Business Operations Specialist

Pearl Inc.; Richmond (VA); Hybrid; USD 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Uncapped PTO

11 paid holidays

Comprehensive benefits

401(k)/Roth 401(k)

Flexible work hours

Job summary

Pearl Inc. is seeking a Business Operations Specialist to move operational work from the COO, building reliable, scalable systems across departments. You will coordinate projects, support compliance, IT, BI, and admin tasks, and help teams stay organized while learning new tools.

The role emphasizes process improvement, documentation, and cross-functional collaboration with a remote-first culture and regular Richmond in-person collaboration.

Qualifications

• Legally authorized to work in the United States.
• 2+ years of professional experience in operations, admin, or project coordination.
• Local to Richmond, VA with in-office presence one day per week.
• Strong spreadsheet skills including conditional logic and cross-sheet linking.
• Background check required; results reviewed case by case.
• Uncapped PTO and 11 annual holidays; flex time.
• Familiar with Google Workspace, Slack, Monday, Salesforce, and AI tools.

Responsibilities

• Coordinate internal projects, timelines, trackers, and cross-functional follow up.
• Support product release readiness and company-wide change management.
• Maintain documentation, workflows, and operational systems.
• Assist with compliance, risk, and data handling requests.
• Manage IT asset records, software inventories, and access workflows.
• Support onboarding/offboarding system setup and admin follow-ups.
• Evaluate AI use cases and assist with adoption and training.
• Prepare and reconcile operational reports and KPI dashboards.

Skills

Project coordination

Spreadsheet skills

Cross-functional collaboration

Documentation

IT systems familiarity

Proactive learning

Tools

Google Workspace

Slack

Monday

Salesforce

ChatGPT/Claude AI tools

Job description

The Business Operations Specialist is a new individual contributor role reporting to the Chief Operating Officer. The COO has historically managed most business operations directly, but as Pearl has grown, many well-defined business support activities are ready to transition into this role.

This is a highly cross-functional role supporting accounting, compliance, legal, IT, business intelligence, and internal operations. It also supports Product, Revenue, and Success teams through project coordination, release support, and change management.

This role is a good fit for someone who is naturally organized, dependable, curious, and excited to learn new things. You’ll work across many parts of the business, helping teams stay organized, informed, and able to move work forward.

The ideal candidate has shown they can learn quickly, bring order to messy work, and successfully manage responsibilities that do not always fit neatly into one box.

Your mission is to move operational work off of the COO’s plate while maintaining and improving the processes and tools that create reliable and repeatable systems for Pearl.

This role is intentionally broad, but we do not expect candidates to have experience in every area listed below. We are more interested in how you think, learn, organize, communicate, and follow through than whether you have already worked in every functional area. You will be trained and supported as you take on new responsibilities, with many of these activities already well-defined and currently performed by the COO.

What You’ll Do

Project Operational Coordination

• Coordinate internal projects, timelines, trackers, and cross-functional follow up
• Support product release readiness and company-wide change management processes
• Maintain documentation, workflows, and operational systems that improve organization and execution

Compliance & Risk Support

• Support SOC 2 administration, compliance tracking, policy documentation, and audit readiness
• Coordinate compliance-related communications, remediation activities, and special data handling requests
• Assist with incidence response coordination, postmortems, and follow-up tracking

IT & Systems Administration

• Manage employee IT asset records, software inventories, and account access workflows
• Support onboarding/offboarding system setup, troubleshooting, and administrative follow-up
• Maintain documentation, naming conventions, and organizational standards across all systems and files

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Process Improvement

• Support adoption, documentation, and training for AI tools across internal teams
• Explore practical uses of AI integrations and agentic workflow tools for internal operations
• Help evaluate AI use cases with attention to usefulness, accuracy, privacy, and risk

Business Intelligence & Reporting

• Maintain operational reports, dashboards, KPI trackers, and recurring business metrics
• Organize, validate, and reconcile data used across operations, finance, compliance, and customer-facing teams
• Build spreadsheets and reporting tools that improve visibility, decision-making, and operational consistency

Business Administration

• Coordinate operational support activities including insurance administration, accounts receivables follow-up, and internal business processes
• Support other recurring and ad hoc business operations activities as Pearl continues to scale

Success in This Role Looks Like:

• Operational work is proactively managed, organized, and consistently moving forward
• Teams have better visibility into projects, timelines, priorities, and follow-up items
• Internal systems, documentation, and processes become more scalable and reliable
• Compliance activities and operational workflows stay on track with less manual oversight
• Cross-functional teams feel supported, informed, and able to execute more effectively
• The COO gains meaningful capacity to focus on strategic initiatives instead of day-to-day operations
• Are innately organized and think like a project manager
• Love learning new things and can quickly adapt to new systems and tools
• Enjoy bringing structure to processes, systems, and information
• Think in spreadsheets
• Have professional experience helping teams, projects, systems, or operations run more smoothly
• Are comfortable learning and working within tools like Google Workspace, Slack, Monday, Salesforce, and AI tools such as ChatGPT or Claude
• Like to manage your own work and can prioritize when there is more to do than time available

Requirements

• Legally authorized to work in the United States
• Local to Richmond, VA and ability to be in the office one day per week
• Ability to begin workday at 9 AM ET
• 2+ years of professional experience in an operations, administrative, or project coordination role
• Strong spreadsheet skills (conditional logic, helper tables, conditional formatting, cross-sheet linking)
• This role requires a background check. A prior record does not automatically disqualify a candidate. Pearl reviews background check results individually and focuses on whether any findings are directly relevant to the trust, access, judgment, and responsibilities required for the role.
• Uncapped (and encouraged) PTO, plus 11 annual holidays
• Flex time for employees to balance work responsibilities and personal commitments
• Comprehensive benefits include medical, dental, and vision
• Retirement benefits – Pre-tax 401(k)/Roth 401(k)
• Short-term disability insurance at no cost to employees
• A respectful, inclusive, parent-friendly, and flexible work environment
• Strong remote-first work culture, with regular in-person collaboration in Richmond

This role touches several parts of the business, but we do not expect candidates to have experience with everything listed here. We care more about how you learn, communicate, solve problems, and follow through than whether your resume matches every bullet.

Using AI:

At Pearl Education, we work with AI tools regularly and we’re continually learning to use them more effectively and responsibly. We hope candidates are doing the same. Please use AI to prepare, organize your thoughts, and help you genuinely represent yourself. But AI shouldn’t take your voice away. During interviews, we ask that you not use AI to generate or look up answers in real time. Our goal is to get to know you, not your AI agent!