with optimizing Microsoft tools for collaboration and efficient workflows such as Loop, Teams, and copilot

Cross-Functional Coordination:

- Serve as a point of coordination across the department's functional areas, making sure handoffs between teams don't stall

- Help prepare and run recurring check-ins and status reviews with functional leads

- Use Teams effective