Principal, Generative AI & Business Operations

Avalara, Inc.; United States; On-site; USD 210,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

Avalara seeks a Principal-level Head of Generative AI & Business Operations to scale its Micro and Emerging Business portfolio. This senior IC will design how the business runs, building operating rhythms, dashboards, and AI-enabled workflows to accelerate growth and reduce manual work.

You will partner across Product, Growth, Operations, Engineering, Finance, and Go-to-Market to deliver measurable impact while maintaining governance, security, and compliance.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in business operations and related fields in SaaS, fintech, or e-commerce.
• Experience operating at principal or senior IC level with cross-functional influence.
• Designing operating systems for high-growth businesses with cadence, KPI architecture, and governance.
• Strong applied AI fluency with hands-on use of LLMs, agents, workflows, and AI-enabled analytics.
• Bachelor’s degree in business, analytics, CS, engineering, economics, or equivalent.

Responsibilities

• Define and run the business operating cadence across weekly, monthly, and quarterly reviews.
• Create a single operating model for goals, ownership, decision rights, intake, prioritization, and escalation.
• Develop dashboards and decision surfaces for acquisition, activation, onboarding, retention, and revenue.
• Identify bottlenecks and translate into automation, data, tooling, or org changes.
• Lead generative AI strategy and applied AI execution with measurable impact.
• Define AI roadmap for the business focusing on real outcomes over experiments.
• Build AI-enabled workflows that reduce manual work across onboarding, support, and data intake.
• Partner with cross-functional teams to ensure governance, explainability, and scalability.

Skills

AI fluency

Analytical thinking

Systems thinking

Written communication

Influence without authority

Education

Bachelor’s degree in business, analytics, CS, engineering, economics, or equivalent

Tools

BI tools (Power BI, Looker, Tableau)

CRM/analytics platforms (Salesforce, Gainsight)

Jira, Zendesk

Job description

Avalara seeks a Principal-level Head of Generative AI & Business Operations to scale its Micro and Emerging Business portfolio. This senior IC will design how the business runs, building operating rhythms, dashboards, and AI-enabled workflows to accelerate growth and reduce manual work.

You will partner across Product, Growth, Operations, Engineering, Finance, and Go-to-Market to deliver measurable impact while maintaining governance, security, and compliance.