Senior Director, Business System Office

Viasat; Carlsbad (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Viasat seeks a Sr. Director, Business System Office to drive the Strategy Deployment Process and build enterprise capability. You will lead policy deployment, tool mastery, and cross-functional OKR execution across the company.

You will shape transformation initiatives, manage a network of practitioners, and ensure sustained improvements that tie to financial results. This role requires 12–15 years of CI leadership in complex engineering/services environments.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, operations, business, or a related field.
• 12 to 15 years of progressive experience in continuous improvement, operational excellence, or business system leadership, including 5+ years at enterprise scope.
• Personally led 20+ improvement events (Kaizen, rapid improvement, value stream, or transactional process improvement).
• Experience building capability in others: curriculum design, training, and certification of practitioners.
• Experience inside mature, named business system environment preferred (e.g., Danaher DBS, Fortive FBS, etc.).
• Experience deploying Strategy Deployment or Hoshin Kanri at enterprise level, including executive planning sessions.
• 5+ years of people leadership experience with senior leaders.
• Finance-validated improvements with sustained impact; external consultant transition preferred.
• Familiarity with satcom, space networks, or related complex engineering/services environment preferred.

Responsibilities

• Direct the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of the enterprise Strategy Deployment Process.
• Own policy deployment methodology end to end: objective selection, catchball, alignment, and review cadence.
• Facilitate annual and mid-year strategy deployment sessions with executives and leaders.
• Ensure vertical and horizontal alignment of objectives to plans and standard work.
• Lead high-impact improvement events and set scoping, preparation, and results expectations.
• Collaborate with FP&A and leadership to validate benefits and connect to financial plan.

Skills

Structured problem solving

Lean methods

OKR frameworks

Financial acumen

Education

Bachelor's degree in engineering

Advanced degree preferred

Job description

About us

At Viasat, the work you do helps people stay connected in ways that matter, from everyday moments to critical missions across air, land, sea, and space.

We're a place for people who are curious, bold, and motivated by meaningful work. Here, you'll have the opportunity to make an impact, explore new possibilities, and grow your career in ways that align with your interests and goals. When you're ready to take on something new, you'll find leaders who support your development and help you turn your ambition into action.

What you'll do

The Sr. Director, Business System Office owns the method and the people who carry it. This role leads the strategy, culture, and implementation of the continuous improvement system across Viasat, and is accountable for building the internal bench that allows the company to run its own improvement work and build organizational capability at scale. This leader owns the Viasat Business System, the enterprise framework that connects strategy deployment, operational excellence, performance improvement, and capability development into a single, integrated approach for driving results.

The Sr. Director is the architect of the Viasat Business System: the common language, tools, standard work, and operating cadence used by every business area and corporate function to set direction, solve problems, and improve performance. The role directs the Strategy Deployment Process (SDP), drives mastery of the Business System toolset, partners with senior executives on OKR setting and cross-functional execution, and develops and certifies internal talent. The role also enables the systematic redesign of enterprise processes through the application of business system methodologies, digital technologies, workflow automation, analytics, and AI, ensuring improvement deliver meaningful gains in productivity, quality, employee experience and business performance.

The role partners closely with executive leadership to translate strategic priorities into measurable outcomes, improve cross-functional execution, eliminate organizational barriers, and ensure the enterprise has the processes, disciplines, and capabilities required to achieve its objectives.

This is a hands-on builder's seat, not a staff advisory role. The successful candidate has personally led 20 or more improvement events and has built that capability in others. Beyond leading improvement initiatives, the Senior Director is accountable for creating a self-sustaining culture of execution excellence by building internal practitioner capability, developing leaders, reducing reliance on external consulting support, and establishing the governance, coaching, and operating disciplines necessary to sustain long-term performance improvement.

Success is measured through improved enterprise performance, stronger execution of strategic priorities, increased organizational capability, finance-validated business results, adoption and maturity of the Viasat Business System, and the organization's ability to continuously improve independent of external resources.

The Sr. Director, Business System Office (how we execute) partners closely with the Director, Enterprise Strategic Initiatives (what we do) and the Director, Enterprise Performance & Reporting (how we measure and communicate success). Together, these three seats operate as one integrated system.

The day-to-day

Strategy Deployment Process (SDP)

• Direct the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of the enterprise Strategy Deployment Process, translating strategic priorities into executable, measurable, and owned actions tied to core business metrics.
• Own the policy deployment methodology end to end: breakthrough objective selection, catch ball and alignment cycles, Hoshin Kanri/X-matrix or equivalent alignment artifacts, action plan development, and the review cadence that keeps plans live rather than shelved.
• Facilitate annual and mid-year strategy deployment sessions with the executive leadership team, business area presidents, and corporate function leaders.
• Ensure vertical alignment from enterprise objectives through business area and functional plans to team-level standard work, and horizontal alignment across functions whose work depends on one another.
• Establish the standard for how strategic objectives are resourced, sequenced, and counter measured when off track.
• Build coaching capability that allows business leaders to run their own SDP cycles with decreasing central support over time.

Business System Tool Mastery

• Own the definition, documentation, and evolution of the Viasat Business System toolset, including Kaizen and rapid improvement events, Daily Management, structured Problem-Solving Process (A3, 8D, or equivalent), Standard Work, Value Stream Mapping, Transactional Process Improvement, 5S, error proofing, and Lean and Growth methodologies.
• Assess organizational maturity against a defined business system maturity model, publish the assessment, and drive targeted capability building where gaps exist.
• Personally lead high-impact improvement events in the business, setting the standard for scoping, preparation, facilitation, follow-through, and results validation.
• Maintain and publish the standard work, templates, playbooks, and event kits that make the tools repeatable without central involvement.
• Continuously evolve the toolset so it fits the actual business portfolio, extending into engineering, software, services, supply chain, and corporate function applications.
• Establish tool selection guidance so teams apply the right method to the right problem rather than defaulting to the most familiar one.
• Define and govern the naming, branding, and internal identity of the business system, and build the communication approach that makes it recognizable and credible across the company.

OKR and Cross-Functional Leadership

• Serve as an advisor to executive leadership on organizational effectiveness and performance improvement opportunities.
• Partner with senior executives across business areas, central functions, and corporate functions , to support the translation of deployed strategic priorities into aligned OKRs with clear ownership and measurable outcomes and help identify and remove operational bottlenecks that cross organizational lines.
• Establish governance mechanisms that ensure business priorities and improvement initiatives are aligned to enterprise strategic objectives and financial commitments.
• Lead cross-functional improvement work where no single leader owns the end-to-end process, and broker the trade-offs required to make the whole flow better rather than optimizing one function at the expense of another.
• Foster a culture of accountability in which commitments are visible, progress is reviewed on a known cadence, and misses generate countermeasures rather than explanations.
• Partner with the Director, Enterprise Performance & Reporting to ensure OKR traceability, metric definitions, and Bowler reporting reflect the improvement work accurately and connect to the financial plan.
• Serve as an objective, credible voice in front of P&L owners when improvement work surfaces uncomfortable findings about process, structure, or performance.

Talent and Culture Development

• Build and own the internal certification model for business system practitioners, including curriculum, certification criteria, event requirements, assessment standards, and recertification.
• Recruit, train, coach, and certify a network of practitioners embedded in the business units, without adding headcount, and grow that network over time.
• Develop and deliver leader-level training so executives and managers can lead improvement rather than sponsoring it from a distance.
• Cultivate a culture of ambitious goal setting, curiosity, structured problem solving, and high performance, and reinforce it through recognition, visible results, and leader standard work.

Transformation and Innovation

• Integrate modern advancements, including digital and AI-enabled transformation, into the operating model, improvement toolset, and performance reporting processes.
• Identify where automation, analytics, and AI can eliminate work rather than accelerate waste, and build the standard for evaluating those opportunities.
• Lead enterprise transformation efforts that change how work is done, not only how it is measured, including process redesign, organizational workflow changes, and system enablement.
• Benchmark externally against recognized business system companies and bring back practices that fit Viasat's business rather than copying wholesale.
• Own the replication mechanism so proven improvements spread across sites, functions, and business areas instead of being rediscovered repeatedly.

Results, Sustainment, and Financial Linkage

• Ensure improvement work is scoped against real business problems with quantified, finance-validated benefit targets.
• Partner with FP&A and the Director, Enterprise Performance & Reporting on benefit validation and validated savings from forecast.
• Own the sustainment standard so gains will hold after an event closes, including control plans, ownership handoff, and audit cadence.
• Report business system results, maturity, and bench depth to the executive leadership team on a defined cadence.

Scope, Communication, and Influence

• Operate at a high level of autonomy with enterprise-wide scope, accountable for the credibility and adoption of the business system across all business areas and corporate functions.
• Communicate the purpose, method, and results of the business system clearly to audiences ranging from the executive leadership team to individual contributors on the floor.
• Represent Viasat's business system externally where appropriate and build the internal narrative that sustains commitment through leadership changes and business cycles.
• Direct people‑management responsibility is required, including leading professional staff and influencing a distributed practitioner network that does not report to this role.

What you'll need

Experience and Education

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, operations, business, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.
• 12 to 15 years of progressive experience in continuous improvement, operational excellence, or business system leadership, including 5 or more years at an enterprise or multi‑business‑unit scope.
• Personally led 20+ improvement events (Kaizen, rapid improvement, value stream, or transactional process improvement) as the facilitator, not as a sponsor or observer.
• Demonstrated experience building capability in others: designing curriculum, training and certifying practitioners, and creating a self‑sustaining internal bench.
• Direct experience inside a mature, named business system environment (for example Danaher DBS, Fortive FBS, Roper, Ingersoll Rand, Honeywell HOS, Toyota Production System lineage, or equivalent) is strongly preferred.
• Experience deploying Strategy Deployment or Hoshin Kanri at an enterprise level, including facilitating executive-level planning sessions.
• 5 or more years of people leadership experience, including leading experienced professionals and coaching senior leaders.
• Track record of improvement work with measurable, finance-validated financial impact that was sustained after the project team disbanded.
• Experience transitioning from external consultants to internal ownership is strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with satcom, space networks, defense technology, or a comparably complex engineering and services environment strongly preferred.

Technical and Functional Skills

• Deep, hands‑on command of Lean and continuous improvement methods: Kaizen, value stream mapping, standard work, daily management, 5S, error proofing, pull and flow, and transactional process improvement.
• Strong structured problem‑solving discipline (A3, 8D, PDCA, DMAIC) and the ability to teach it rather than only apply it.
• Strong knowledge of Strategy Deployment and Hoshin methods, including X‑matrix construction, catchball, breakthrough objective selection, and countermeasure management.
• Fluency with OKR frameworks, leading versus lagging indicators, Bowler reporting, SQDICP boards, Obeya and visual management.
• Financial acumen