Production Operations Manager

In this role, you’ll work closely with our Flight Operations team as a critical link in the production chain, ensuring accurate, reliable map products move quickly from captured imagery to our farmer customers. These technologies are rapidly transforming agricultural intelligence, allowing farmers to make faster and more informed decisions that translate into highly precise actions and more productive farms.

We’re looking for a Production Operations Manager to lead post-flight processing, quality control, and delivery of TerraClear’s map products. Our commitment is to provide farmers with high-quality maps by the day after image capture—and you’ll be accountable for the operational metrics that make that possible.

In this role, you’ll work closely with our Flight Operations team as a critical link in the production chain, ensuring accurate, reliable map products move quickly from captured imagery to our farmer customers.

This is a highly hands-on leadership role. You’ll manage a small team of specialists as well as seasonal processing technicians, providing day-to-day direction while building the capabilities needed to scale. You’ll develop and execute seasonal operating plans, strengthen the tools, processes, and systems that support production, and work alongside your team to consistently deliver at a high level.

In this role, you will:

• Own on-time, high-quality map delivery
• Own delivery of maps next day after image capture, at quality standard
• Oversee a team that runs 24/7 in-season 
• Develop, report, and improve turnaround and quality metrics
• Work with each shift to prioritize and strategically clear daily order queues
• Triage and rapidly resolve pipeline errors and order issues
• Deliver Sales and Customer Success reliable order statuses and delivery dates
• Improve the production pipeline
• Troubleshoot and drive recurring failures to a permanent fix with Product and Engineering teams
• Identify and implement process improvements and automation to raise throughput per shift and per person
• Coordinate with Flight Operations on image capture quality, timing, and handoff protocol
• Implement field and customer feedback into the production operations process
• Lead and staff the Production Operations team
• Manage the production operations specialists, including weekly 1:1s, goal setting, and performance feedback
• Recruit, onboard, and train seasonal processing techs (approximately 3 in fall, 9 in spring, every year)
• Plan seasonal shift coverage alongside production operations specialists
• Write and maintain process documentation, SOPs, and training materials
• Plan capacity for the season
• Build seasonal capacity plan and communicate required budget, staffing, and infrastructure
• Represent production operations in quarterly and annual planning cycles
• Bring new map products into commercial production
• Define process, quality control protocol, and training regimen for new map products
• Partner with Flight Operations, Product, and Engineering to implement processes that will scale commercially with growth of new products 

What we're looking for:

• Required
• 3+ years managing/operating a production, fulfillment, processing, or data-operations function with a daily throughput or turnaround commitment
• Experience owning, creating and planning shift schedules
• A track record of building processes, executing them, and owning responsibility of metrics of success
• Experience managing a small team, including recruiting and training seasonal or temporary staff
• Hands-on technical expertise: Windows environments, troubleshooting software and server error messages, and building tracking and reporting in Google Sheets
• Experience writing SOPs, and training materials,, developing metrics, and capacity planning
• Strong attention to detail, and the organizational discipline to hold a quality bar under time pressure
• Direct, clear communication that leads to action, with customer-facing teams as well as your own
• Comfort in a fast-paced startup where process is built rather than inherited
• Desired
• Exposure to agriculture, geospatial or remote sensing work, drone imagery, or GIS
• Experience scaling an operation through a step change in volume, or standing up a new product line in an existing operation
• Familiarity and comfort discussing technology (AI, software, automation)
• Bachelor's degree in operations management, business, engineering, geospatial science, or a related field

Location: U.S. remote based is an option 

Base salary pay range:

• $120-140k USD