Director of Operations

Job Description

Job Description

Director of Operations

Castro Valley Advantage Dental | Castro Valley, CA

Full-time • On-site • $85,000–$110,000 annually, based on experience, plus bonus opportunities

Help make a dream dental office a reality.

Imagine an office where people love coming to work, leaders help others grow, and thoughtful systems make excellent care easier to deliver. At Castro Valley Advantage Dental, that is the practice we are building—and we are looking for a Director of Operations excited to help bring it to life. We are a locally owned, owner-operated, multi-doctor dental practice—not a corporate office—with the opportunity to shape how our growing team works together.

This is a primarily team-facing leadership role. You will develop people, build repeatable systems, and turn good ideas into improvements the team can feel every day. Lead operations, HR, onboarding, and front-office accountability alongside our Back Office Lead and Hygiene Lead. Direct patient-facing work is occasional support when needed.

If you enjoy helping someone become a confident leader or turning a frustrating process into one that works smoothly, you will find meaningful work here. Bring initiative, accountability, and a willingness to roll up your sleeves. During staffing gaps, help with trained administrative tasks such as phones, scheduling, and patient coordination; arrange qualified coverage for clinical duties. Broader planning and financial authority expand through demonstrated results and explicit delegation.

What you will lead

People and accountability: Coach team members and department leads, set clear expectations, personally lead difficult performance conversations, and follow through on improvement plans—even when a decision is unpopular.

Staffing and HR: Anticipate staffing needs, evaluate options with department leads, recommend hiring plans, and manage approved recruiting and routine HR administration.

Onboarding and training: Develop trainers, coordinate learning plans and check-ins, and verify that training translates into demonstrated ability and consistent performance.

Front-office operations: Strengthen scheduling, patient communication, treatment follow-up, insurance, billing, financing workflows, and collections. Learn these workflows well enough to train, audit, improve systems, and provide occasional backup.

Projects and systems: Turn high-level goals into practical plans with clear responsibilities, deadlines, training, and follow-up. Resolve barriers and confirm that improvements last.

Operational and financial visibility: Review agreed reports, notice unusual trends, investigate causes with the responsible team members, and bring coordinated recommendations when approval is needed.

Practice coordination: Work with qualified clinical leaders on patient flow, supplies, equipment readiness, and completion of assigned safety and compliance tasks.

CVAD • Job Posting |

Minimum qualifications

Meet either experience path: (1) At least 2 years working in a dental office, plus demonstrated experience managing people; or (2) at least 5 years managing people and operations in another industry, with a commitment to learning dentistry.

Demonstrated success leading people, coaching performance, holding others accountable respectfully, and helping team members become more capable.

Excitement about systematizing a growing practice: you enjoy bringing order to complexity, developing people, and seeing improvements become part of how the team works.

Strong organization, clear communication, discretion, and dependable follow-through.

Comfort using reports, spreadsheets, and technology to understand performance and make thoughtful recommendations.

Humility, integrity, ownership, work ethic, and teachability. You welcome feedback, take responsibility for mistakes, and keep improving.

For either path, management experience includes direct responsibility for coaching staff, addressing performance concerns, and achieving results through a team. Dental management experience and Open Dental familiarity are preferred.

How you approach the work

You see possibilities for making the practice better and take thoughtful action. When daily operations are running well, you look ahead: coach a leader, verify training, investigate a trend, or solve a recurring frustration. You find satisfaction in helping people succeed and building systems that keep working.

You independently coordinate daily staffing and workflows, coach team members, lead performance conversations and improvement plans, and track follow-through within established policies. Ownership initially approves budgets, major financial commitments, new positions, compensation ranges, final hires, and significant policy changes; consult ownership before terminations. Develop plans with department leads, obtain required approvals, and own implementation and verification. Diagnosis, treatment, and clinical competency decisions remain with qualified clinical leaders. Perform clinical work only if appropriately qualified and authorized for those duties.

What success looks like in the first 90 days

By day 30: Establish baseline measures for agreed priorities, map recurring responsibilities to named owners, and agree on the top improvement projects with ownership.

By day 60: Run weekly leadership follow-up with recorded owners and due dates; put priority workflows and training plans into use and verify adoption.

By day 90: Present results against agreed baselines and targets, show which improvements are sustained, and identify corrective actions and next priorities. Track on-time commitments, verified training, and relevant schedule, collections, or aging measures; set numerical targets with ownership after reviewing the baseline.

Why CVAD

Help build a workplace people are proud to be part of. You will work directly with local ownership, have a voice in how the practice grows, and see your ideas take shape through a stronger team and smoother operations. This is a long-term opportunity to develop leaders, make lasting improvements, and grow your own responsibilities along the way.

Schedule, compensation, and benefits

Full-time, Monday through Friday, per office hours; on-site in Castro Valley, California.

$85,000–$110,000 annual base pay, based on experience, with bonus opportunities.

Medical, dental, paid time off (PTO), and retirement benefits.

How to apply

Submit your resume and a brief response to: “Tell us about an operational problem you noticed before someone asked you to fix it. What did you personally do, and what changed?”

Apply through: This application

Our hiring process

1. Application review, followed by a 20–30-minute introductory conversation with the practice owner about experience, goals, and role fit.

2. A 60–75-minute on-site interview with the practice owner and department leads, including practical scenarios about accountability, systems, staffing, and numbers, plus time to meet the team and ask questions.

3. A final conversation with the practice owner to clarify expectations and decision authority, followed by reference checks for finalists and an offer decision.

Expected timing: Approximately 2–3 weeks from the introductory conversation to a decision, depending on scheduling and reference availability.

Castro Valley Advantage Dental is an equal opportunity employer. Reasonable accommodations are available during the hiring process.