Operations Manager, Review Team

Job Description

Job Description

At Aardvark Tax Advisors, the client comes first. We’re a full-service tax, accounting, and advisory firm serving small businesses and entrepreneurs. Our people are uniquely enabled to spend more of their time understanding clients, solving complex problems, and building lasting relationships.

Technology helps make that possible. As the accounting and client services practice of Cynch AI, we use proprietary AI to reduce routine tasks and free up time for higher-value client work. Our tools support the work. Our people remain accountable for the outcome.

We’re building an expanding practice with clear paths for career advancement. We grow organically and through strategic acquisitions, and as we grow so does our team's scope of responsibility. Each level has defined expectations and advancement criteria, with performance-based opportunities for greater responsibility and equity over time.

We hold ourselves to three goals: lower the time and cost of every return, protect healthy margins, and earn clients who would recommend us.

We’re looking for an Operations Manager for our review team: the people, the queue, and the deadlines. Your job is to get every return through review on time and within budget, with a team that is well led and productive, so review issues are solved inside your team rather than escalated.

This is a people and operations role, not a tax-technical one. Our reviewers are experienced tax professionals, and technical questions go through an established path to our senior tax leadership. You manage the work and the team; you are not expected to answer the tax question. If you have run a skilled team through a deadline-driven production cycle, you will recognize this job.

You’ll report to the practice leader and work side by side with the leaders of tax preparation, client success, and operations.

The role is hybrid, based out of our  Pleasanton , Cupertino , or Santa Cruz offices. Target start date is December 1, 2026, so you have time to learn our systems before busy season begins in January.

What You'll DoRun the Review Queue

• Own assignments, priorities, and the daily review standup, so the right return reaches the right reviewer at the right time.
• Track review turnaround against service levels by return complexity, and act early when a queue starts to age.
• Join the weekly capacity review with the tax preparation and operations leads to balance workload ahead of demand.

Lead the Review Team

• Manage a team of about five reviewers, growing with seasonal reviewers, staff from acquired practices, and transitioning practice owners.
• Hold regular 1:1s, set clear expectations, give direct feedback, and handle performance conversations.
• Onboard new reviewers quickly into our standards, tools, and rhythm.

Keep Quality and Cost on Track

• Manage review hours per return against budget, the single biggest lever on our cost per return.
• Work with the tax preparation lead to reduce returns sent back from review by finding patterns and fixing them at the source.
• Coordinate quality sampling and feedback, with technical judgments made by our senior tax leadership.

Report and Escalate

• Report review metrics on the weekly leadership scorecard, with a clear view of what is red and what you are doing about it.
• Route technical questions through the established path within 24 hours, and solve everything else inside the team.

What Success Looks Like by April 15, 2027

• At least 90% of returns are reviewed within their service level, by complexity tier.
• Review hours per return are at or under budget.
• No return sits in review beyond the agreed number of days.
• The rate of returns sent back from review is trending down.
• Seasonal and newly acquired reviewers are productive by the start of busy season.
• Review problems are solved inside the team; escalations to the practice leader are rare.
• The team finishes the season intact, with no reviewer departures we would regret.

Requirements

Core qualifications

• 5+ years managing a team of roughly 5–15 skilled professionals in deadline-driven production work, such as tax or accounting firm operations, legal operations, insurance claims or underwriting, or a professional-services project office.
• A track record of running work through queues, service levels, and capacity plans, and comfort living in a ticketing or workflow system.
• Experience leading people who know more about the substance of the work than you do, and earning their respect by removing obstacles.
• The ability to have direct performance conversations, and a calm, organized presence when a deadline is close.
• Comfort with data: you know the three numbers that tell you whether your team is on track, and you look at them every morning.
• No tax credential is required.

Helpful additions

• Experience through a seasonal crunch, such as tax season, audit busy season, or insurance renewals.
• Familiarity with HubSpot, CCH Axcess, or similar tax and workflow software.
• A project management background or certification.

This role is not for you if you need to be the subject-matter expert in the room, or you tend to add process for its own sake.

Work Environment

• Hybrid : Cupertino, Santa Cruz, or Pleasanton, CA.
• Full-time; contract-to-hire considered.
• Daily review standup in season, weekly capacity review, and weekly leadership scorecard.
• Tools: HubSpot (return workflow), CCH Axcess (tax software), Notion and Guru (plans and documentation), and AI-assisted reporting.
• Extended hours during peak tax season.

We run on a simple operating cadence and a short list of numbers. We ask every week whether we are 1% better than last week, and we expect you to bring that habit to the review team.

California salary range: $140 – $165k

Benefits

• Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
• Retirement Plan (401k)
• Life Insurance (Basic)
• Paid Time Off (Unlimited Vacation, plus Sick & Public Holidays)
• Short Term & Long Term Disability
• Work From Home (Hybrid)
• Stock Option Plan