Director, Business Operations - Operational Excellence

tastytrade; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Performance Bonuses

Stock Purchase Options

Medical/Vision/Dental Benefits

401k Plan

20 Paid Vacation Days

10 Paid Sick Days

Gym Membership Reimbursement

Commuter Benefits

Wellness & Mental Health Programs

Volunteer Days Off

Catered Lunch

Job summary

tastytrade is seeking a Director of Business Operations — Operational Excellence in Chicago, hybrid role. You will own the operating performance framework, drive tooling investments, and collaborate with engineering, data, and finance to optimize costs and speed.

This role emphasizes hands-on leadership, data-driven decision making, and scalable playbooks across teams. You will lead cross-functional projects, shape cost structures, and design KPI systems that translate data into action, enabling

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in operations, ops strategy, or shared services.
• Experience building cost to serve or unit economics models.
• Ability to design KPI frameworks and reporting systems used by operational teams.

Responsibilities

• Identify and fix manual or duplicative workflows by building or rolling out new tools and systems.
• Define and maintain a cost to serve model at multiple levels (channel, segment, customer).
• Design KPIs, dashboards, and reporting cadences for day-to-day operations.
• Lead cross-functional process redesigns spanning multiple teams from diagnosis to implementation and impact.

Skills

Operational leadership

Cost to serve modeling

Tooling rollout

KPI frameworks

Data analysis

Cross-functional leadership

Executive storytelling

Process redesign

Project management

Job description

Company: tastytrade

Role: Director, Business Operations — Operational Excellence

Location: Chicago, IL — Hybrid

About the Role

The Business Operations team at IG North America works on many of the company's biggest opportunities and challenges. We help shape where the company is headed, identify new ways to grow, and make sure the entire organization is aligned. This role reports to the head of Business Operations and calls for someone who can think about the company's future while also getting critical work done day to day. The team moves between building multiyear plans and driving execution, depending on what the business needs most.

This particular role is the team's depth expert on operational performance: how our operating teams run day to day, what it costs to serve our customers, and where better tooling, process, or data can unlock efficiency. You'll partner closely with the leaders of our operational teams, and their teams directly, as a hands‑on partner, not just a strategist handing down recommendations.

What You'll Do

Operational tooling and efficiency

• Identify where manual, duplicative, or broken workflows are slowing down operational teams, and lead the build or rollout of new tools and systems to fix them.
• Partner with Engineering, Data, and operational leaders to scope, prioritize, and implement automation that reduces cost and improves speed or quality.
• Own the roadmap for operational tooling investments, including making the build versus buy case to leadership.

Cost to serve and unit economics

• Define and maintain a cost to serve model across our operational functions, down to the channel, segment, or customer level.
• Identify where costs are out of line with value delivered, and build the business case for changes to staffing, process, or technology.
• Partner with Finance to connect operational metrics to P&L impact, and keep leadership honest about tradeoffs.

Operational tracking and performance management

• Design the KPIs, dashboards, and reporting cadences operational teams use to run their business day to day.
• Work with the data team to build reporting infrastructure that gives leadership and frontline managers the same source of truth, in near real time.
• Stand up operating reviews, such as weekly and monthly business reviews, that turn data into decisions and accountability.

Cross functional execution

• Lead process redesigns that span multiple operational teams, from root cause diagnosis through implementation and measured impact.
• Support new product or market launches by building the operational playbook, including staffing models, SLAs, tooling, and performance targets, before go live.
• Take on special projects that support the CEO's and operating leaders' top priorities.

Broader Biz Ops work

• Contribute to company strategy, market evaluation, and planning processes alongside the rest of the Biz Ops team.
• Support partnership or M&A evaluation when operational integration or cost to serve diligence is needed.

Who You Are

To succeed in this role, you need real depth in operations. You've built cost to serve models, rolled out tooling, or run performance management systems before, and you know the difference between a dashboard that looks good and one that changes behavior. You pair that operational fluency with the influence, communication, and analytical skills the rest of the Biz Ops team relies on.

A qualified candidate has 8+ years of work experience, including a meaningful chunk in an operations, ops strategy, or shared services role, and should be able to:

• Lead complex, cross functional projects from diagnosis through implementation and measured impact, specifically in an operational context, such as tooling rollouts, process redesign, or cost structure changes.
• Build and maintain cost to serve or unit economics models, and use them to make concrete tradeoff recommendations to leadership.
• Design KPI frameworks and reporting systems that operational teams actually use to run their business, not just report upward.
• Evaluate, scope, and help implement new operational tools and systems, working closely with Engineering and Data.
• Present analyses that help leadership make tough calls, including being ready to disagree when the data points in a different direction.
• Communicate clearly with different audiences, from the CEO and board to frontline operational managers.
• Work comfortably and hands on with data: financial models, customer metrics, and operational dashboards.
• Engage with distributed operational teams and get people motivated to adopt new ways of working.
• Have fun, challenge yourself and your teammates, and keep perspective when things get intense.

Preferred Requirements

• Prior experience in an operations, shared services, or ops strategy role, internal or consulting.
• In that role, you owned tooling and cost to serve directly, rather than advising on it from the outside.

Company Perks + Benefits:

• Performance Bonuses
• Stock Purchase Options
• Medical/Vision/Dental Benefits
• 401k Plan
• 20 Paid Vacation Days (plus anadditionalpaid vacationdaythe month of your birthday!)
• 10 Paid Sick Days
• Gym Membership Reimbursement
• Commuter Benefits
• Pet Insurance
• Wellness & Mental Health Programs
• Charitable Donation Matching
• Two Paid Volunteer Days Off
• Daily catered lunch when in the office
• Full kitchen with snacks and beverages
• In-building gym
• Shuttle to/from Metra

Base Salary Range:

$120,000-$170,000 The actual salary offered will be based on the candidate's level of experience and qualifications.

Discretionary Performance Bonus: 15-20% of base salary based on individual and company performance.

About IGNA+ tasty

IG North America is home to tastytrade, tastylive & tastyfx—a family of brands built to democratize trading and empower individual investors. Founded in Chicago by the creators ofthinkorswim, acquiredby London-based IG Group in 2021, we combine startup innovation with the backing ofa FTSE 100 fintech operating across five continents serving over 1.3m customers and handling billions of dollars in transactions – built on scale, trust, and proof.

From our headquarters in Chicago's Fulton Market, our team builds award-winning trading platforms, produces live financial education content daily, and creates technology that makes complex markets accessible. tastytrade is our retail brokerage for self-directed investing and trading, with tastylive providing content to educate our customers. tastyfx is the fastest-growing forex broker in the US. tastycrypto provides self-custody digital wallets for decentralized finance.

We'rea lean, collaborative team that values autonomy, pragmatism, and impact. Whetheryou'rebuilding technology, creating content, serving customers, or supporting operations,you'llwork alongside people who are passionate about disrupting traditional finance and genuinely care about helping traders succeed. Our culture rewards initiative, embraces experimentation, and measures success by the value we create for our users.The bar is high – bring a curious and forward-thinkingmindsetandwe'llgive you the platform to define what comes next. Join us at IG|tasty – the future gets built here.

Location:

Our office is in the West Loop - Chicago's growing center of tech, great cuisine, and high-end bars.