Head of Operations
The company
Panda Drum is the world's biggest steel tongue drum brand. Bootstrapped, profitable, growing 3x year over year for three years straight, projected ~$50M this year. US market. Physical product on the front end; subscriptions, courses, and an app on the back end, with new products in the pipeline, including connected hardware. The business is highly seasonal, most revenue concentrates in Q4, so cash flow discipline is a core requirement. We run lean, automate first, and make decisions from data. The founder currently runs operations himself. This role removes that bottleneck so he can focus on marketing.
The structure
Since we currently have no head of ops or ops manager, you start de facto as operations manager, plus some strategic scope. You get the Head of Operations title and compensation from day one, every head of department in this company has gone through the same path. This is how it looks in practice:
Month 1: run day-to-day operations yourself: cadences, verification, unblocking, including the mundane parts. First usable deliverables ship in week one.
Month 2: document the processes you've been running, start making strategic calls, begin designing the operating architecture.
Month 3: process architecture and documentation complete enough to hand a large portion of the day-to-day to a replacement. We open that search together.
The main goal: remove yourself from day-to-day by building the processes, then hire your replacement as Operations Manager, and formally take over the full Head of Ops scope. Not the other way around.
After the handover
Product development coordination: working directly with engineering and design on new physical and connected products
The company operating system: KPIs, dashboards, single source of truth, accountability cadences
Cash flow management across the seasonal cycle
Strategic projects, reputation management, legal operations
Building the ops org as the company grows. We hire long-term; this role grows with the business
Requirements
Proven build-from-scratch track record: P&Ls built from zero, dashboards teams actually used, processes that kept running after you stopped touching them
Strong finance skills: P&L, working capital, cash conversion
You have automated or replaced your own position at least once and moved up because of it
Strategic thinking combined with willingness to execute
Operating experience at a physical-product or e-commerce company at real scale
Compensation
$100,000-130,000 base
Up to 30% annual performance bonus, tied to written numeric gates you receive in month one
Discretionary budget: tooling, consultants, pilots
Travel: factory trips to China, US market visits
Personal development budget
Fully remote, direct daily work with the founder
As published by recruitee
Full name, Email, CV
- LinkedIn profile URL
- Largest company you've operated in (annual revenue band) choose one
- Largest team size you managed there (number)
- Have you spent 2+ years in a role where operational decisions were yours to make, with real money attached: purchase orders, inventory bets, budgets, hires and fires? yes / no
- E-commerce experience (select all that apply) choose any
- You've read the Structure section: your first 90 days are hands-on operations, including the mundane parts, before you build and hand over. Are you comfortable with this? yes / no
- Have you ever automated or replaced your own position and moved up because of it? Describe: what you built, who or what took over, and what happened to it after you left it. written answer
- Have you built a P&L from scratch and owned it? Walk us through your actual sequence: where did you anchor the numbers, and how do you keep the number hygiene intact over time? written answer
- Name one process or system you built from nothing that still ran six months after you stopped touching it. What was it and who runs it now? written answer
- Highest responsibility you've ever been handed: what was handed over, the circumstances, how the handover happened, your role, and the outcome. written answer
- What are you most proud of having built in your career? written answer
- Nov 10 - Dec 15 is our peak: full availability, no time off in that window. Workable? yes / no
- Tool stack - mark what you've personally worked in (select all that apply) choose any
- Expected salary range (USD base, annual) choose one
- What is your earliest possible start date? (e.g. 2026-10-01)