Department Operations Lead

M S Benbow And Associates; Metairie (LA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Insurance, Health, Wellness

401(k) Plan

Flexible Hours & Schedules

Paid Vacation & Holidays

Professional Development

Job summary

MSB Consulting Engineers is seeking a Department Operations Lead to implement scalable operating systems for the 19-person Connectivity Solutions team. You will own calendars, routines, and communication archives, while ensuring accountability and timely follow-through across leadership and staff.

The role emphasizes building practical processes, visible KPIs, and repeatable workflows to improve execution and resource planning.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of relevant experience in business operations, program coordination, or PMO support.
• Bachelor's degree preferred; equivalent experience will be considered.
• Experience in professional services or client-facing environments is highly valued.

Responsibilities

• Design and build the department operating system and calendars.
• Coordinate department communications and escalation.
• Manage annual performance review, goals, and development workflows.
• Maintain resource forecasts and reporting for leadership.
• Support development rhythms and measurement of department initiatives.

Skills

PMO coordination

Communication

Facilitation

Planning & tracking

Influence without authority

Education

Bachelor's degree in Business Administration/Management/Operations

Tools

Microsoft 365

SharePoint

Excel

Power BI

Job description

Why This Role Exists

Connectivity Solutions is a growing professional-services department with increasing complexity across clients, projects, staffing, and internal operations. Operational excellence depends on consistent systems, clear accountability, trusted relationships, and disciplined execution.

The Department Operations Lead helps build the management infrastructure required to scale the 19-person Connectivity Solutions department. This role creates and improves repeatable operating systems that strengthen execution, resource visibility, communication, people processes, and follow-through while reducing administrative coordination burden on department leadership.

Connectivity Solutions delivers enterprise network engineering, high-density Wi-Fi, private LTE/5G, and mission-critical DAS solutions for complex client environments. This position offers an experienced operations professional the opportunity to help a growing technical consulting business scale without sacrificing accountability, employee development, service quality, or operational discipline.

This role is ideal for someone who enjoys bringing order to complexity, can translate loosely defined management needs into practical systems, and builds credibility by improving how busy technical professionals work together.

How We Work at MSB

Success at MSB is measured by both results and how we achieve them. Our Core Values are Lead with Energy, Trust is the Foundation, Own It, Deliver It, Stronger Together, and Enjoy the Journey.

What You'll Own

This role is expected to identify operational gaps, build practical systems, establish repeatable processes, create useful measures, and continuously improve how the department operates. The emphasis is on creating organizational capability and reliable execution—not simply administering existing routines.

Department Operating Rhythm & Accountability

Design, build, and continuously improve the department operating system, including its annual calendar, management routines, meeting cadence, action tracking, and supporting tools. Create visibility to commitments, identify obstacles or recurring process breakdowns, and reinforce accountability with appropriate follow-through and escalation.

Department Communication Planning

Plan and coordinate recurring department communications, convert leadership decisions into clear employee messages, and maintain an accessible communication archive. Draft routine communications for leadership review and route sensitive, strategic, financial, or personnel matters for approval.

Performance Management & Employee Development Coordination

Coordinate the Annual Performance Review, goal setting, and development-plan processes; maintain schedules and completion visibility; and improve the supporting workflows. Managers retain responsibility for evaluations, ratings, coaching, promotions, compensation, and performance-improvement decisions.

Coaching and Career-Development Rhythm

Support consistent manager-employee development rhythms by coordinating standard processes, tracking completion at an aggregate level, and maintaining development actions, training, certifications, and mentoring assignments. This role does not collect or maintain confidential one-on-one or coaching content, which remains with the employee and manager.

Resource Monitoring & Forecast Preparation

Maintain a current resource forecast by integrating staffing demand, project timing, availability, planned leave, utilization risks, and unfilled needs. Prepare clear resource-review information for leadership and improve the underlying forecasting process; the Department Manager retains staffing and prioritization authority.

Department Initiative & Accountability Tracking

Maintain visibility to department priorities and strategic initiatives, including owners, milestones, dependencies, risks, and next actions. Prepare concise progress reporting, surface stalled work or recurring obstacles, and support leaders in maintaining execution discipline.

Department Rhythm Scorecard

Develop and maintain practical operational KPIs and scorecards that show whether key department routines, commitments, people processes, resource-planning inputs, and initiatives are working as intended. Employee-specific performance, coaching, utilization, and personnel information remains restricted to appropriate leaders.

Decision Making & Role Boundaries

The Department Operations Lead is authorized to coordinate department operating processes, request required inputs, maintain official calendars and approved expectations, draft routine communications, surface unresolved issues, and work with HR, Finance, Marketing, Project Controls, and other support groups on behalf of Connectivity Solutions.

The role creates visibility, facilitates execution, and recommends process improvements without assuming management authority for staffing, employee performance, compensation, technical/project direction, budgets, or client decisions.

Required Qualifications

• Typically, 5+ years of relevant professional experience in business operations, program/project coordination, PMO support, workforce planning, professional-services administration, or a related field; candidates with deeper experience are encouraged to apply.
• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Management, Operations, or a related discipline preferred; equivalent combinations of education and directly relevant experience will be considered.
• Experience in professional services, consulting, construction, telecommunications, technology, or another client-service/project-based environment is strongly preferred; prior experience supporting technical teams is a plus but is not required.
• Strong business acumen, written communication, organization, facilitation, and follow-through skills, with the ability to understand how operational priorities support technical and client-facing work.
• Advanced capability with Microsoft 365 tools, including Excel, Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, and PowerPoint; experience with Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP or comparable ERP/business systems strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience designing operating workflows, dashboards, KPIs, reports, or other practical systems that improve visibility, execution, and accountability—not simply maintaining systems created by others.
• Demonstrated ability to influence and coordinate team members, managers, and senior professionals without direct authority while building trust and maintaining productive working relationships.
• Ability to translate loosely defined management needs into practical processes, clear ownership, useful measures, and repeatable systems—and to recommend solutions without waiting for detailed instructions.
• Familiarity with utilization, staffing demand, project phases, professional-services operations, and the realities of supporting client-facing technical teams is preferred.
• Practical exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) tools or AI-enabled workflows, with curiosity about responsible uses of AI to improve research, communication, process design, reporting, and administrative efficiency. Strong discretion and judgment when handling management, employee, and personnel information are required.

Who Will Thrive Here

The successful candidate's personal attributes are especially important in this role. The strongest candidates will consistently demonstrate:

• Proactive ownership and follow-through - moving from a desired outcome to organized action and maintaining visibility until commitments are complete.
• Execution discipline and good judgment - managing multiple priorities accurately, distinguishing isolated misses from recurring process issues, and escalating appropriately.
• Resourcefulness and learning agility - researching unfamiliar topics, learning new systems and technical terminology, asking effective questions, and making progress without perfect instructions.
• Communication and interpersonal effectiveness - gathering information from busy professionals, turning it into concise and useful communication, and building credibility across functions and levels.
• Systems and measurement orientation - naturally asking what outcome is expected, what process should be built, who owns each action, how success will be measured, and how the system should improve over time.

Role Structure

Reports directly to the Connectivity Solutions Department Manager and is dedicated exclusively to the 19-person Connectivity Solutions department, whose employees may work in the office, remotely, or while traveling to support client needs. The position is an individual contributor and does not have direct supervisory responsibility.

What Success Looks Like

Success is measured by the reliable operating systems, visibility, accountability, and consistency this role creates for a technical, client-service department. A successful Department Operations Lead:

• Establishes a dependable operating cadence that leaders and employees can rely on.
• Improves the quality and timeliness of resource-planning inputs, department communications, and recurring management processes.
• Creates clear ownership, visibility, and follow-through on department priorities and strategic initiatives.
• Improves the consistency and usability of performance-review, goal setting, and employee-development processes.
• Maintains a current resource forecast and provides leadership with useful staffing and capacity insight.

Growth Opportunity

As the individual demonstrates capability and department routines mature, the role may expand into broader annual operating planning, operational excellence, workforce planning, process improvement, AI-enabled workflows, and department-management support. Strong performance can create a path toward broader business operations, program management, or operations leadership responsibility as the department grows.

The intended maturity cycle is to build, stabilize, document, delegate, evaluate, and then select the next operating priorities—allowing the role to continually move from recurring coordination toward higher-value operational improvement.

Our Commitment to Your Success

At MSB Consulting Engineers, this role offers meaningful exposure to department leadership, a highly technical team, and the opportunity to build systems that directly improve how a growing consulting business operates.

Perks:

• Insurance, Health, Wellness. Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance, Flexible Spending Account (FSA), Employer Paid Life Insurance, Voluntary Life Insurance, Accidental Death & Dismemberment Insurance, Supplemental Insurance Benefits, Paid Long-Disability Insurance, Pet Insurance and much more!
• Financial & Retirement. 401(k) Plan (Traditional & ROTH options), Performance Bonus.
• Family & Parenting. Flexible Hours & Schedules, Family Medical Leave.
• Vacation & Time Off. Paid Vacation, Paid Holidays, Bereavement Leave.
• Perks & Discounts. Employee Assistance Program, Lunch & Learns, Employee Recognition & Discounts.
• Professional Support. Job Training, Professional Development, Tuition Assistance