Center of Excellence Lead: Process Optimization

Afni, Inc.; Bloomington (IL); Hybrid; USD 76,000 - 105,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay

Health benefits

401(k) match

Paid time off

Tuition reimbursement

Continuous improvement culture

Job summary

Afni, Inc. is seeking an Operational Excellence Manager (Center of Excellence) to drive performance improvements across frontline teams through process design, enablement, and continuous improvement without direct people management.

The role partners with Operations Leaders to design scalable processes and training frameworks. You will strengthen productivity, quality, and cycle-time performance, while aligning with technology and analytics teams for enabling tools.

Qualifications

• Minimum: Demonstrated experience in operational process design, continuous improvement, operations enablement, or a related function.
• Proven experience designing, documenting, implementing, and improving operational processes at scale.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with ability to use data to guide decisions.
• Experience leading cross-functional initiatives and influencing outcomes without direct authority.
• Experience partnering across Operations, Training, Quality, Technology, Analytics, or Product teams.
• Experience supporting change adoption and translating process or technology changes into practical operational solutions.

Responsibilities

• Design, document, and continuously improve end to end operational processes.
• Establish standard work, playbooks, and frameworks for consistent execution across teams.
• Identify root causes of performance gaps and translate insights into durable solutions.
• Balance standardization with business line specific needs.
• Analyze operational trends and identify leverage points for improvement.
• Lead structured improvement initiatives (e.g., RCA, Lean, Six Sigma).
• Own improvement initiatives end to end from problem definition to benefit realization.
• Ensure improvements are measurable, scalable, and adopted by Operations.
• Partner with Training to design role-specific, process-aligned training programs.
• Define certification standards and readiness criteria for operational roles.
• Serve as a subject matter expert for complex workflows, exceptions, and escalation handling.
• Ensure training content aligns with current process, tooling, and quality expectations.
• Own the design of quality standards, audit criteria, and control frameworks for operational work.
• Partner with Quality to ensure defect insights drive upstream process and training improvements.
• Reduce rework and error rates by addressing systemic causes, not individual behavior.
• Partner with Technology, Analytics, and Product teams to implement tools that improve accuracy, speed, and scalability.
• Define operational requirements for workflow systems, automation, and reporting.
• Ensure technology solutions are usable, documented, and trainable.
• Act as a lateral partner to Operations Leaders, providing data-backed insights and structured problem solving support.
• Influence without authority through credibility and results.
• Support enterprise and cross-line initiatives requiring coordinated adoption.

Job description

Afni, Inc. is seeking an Operational Excellence Manager (Center of Excellence) to drive performance improvements across frontline teams through process design, enablement, and continuous improvement without direct people management.

The role partners with Operations Leaders to design scalable processes and training frameworks. You will strengthen productivity, quality, and cycle-time performance, while aligning with technology and analytics teams for enabling tools.