Job Title
Process Improvement Specialist
Monthly Pay
$4,140 - $5,881 USD per month
Summary
This contract role examines day-to-day workflows, identifies delays and repeat issues, and recommends practical changes that help teams complete work more consistently. It sits within the operations team and works under an operations manager. The specialist works with frontline team members, supervisors, project partners, and system users to understand how requests move through each step. This position is fully remote and work from home in New Jersey, United States. The role requires a 40-hour weekly commitment. Working days and shift times may vary. Clear findings, useful process guides, and well-tracked improvement actions matter because they support reliable service and informed operational decisions.
Job Responsibilities
- Receive improvement requests through a shared queue, emails, meeting notes, and project tickets, then confirm the business question, workflow area, and desired outcome.
- Review current workflow steps, handoffs, request volumes, cycle times, and recurring issues using available operational information and team input.
- Map existing and proposed workflows in Microsoft Visio, showing roles, decision points, dependencies, and points where work may pause or repeat.
- Maintain action plans and improvement tasks in a project management system such as Smartsheet, including owners, target dates, status updates, and open questions.
- Use a spreadsheets and data entry tool such as Microsoft Excel to organize observations, compare process measures, and prepare clear summaries for review.
- Facilitate structured discussions with team members to clarify work steps, identify likely causes of delays, and gather workable change ideas.
- Draft practical process guides, checklists, and implementation notes that explain revised steps in clear language for the teams using them.
- Coordinate pilot activities with supervisors and project partners, track feedback, and note whether proposed changes produce the intended result.
- Follow up on incomplete actions or unclear findings with the assigned owner, and escalate material risks, unresolved dependencies, or approval needs to the operations manager.
- Prepare concise progress updates that explain findings, recommended next steps, current status, and items requiring a decision.
- Quality is judged by accurate workflow findings, timely turnaround, complete notes, usable recommendations, and dependable follow-up on assigned actions.
Qualifications
- High school diploma or equivalent.
- About 1-2 years of related experience preferred in operational support, workflow review, project support, or a similar desk-based setting.
- Working knowledge of Kaizen principles and practical methods for identifying waste, delays, repeated effort, and unclear handoffs.
- Familiarity with process mining concepts, gap analysis, and using operational measures to compare current and proposed ways of working.
- Ability to create workflow visuals in Microsoft Visio and explain process steps to both frontline and supervisory audiences.
- Experience using a project management system such as Smartsheet and a spreadsheets and data entry tool such as Microsoft Excel preferred.
- Familiarity with statistical process control, Pareto analysis, fishbone diagrams, and process simulation concepts preferred.
- Strong written and verbal communication for interviews, meeting discussions, status updates, and concise process guides.
- Reliable computer, high-speed internet, and a quiet private workspace, with availability for the 40-hour weekly commitment and agreed working days and shift times.
- Authorization to work in the United States.
- Fully remote work from New Jersey, United States.
- Structured onboarding and training on the named systems, including Smartsheet and Microsoft Excel.
- Regular check-ins with the operations manager.
- Experience building workflow visualization, improvement planning, operational measurement, and cross-team coordination skills.
- Health coverage, paid leave, a 401(k), maternity leave, and stipends.