Operations Manager

RTK Tickets is a high-volume, technology-driven trading company in the ticket resale market. We buy and sell at scale, leveraging proprietary technology and trading strategies. Our edge is the pace and quality of our decision-making — we move faster than the market, price more precisely, and keep the operational infrastructure clean. As we scale, the difference between a good week and a great week is increasingly an operations difference: events set up correctly the first time, fulfillment moving without friction, and marketplace and vendor relationships managed deliberately. This role exists to own that layer. The Role The Operations Manager leads RTK's Operations & Fulfillment function. You will manage the existing Ops team, define how the function works day-to-day, and own the systems and playbooks that make our operational layer reliable and scalable. This is a hands‑on leadership role — you'll be in the work reviewing event configurations, troubleshooting fulfillment exceptions, talking to marketplace reps, and writing the SOPs that codify what “good” looks like — while simultaneously building structure: defined responsibilities, measurable KPIs, and an ops team that runs with intention rather than reaction. This role reports directly to the CEO. Core Responsibilities Lead the Operations team. Define each role's responsibilities, focus areas, and success metrics, and structure work so the right things get the right attention at the right time. Assess the current shape of the function and decide how it should be organized to best serve the business. Specialize where specialization helps; generalize where flexibility matters more. Establish a clear operating cadence — daily stand‑ups, weekly reviews, on‑call coverage, escalation paths — that gives the team rhythm and gives leadership visibility. Run performance management end‑to‑end: 1:1s, written feedback, growth plans, and decisions about scope changes, role redefinition, or hiring. Build the Ops bench. Identify when and where to add capacity and lead hiring for new ops roles as volume grows. Manage a distributed team including offshore and remote members. Set clear expectations, define handoffs, and structure coverage across time zones. Hold remote team members to the same standards, feedback, and growth opportunities as on‑site staff. 2. Event Scaling & Event Setup Own end‑to‑end event scaling and setup across the full live event catalog with accurate metadata and consistent setup standards. Partner closely with Quant and Technology on event and inventory data that drives downstream pricing and decisioning. Operations is a key contributor to data quality. Build the QA processes that catch setup errors before they create downstream problems. 3. Fulfillment Operations & Delivery Own fulfillment end‑to‑end, from order receipt through delivery and buyer confirmation. Hit fill‑rate, on‑time delivery, and exception‑resolution targets. Manage the daily fulfillment queue across all marketplace partners — triage, prioritization, and resolution. Manage delivery across all formats and channels common to the secondary market, ensuring the playbook accounts for the nuances of each. Investigate and drive root‑cause fixes for fulfillment errors so the same issues don't recur. Coordinate with adjacent functions when live operational issues affect commercial decisions. Own reconciliation across all purchasing and sales channels. Match every buy to its corresponding sale and confirm that quantities, costs, fees, and proceeds tie out across platforms. Partner with finance on the operational ledger — cost of goods, marketplace fees, payouts, chargebacks, and refunds. Build a reconciliation cadence that surfaces discrepancies — unmatched orders, pricing variances, missing payouts, duplicate purchases — early enough to resolve them before they compound. Drive open items to closure and ensure nothing sits unreconciled. Establish controls and an audit trail — documented procedures, sign‑offs, and reporting that make accounting hygiene measurable and legible to leadership. Serve as the primary operational point of contact with marketplace partners across primary, secondary, and B2B platforms — account standing, policy compliance, fulfillment SLAs, and dispute resolution. Build and maintain working relationships with key contacts at each platform; know who to call when something needs attention. Track and act on marketplace policy changes and platform risks before they affect our standing. Manage vendor relationships — performance reviews, contract renewals, and change management when providers are added or replaced. 6. Operational Playbooks, SOPs, & Process Improvement Build and maintain a comprehensive operational playbook — written, current, and actually used. Treat process improvement as an ongoing responsibility, not a project. Identify friction, automate or eliminate it, and update documentation so improvements persist. Establish operational KPIs, report on them regularly, and lead post‑incident reviews — turning each one into a process, tooling, or training change. 7. AI & Automation Lead AI adoption across the Operations function. Identify high‑volume, repetitive work and find AI or automation solutions before throwing more people at it. Use modern AI tools fluently in your own work — documentation, communication drafting, exception triage, and data hygiene. Partner with Technology to identify workflows to automate and stay current on the broker‑tooling landscape. 8. Cross‑Functional Collaboration Operate as a peer to commercial functions — bring operational input into commercial and technical decisions. Provide structured feedback to adjacent functions on data, process, and edge cases that affect their work. Surface operational risk to executive leadership early and clearly, with context and a recommendation. What This Looks Like in Practice A reasonable week: Monday morning, you review the weekend's fulfillment exceptions, set the team's priorities, and confirm the event catalog is ready for the week ahead. Mid‑week, you're partnering with adjacent functions on data quality, checking in with a marketplace partner about a policy change, and reviewing a draft SOP your team has written. By end of week, you've reported operational KPIs to leadership, identified a process to improve, and coached at least one team member on work they own. On a tough week, you're also live‑troubleshooting a marketplace incident, coordinating with Technology on a system issue, and writing the post‑incident review so it doesn't happen again. Qualifications Required: 5+ years of operations experience, with at least 2 years managing a team. Direct experience in ticketing, secondary markets, marketplaces, or e‑commerce fulfillment. Hands‑on familiarity with the ticketing operational stack — POS, inventory management, automation, and primary marketplace tooling. You've been in the systems, not just adjacent to them. Demonstrated SOP discipline. You can show playbooks and process documentation that teams actually use. AI fluency. You actively use modern AI tools and have a point of view on where they help and where they don't. Strong attention to detail. A setup error, missed flag, or bad delivery format costs real money. You catch those things instinctively. Responsive and attentive. You operate on the tempo of the work — you don't go quiet. Strong written communication. Clear updates, clean documentation, and concise escalations. Comfort with the operational tempo of trading. Hours flex with the live event calendar. Preferred: Experience scaling an ops function from a small team to a structured, KPI‑driven function. Experience supporting quantitatively driven inventory and pricing operations. Experience working directly with marketplace partner account managers. Bachelor's degree in business, operations, or a related field — or equivalent practical experience. Comfort working with technology and quant teams; ability to translate operational needs into technical requirements. Experience managing distributed teams, including offshore and remote members across time zones. Experience owning reconciliation and accounting hygiene across purchasing and sales channels. How We'll Know You're the Right Fit You build, you don't just maintain. You see a function that works “okay” and make it better — and write down what you changed. You hold a high standard, kindly. You're direct with your team, give real feedback, and they're better for it. You don't hide problems. Bad news travels fast, with context and a recommendation. You're curious about tech. You try the new tool, ask how the system works, and push for automation when it makes sense. You take ownership. If it's an Ops outcome, it's yours — even when the cause sits in another team. How to Apply Send your resume and a short note on a process or operational system you built that you're proud of — what was broken, what you changed, and how you'd know if it worked. We care more about how you think than how polished the cover letter is. #J-18808-Ljbffr