Senior Consultant: Process Excellence & AI-Ready Ops

Ascensus; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Ascensus is seeking a Senior Consultant to drive process improvements and operational excellence across retirement services. You will diagnose, redesign, and implement solutions with business leaders, while preparing processes for automation and AI-enabled operations.

The role emphasizes measurable value realization and cross-functional collaboration. The ideal candidate has 5+ years in improvement roles, expertise in retirement operations, and Lean Six Sigma credentials.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in process improvement, operational excellence, consulting, transformation, or continuous improvement roles.
• Retirement operations and recordkeeping.
• Financial services servicing and operations.
• Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Black Belt, or equivalent continuous improvement certification preferred.
• Consulting experience preferred.
• Experience supporting automation, workflow transformation, AI, or digital transformation initiatives preferred.
• Proven experience leading operational improvement initiatives from assessment through implementation and stabilization.
• Strong process analysis, workflow redesign, and operational problem-solving skills.
• Demonstrated ability to influence stakeholders and drive organizational change.
• Experience implementing and sustaining measurable operational improvements.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to leverage data to inform decisions and quantify outcomes.
• Experience developing business cases, performance metrics, and value realization measures.
• Financial services experience preferred; Retirement industry experience highly preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead operational diagnostics to identify opportunities for efficiency, quality, capacity, customer experience, and risk reduction.
• Analyze current-state processes and develop practical future-state solutions that improve business outcomes.
• Partner directly with operational leaders to implement process improvements and drive organizational adoption.
• Identify and eliminate non-value-added activities, bottlenecks, duplication, rework, and process complexity.
• Own improvement initiatives from opportunity identification through implementation, stabilization, and value realization.
• Develop data-informed recommendations that balance customer impact, operational feasibility, risk considerations, and business objectives.
• Apply Lean, Six Sigma, Operational Excellence, consulting, and change management techniques as appropriate to the business problem.
• Conduct process assessments, workflow analysis, and current-state evaluations across operational functions.
• Facilitate process redesign efforts that simplify work, reduce variability, improve controls, and enhance customer and associate experiences.
• Establish performance measures, management routines, and control mechanisms that sustain improvements after implementation.
• Partner with business stakeholders to embed continuous improvement capabilities within day-to-day operations.
• Assess operational processes for automation, AI, and agentic readiness.
• Identify opportunities to standardize workflows, decision points, business rules, and knowledge assets that support future AI-enabled operations.
• Partner with business, technology, and AI teams to redesign work before automation is implemented.
• Contribute to the organization’s long-term transition toward agentic operating models by improving process maturity and operational consistency.
• Define measurable success criteria and expected outcomes for improvement initiatives.
• Track realized benefits including productivity, cycle time, quality, capacity, customer experience, and risk outcomes.
• Support portfolio governance by providing visibility into initiative progress, implementation risks, and realized value.
• Ensure operational improvements result in measurable and sustainable business impact.

Skills

Process improvement

Operational excellence

Data analysis

Stakeholder influence

Change management

Automation readiness

Education

Lean Six Sigma Green Belt

Lean Six Sigma Black Belt

Equivalent certification

Job description

Ascensus is seeking a Senior Consultant to drive process improvements and operational excellence across retirement services. You will diagnose, redesign, and implement solutions with business leaders, while preparing processes for automation and AI-enabled operations.

The role emphasizes measurable value realization and cross-functional collaboration. The ideal candidate has 5+ years in improvement roles, expertise in retirement operations, and Lean Six Sigma credentials.