Operations Manager Jobs

Olson Kundig is a Seattle and New York City-based design practice founded on the ideas that buildings can serve as a bridge between nature, culture and people, and that inspiring surroundings have a positive effect on people’s lives. The firm’s work can be found across the globe, with projects as wide-ranging as huts to high rises, homes—often for art collectors—to academic, cultural and civic projects, museums and exhibition design, places of worship, creative production, urban design, and interior design

Position Summary

The Operations Manager is a centralized resource holding a firm-wide view linking the business operations with project or department performance. This proactive role helps project managers unstick operational challenges on projects and is a solutions-focused individual who can drive towards issue resolution. This role reports both to a centralized operational leadership as well as the departmental director when applicable.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Assist Directors in understanding project needs
• Communication
• Manage internal intranet pages for specific departments
• Identifying staffing availability or shortages across projects and working with Staffing team to reallocate resources
• Develop tools for departments to understand workload predictability
• Reporting & Data
• Interpret and explain data to managers and stakeholders
• Work with managers and staffing team to update project plans and find solutions for gaps and inefficiencies.
• Clarifies project deliverables and deadlines for managers and/or departments
• Liase with project managers, centralized staffing team and departmental directors to understand and track project needs
• Project Startup/Kickoff
• Seek out project work to plan workflows
• Contracts & Proposals
• Special projects as assigned
• Generate commonly used project performance reports
• Business Operations
• With training and supervision from other stakeholders, draft project proposals
• Seek out project innovation to communicate to the firm
• Staffing & Resource Management
• Interpret contracted scope with project managers to assess scope creep, gaps and when to pursue additional service requests
• Assist Project Managers with establishing workplans for completing work
• Understands scope and helps the contracts department with clarifying scope, fee, deliverables and other project requirements
• Support managers by prioritizing and acting upon understanding financial performance at both project and departmental levels
• When related to departmental work (as opposed to project work), bring business operations perspective to how the department runs and operates financially.
• Assist departments with understanding utilization goals
• Lead project teams through project startup with documenting and understanding project goals
• Planning Workflow

Requirements:

• Minimum 7 years of relevant experience
• 4-year undergraduate degree related to design or business studies or organizational management.

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills
• Ability to manage and delegate a multitude of tasks, assignments and changing priorities efficiently
• Interest in systems thinking and how to make process improvements
• Strong communication skills to help explain financial concepts to Project Managers
• Proficient in Microsoft Suite, particularly MS Excel
• Being able to work amongst a group of peers, along with Director of Architectural Operations, other senior operations managers, project accountants, project managers, project administrators and team members
• Strong organizational skills
• Follow through

Nice to have –

• Interest and aptitude in learning new software and solutions to team issues
• Experience with ERP software such as Deltek Vision
• Knowledge of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign a plus, but not required.
• Experience with Microsoft Power BI
• Familiarity with Architecture and Engineering project phases and terminology
• Project management and collaboration software such as Smartsheet, Trello, Miro
• Proficient in departmental specific software when needed

Personal Attributes –

• Pro-active and dynamic in their skills and initiative
• High emotional intelligence
• Highly collaborative by nature, with the willingness to approach every project with creativity and curiosity to learn
• An innate desire to contribute team goals and deliverables
• Detail and task-oriented with a passion for excellence and organization
• Solutions-focused and resourceful in finding options to move forward

What can you expect from us?

• A creative work environment and colleagues who are collaborative, creative, and challenging
• Check our culture page to learn about life at Olson Kundig
• Opportunity to grow professionally with excellent projects

In addition to a dynamic and creative culture, Olson Kundig provides a generous benefits package that includes 16 days of paid time off, paid holidays, health plan, 401k match, bonuses, profit-sharing plans for qualified positions, a monthly travel subsidy for public transportation, and more.

As a firm, we are committed to pay practices that are fair, competitive, and reflect internal pay equity. At the time of posting this job, the hiring range for this position in Seattle is between $100,000 and $115,000 annually. Final salary decisions are made based upon the extent and relatedness of the candidate’s education and experience and considering internal equity and external market factors.