Operation Excellence Coordinator

The POD Network; New York (NY); On-site; USD 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

Podium Automation is seeking an Operations Excellence Coordinator to bridge product/engineering work with floor operations. You will own training, process consistency, and continuous improvement, absorbing feedback and running experiments to validate changes across sites.

You will enable leadership by ensuring dedicated ownership of change management and scalable SOPs. Thriving in ambiguity, you will organize chaos into repeatable processes, drive cross-site consistency, and champion lean

Qualifications

• 0–3 years of experience and openness to early-career candidates.
• Naturally organized with strong systems thinking capabilities.
• Background or coursework in design thinking within an engineering/design context.
• Comfort creating structure and concrete next steps from ambiguous situations.
• Interest in or exposure to product or process development.
• Self-motivated with a bias toward action.

Responsibilities

• Own training and enablement for software tools and workflows, including TES and inventory processes.
• Design and run lightweight experiments to validate process improvements; time studies and station design comparisons.
• Develop and maintain SOPs and visual labeling to ensure cross-site consistency and easy onboarding.
• Lead change management efforts to foster lean practices and Kaizen events; collect floor feedback and drive actions.

Skills

Organized with systems thinking

Design thinking background

Structuring ambiguity

Action-oriented

Early career openness

Job description

Podium Automation is reimagining industrial control panel manufacturing through software-enabled design and automated fabrication. We're building technology to create a new industrial supply chain - reducing lead times for critical electrical equipment from months to days. We've raised over $23M from top-tier investors including Construct Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Transition Ventures, Sunflower Capital, Banter Capital, and SV Angel.

As Operations Excellence Copordinator, you will be the connective tissue between our product/engineering work and day-to-day operations on the floor. Reporting to the General Manager of Operations (Brooklyn), this person will own training, process consistency, and continuous improvement. You will give leadership the confidence that there's dedicated ownership of change management on the floor. This should be someone who can absorb feedback, run experiments to validate improvements, and push consistent process across sites, freeing up leadership time to focus on core engineering and design priorities.

You’ll thrive in ambiguity, naturally organize chaos into clear processes, and act as a driving force for change management across the team.

What You’ll Do

Training & Enablement

• Own continuous training and retraining for the team, especially on software tools and systems (e.g., setting up barcode scanners for inventory tracking, executing correct tasks in our internal Task Execution System (TES), and rolling out new features).

• Serve as the first line of problem resolution when people get stuck on "how to do X" process and handle workflow edge cases (e.g., investigating and resolving missing parts in Odoo pick lists).

• Build and maintain training materials that keep pace with evolving tools and workflows, such as on-demand video tutorials available in Slack or Drive.

Process Improvement & Experimentation

• Work with the team to surface, prioritize, and drive process improvement initiatives (e.g., optimizing station organization, backplane storage, and station ergonomics).

• Design and run lightweight experiments, such as time studies for bottleneck tasks or station design comparisons, to validate whether proposed changes are actual improvements.

• Help scope new initiatives and route feedback to the right people. You will be the daily "eyes and ears" on the ground, closing the loop on floor issues across sites so leadership can stay focused on design and procurement.

SOP & Standards Management

• Ensure accessibility and dissemination of SOPs by implementing right-place, right-time process cues, signage, kanban cards, and helpful visual labeling at stations.

• Ensure consistency of process and standards across multiple sites, guaranteeing that an improvement at Site A is successfully implemented at Site B.

• Support General Managers with the tools and training their teams need to execute successfully, including sufficient documentation of spatial designs and station organization to allow new GMs to effectively "copy-paste" configurations.

• Act as a champion for cross-site consistency—a "multisite regulatory force" for process standards—by conducting quarterly site reviews and audits.

Change Management

• Be the voice of management to help drive cultural change from the bottom up, building a culture around lean practices, providing feedback forums, and facilitating Kaizen events.

• Take in feedback from the floor and iterate, while pushing process changes out where they'll have the most impact and finding creative ways to celebrate and elevate task completion.

Who You Are

There are 4 values that all Podium employees are expected to demonstrate (albeit imperfectly):

1. Win for the customer. We sit on the same side of the table as our customers - their wins are our wins. We’re building the vendor we always wished we had.

2. Default to transparency. We believe in honesty, transparency, and kindness. It’s about how you get things done and not just what gets done.

3. Speed is a feature. We move fast and take ownership. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

4. Win and lose as a team. Individuals drive inputs, teams drive outputs. We celebrate success together but aren’t afraid to fail and iterate. We own outcomes together and don’t deflect blame.

What We’re Looking For

• 0–3 years of experience; we are highly open to strong early-career candidates.

• Naturally organized with strong systems thinking capabilities.

• Background or coursework in design thinking (industrial design, visual/UX design, or design-thinking methods within an engineering background all count).

• Comfort creating structure and concrete next steps out of ambiguous situations.

• Interest in or exposure to product or process development.

• Self-motivated with a strong bias toward action.