Sales Operations Manager, Foundry

OpenKrill; United States; On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Openkrill is seeking an experienced Go-to-Market Operations leader to own the end-to-end GTM lifecycle for pod products. You will map market sizing, strategy, launch plans, and post-launch performance, ensuring repeatable motion as products graduate into the core seller base.

You will shape ICP, pricing, packaging, channel strategy, and competitive positioning with pod founders, marketing, and sales. This is a blank-page role with executive visibility and ownership of reporting, CRM, and

Qualifications

• 5+ years in sales operations or a related go-to-market function.
• Experience launching new products or initiatives without a playbook.
• 3+ years using Salesforce, building reports and dashboards.
• Advanced Excel for modeling, variance analysis, and turning data into decisions.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including exec-level presentations; a bachelor’s degree is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end GTM lifecycle for pod products, from market sizing to launch planning, field execution, and post-launch tracking.
• Shape the go-to-market approach with pod Founders, marketing, and sales on ICP, pricing/packaging, channel strategy, and positioning.
• Design sales motion with coverage models, pipeline processes, forecasting cadences, and engagement rules for the first seller cohort.
• Build the reporting backbone in Salesforce and Excel to track pipeline health, win/loss, attach rates, and renewal trends.
• Lead CRM buildout, playbook documentation, tool configuration, and alignment across enablement, marketing, finance, deal desk, and IT.
• Define graduation criteria and integration motion for products completing a pod journey for handoff to full seller base.
• Translate early-stage complexity into clear data-backed narratives for planning, business reviews, and growth roadmaps.

Skills

Sales operations

Go-to-market strategy

New-product launches

Executive communication

Data storytelling

Education

Bachelor's degree preferred

Tools

Salesforce

Excel

Job description

How we work

A pod is two people: a Founder and a Builder, both hands on, close to the customer. The bet is deliberate: we invest in agent-developer tooling and tokens, not in headcount. An operating team of growth marketing, revenue operations, sales overlay, and G&A supports every pod, so founders stay on building products.

Every pod inherits an underlying platform with common design, development, and deployment harnesses, so no pod rebuilds the plumbing. Each pod runs through key phases with regular checkpoints where a governing board reviews progress or recommends a pivot or kill.

The rhythm is fast and transparent. Investor-style updates go out weekly. Demos and keep-or-kill checkpoints happen twice a month. Transparency is the operating model.

What you will do

You’re the operational engine behind New Markets’ newest product bets. You’ll own the end-to-end go-to-market lifecycle for pod products, from market sizing and early strategy through launch, performance tracking, and the handoff when a product graduates into the core. When a pod proves customers will pay, you make that motion repeatable and hand it to the full seller base. This is a blank-page job: the playbook doesn’t exist yet, and you’ll write it. The role reports directly to the President, New Markets, with a matrixed dotted line to Instructure’s Go-to-Market Strategy and Operations leadership.

What you’ll own

You own go-to-market operations across the portfolio, and you’re the voice of the New Markets business in the rooms where commercial decisions get made.

In practice, that means you’ll:

• Own the end-to-end GTM lifecycle for pod products. Carry each product from market sizing and early strategy through launch planning, field execution, and post-launch performance tracking.
• Shape the go-to-market approach with each pod. Partner with Pod Founders, marketing, and the sales overlay on ideal-customer definition, pricing and packaging input, channel strategy, and competitive positioning.
• Design the sales motion. Build the coverage models, pipeline processes, forecasting cadences, and rules of engagement for the first seller cohort on each product.
• Build the reporting backbone. Stand up and maintain the analytics in Salesforce and Excel that track pipeline health, win/loss, attach rates, average contract value, and renewal trends, and turn that data into insight leadership can act on.
• Run launch readiness. Lead CRM buildout in Salesforce, playbook documentation, tool configuration, and alignment across enablement, marketing, finance, deal desk, and IT.
• Own the graduation playbook. Define the criteria and the integration motion for products that complete a pod’s journey, so the full seller base can carry and sell the product without a messy handoff.
• Be the voice of the business. Translate early-stage complexity into clear, data-backed narratives in planning forums, business reviews, and executive sessions, and support annual planning across capacity, quota, incentive design, and growth roadmaps.

What we expect

• Blank page to operating framework. You go from nothing to a working system without a lot of hand-holding, then improve it as results and field feedback come in.
• Rigor under ambiguity. You structure messy, early-stage go-to-market problems, build the analytical frame, and land a recommendation you can defend.
• Accuracy you stand behind. The insights and reporting you put in front of leadership are right, and you own them.
• Influence without authority. You move product, finance, marketing, and sales toward a shared plan without managing any of them.

What we’re looking for

• Five or more years in sales operations, revenue operations, or a related go-to-market function.
• Real experience supporting new-product launches or emerging-business initiatives, where the playbook didn’t exist yet.
• Three or more years hands-on in Salesforce, building and maintaining reports, dashboards, and data structures.
• Advanced Excel, comfortable building models, running variance analysis, and turning raw data into decision-ready output.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including executive-level presentations. A bachelor’s degree is preferred.

Your first 90 days

• Month 1. Immerse yourself in the New Markets portfolio, the key stakeholders, and the current go-to-market infrastructure. Understand where each product sits in its lifecycle and find the most pressing operational gaps.
• Month 3. Establish a clear view of performance across active pods: pipeline health, coverage, and leading indicators. Build or refine the reporting framework in Salesforce and Excel, and set a recurring operating rhythm with product and sales leadership.
• Month 6. Own and drive the go-to-market motion for at least one pod through a checkpoint. Deliver an integration-readiness recommendation for any product approaching graduation, and present a prioritized roadmap for improving New Markets go-to-market operations to senior leadership.

This role isn’t for everyone

Anti-patterns. You should probably pass if:

• You need an established playbook and a stable process to operate inside. Here you build the playbook.
• You’re uncomfortable being measured on the accuracy of your numbers and the clarity of your recommendations.
• You’d rather own a single, well-defined process than the whole messy go-to-market surface across a portfolio.
• A predictable, slow-changing scope is what you want. The portfolio shifts as pods move through their checkpoints.

Compensation

Base pay is market-competitive. You’ll be paid fairly against the market for the work, so you’re not taking a pay cut to be here. But the base is the floor, not the prize.

The real value is the upside you drive. As part of the operating team, you share in a cash bonus pool tied to portfolio milestones across pods. Targets are set as pods launch, so you’ll know what the portfolio is running at.

The upside is asymmetric, and it’s earned, not granted. There’s a hard floor: below a threshold level of attainment, milestone payouts don’t trigger at all. Above it, hitting and stretching past your targets pays meaningfully. This is built to be the kind of outcome that changes your trajectory, not a routine bonus. The rewards go to the people who build something customers pay for. They don’t reward effort, tenure, or proximity.

What this means in plain terms. Real ownership. Real accountability. Real upside for the people who build a business, and very little for those who don’t. If that trade excites you, you’re the person we’re looking for. If it worries you, trust that instin