VP of Operations

Hip eCommerce is building the world's first truly tech-driven collectibles auction house. We consign comic collections from collectors across the country, from a few key books to tens of thousands at a time, and sell them through our own auctions. Today we sell and ship more than 80,000 consigned comics every month. Our image recognition and AI instantly identify, grade, and price any comic book, our custom-built AI comic experts and sales agents help our team close and manage thousands of consignment deals a month, and our custom warehouse systems, AI, and barcode tracking turn massive collections into sold and shipped orders.

We also operate three marketplaces, HipComic.com, HipStamp.com, and HipPostcard.com, where hundreds of thousands of collectors around the world buy, sell, and collect, along with the My Collection: Comic Scanner app and the new My Collection Pro. Our vision is to know where every collectible is in the world, who has it, who wants it, and use technology to bring them together.

We're a fast-growing, VC-backed team of avid collectors across the United States and the Philippines, known for our vibrant culture and community, and our people are our strongest asset.

POSITION SUMMARY

We're a team of about 40 people (across the US and Philippines) with real traction and more opportunity than our current Executive team can execute alone. We need a senior, strategic operator to join the Executive Team and turn that opportunity into results.

As VP of Operations, you'll own the engine that turns incoming collections and orders into happy collectors, sellers and consignors across the whole company: our Raleigh warehouse and fulfillment operation, Customer Support for the entire business, and the many systems that hold it all together. You'll lead through two strong managers. The Warehouse Manager runs the warehouse floor day to day, and the Customer Support Manager leads support for every marketplace, the app, and our direct customers and consignors. Your job is to set the standard, raise the bar, and make the whole operation measurably better, so it can keep up with our growth plans and ad spend.

You'll also be the CEO's go-to partner and strategist. You'll take on important projects across the company and bring in the right people to deliver them. You'll set your own goals, hold yourself to them, and help shape the strategy and partnerships that get us to our vision.

HOW YOU'LL SPEND YOUR TIME

Operations & Fulfillment

• Own the Consignment-to-Collector Flow: You own every step from the collector's first box to the buyer's doorstep: intake, scanning, listing, labeling, auction, picking, packing and shipping, at 80,000+ comics a month and climbing. Every step has a per-person quota. Your job is to get the team to 100%, hold people accountable, and keep raising the bar to continuously increase efficiency and gross profits.
• Inventory, Security & Shipping: Set auction-house standards for how we protect and ship one-of-a-kind collectibles, and level up the Warehouse Manager and team to meet them every day.

Customer Support

• Support for the Whole Company: Through the CS Manager, oversee support for all three marketplaces, the My Collection app and Pro, our direct orders and our consignors. Set the standards for response time, resolution and satisfaction, make sure the team is staffed and trained to meet them, and turn what customers tell us into fixes in process, policy and product.
• Build Trust & Safety: We're moving payments into our marketplaces, so buyers will pay us instead of paying sellers directly through PayPal. You'll lead the operations side of that change, building our Trust & Safety program and team from the ground up: fraud prevention, seller verification, disputes and chargebacks, and buyer protection. Every buyer and seller should feel safe transacting with u

Systems & Automation

• Company Systems Owner: Own the systems that run the company, including project management, warehouse management, shipping, help desk, internal tools and AI agents. Own data quality and adoption across teams, and partner with engineering to automate bottlenecks. Sales owns the CRM, and you make sure it hands off cleanly to operations.
• Scale Ahead of Growth: Turn our growth plan and ad spend into a capacity plan, so bigger consignments and more orders never create a backlog, and cost per item keeps falling.
• Build for Our New Structure: As we reorganize into category divisions, starting with Comics & Comic Art and Stamps & Postcards, build the shared operations team behind them.
• Run on Numbers: Own one weekly scorecard covering quota attainment, throughput, cycle time, accuracy, on-time shipping, cost per order, capacity against demand, and support response time and satisfaction for every channel.

WHO YOU ARE

• A Senior Operator: 8+ years in operations, including 5+ years leading managers in warehouse, fulfillment, e-commerce or marketplace operations. You've raised throughput and efficiency against hard targets, and you can show the numbers.
• A Strategic Thinker: You see the whole business. You connect operations to growth, margins and customer experience, and you help the CEO decide what to do, not just how to do it.
• Gets Things Done Through Others: When the CEO hands you a project, you own it to the finish, even when the work sits with teams that don't report to you. You set clear asks and deadlines, bring people along, and elevate only when needed. You communicate crisply and give direct feedback to align.
• A Systems Expert: You're a power user of warehouse, inventory, shipping, project management and help desk tools, comfortable with integrations and data, and you've worked with engineers on updates.
• Data-Driven: You define KPIs, build dashboards and run the operation from the numbers.
• A CS Leader: You've led or overseen customer support across more than one channel or brand, and you know what a great support operation looks like and how to build one.

NICE TO HAVES

• Auction house, collectibles or consignment experience.
• Marketplace operations experience, supporting both sellers and buyers.
• Supporting a mobile app or subscription product.
• 3PL operations or management experience.
• WMS selection or implementation experience.
• Managing distributed or offshore team members.
• A love of comics, stamps, postcards or collecting in general.

LOCATION

Hybrid, based in the Raleigh, NC area. You'll be on site at our Raleigh warehouse about 2-3 days a week, more during your first 90 days and in peak periods. Core hours are 7am-5pm ET Monday-Thursday and 7am-12pm ET Friday, with flexibility as an executive. Occasional travel as the business needs it.