Senior Manager, BPO Operations

Owl Ventures; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

401(k) with company matching

Flexible time off

Stock options

Opportunity to help children

Job summary

Amira Learning is hiring its first Senior Manager, BPO Operations & AI Automation to own the day-to-day performance of our offshore support function. You will manage a 10-person BPO team, hold our vendor partner accountable to SLAs, run a rigorous QA cadence, and ensure every educator and IT administrator who contacts Amira gets a fast, accurate, and empathetic response.

You will also serve as Amira’s operational champion for AI-assisted support workflows, identifying where automation and

Qualifications

• 5+ years managing offshore or nearshore BPO vendor relationships in a SaaS or tech-enabled services environment.
• Proven track record running QA frameworks, calibration cadences, and agent performance management for contractor teams you don’t directly employ.
• Experience owning support operations reporting: daily summaries, weekly performance reports, and monthly SLA analysis.
• Comfortable navigating matrix organizations.
• Hands-on experience with CRM/ticketing platforms (Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom).
• Practical familiarity with AI-assisted support tools or support workflow automation.

Responsibilities

• Own vendor performance, team quality, SLA attainment, and the growing portfolio of workflows that are making our support operation faster and smarter.
• Lead QA and calibration cadences and monitor agent performance.
• Build and ship AI-driven support workflows and MCP integrations with internal teams.

Skills

Vendor management

QA frameworks

AI tooling

BPO operations

Escalation handling

Tools

Zendesk

Freshdesk

Intercom

Job description

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Senior Manager, BPO Operations

Full Time Professional US

30+ days ago Requisition ID: 1132

Salary Range: $110,000.00 To $150,000.00 Annually

Job Title: Sr. Manager BPO Operations & AI Automation

Location: Remote

Employment Type: Full-Time

About Us:

Amira Learning accelerates literacy outcomes by delivering the latest reading and neuroscience with AI. As the leader in third-generation edtech, Amira listens to students read out loud, assesses mastery, helps teachers supplement instruction and delivers 1:1 tutoring. Validated by independent university and SEA efficacy research, Amira is the only AI literacy platform proven to achieve gains surpassing 1:1 human tutoring, consistently delivering effect sizes over 0.4.

Rooted in over thirty years of research, Amira is the first, foremost, and only proven Intelligent Assistant for teachers and AI Reading Tutor for students. The platform serves as a school district’s Intelligent Growth Engine, driving instructional coherence by unifying assessment, instruction, and tutoring around the chosen curriculum.

Unlike any other edtech tool, Amira continuously identifies each student’s skill gaps and collaborates with teachers to build lesson plans aligned with district curricula. Teachers can finally differentiate instruction with evidence and ease, and students get the 1:1 practice they specifically need, whether they are excelling or working below grade level.

Trusted by more than 2,000 districts and working in partnership with twelve state education agencies, Amira is helping 3.5 million students worldwide become motivated and masterful readers.

Job Summary:

Amira Learning is hiring its first Sr. Manager, BPO Operations & AI Automation to own the day-to-day performance of our offshore support function and build the AI-powered automation infrastructure that makes it dramatically more efficient. This is a hybrid role: 60% BPO operations, 40% hands-on AI/automation building. You will manage a 10-person BPO team, hold our vendor partner accountable to SLAs, run a rigorous QA cadence, and ensure every educator and IT administrator who contacts Amira gets a fast, accurate, and empathetic response. You will also be the person who personally builds the MCP connectors, AI agents, skill libraries, and chatbot improvements that make our support function a leverage point rather than a cost center.

This role is for someone who is equally fluent running a vendor QBR and writing code with Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor. If you are a BPO operations leader who has not yet picked up AI coding tools, this isn't the right seat. If you are an engineer who finds people management tedious, this also isn't the right seat. We are looking for the rare person who genuinely loves both.

Amira Learning is hiring its first Senior Manager, BPO Operations to own the day-to-day performance of our offshore support function. You will manage a 10-person BPO team, hold our vendor partner accountable to SLAs, run a rigorous QA cadence, and ensure every educator and IT administrator who contacts Amira gets a fast, accurate, and empathetic response. You will also serve as Amira’s operational champion for AI-assisted support workflows, identifying where automation and intelligent tooling can improve resolution quality and team efficiency, and working with internal partners to develop those capabilities.

Essential Functions:

You will own vendor performance, team quality, SLA attainment, and the growing portfolio of workflows that are making our support operation faster and smarter. If you thrive on operational clarity, hold high standards for team execution, and get energized by bringing AI tools into real-world support workflows, this role was built for you.

Day-to-Day Offshore Team Management

• Serve as the primary operational point of contact for the BPO vendor, managing the day-to-day performance of a 10-person dedicated support team
• Run weekly team syncs, performance check-ins, and escalation reviews with the vendor’s Account Manager and QA Lead
• Monitor agent-level performance against QA scorecards; identify coaching opportunities and coordinate remediation with the vendor
• Manage agent approval workflows, personnel change requests, and onboarding of new or replacement agents
• Coordinate surge staffing plans aligned to the K-12 academic calendar (mid-July-September peak, January MOY, March-May EOY) and low-staffing redeployment windows
• Handle direct customer-facing conversations with district IT administrators when issues require escalation beyond the BPO team
• Own SLA performance tracking across first response time, resolution time by priority tier (P1-P4), CSAT, FCR, escalation rate, and QA score
• Conduct monthly performance review meetings with vendor leadership; issue and track corrective action plans when SLAs are missed
• Administer financial performance levers: document SLA failures, calculate penalty credits, and flag bonus-qualifying months per contract terms
• Prepare and deliver daily operational summaries, weekly performance reports, and monthly comprehensive reports to the Director of Scaled Success
• Lead Quarterly Business Reviews with the vendor, including trend analysis, voice-of-customer synthesis, and forward-looking improvement plans

Quality Assurance & Continuous Improvement

• Own the QA sampling framework: ensure minimum 10% interaction review monthly, with targeted reviews for low quality responses and escalations
• Facilitate monthly calibration sessions with the vendor QA Lead to maintain inter-rater reliability and scorecard consistency
• Analyze top contact drivers monthly; surface root cause findings and translate them into actionable knowledge base updates and process improvements
• Partner with Enablement and Product teams to keep the support knowledge base current as the Amira platform evolves
• Monitor ticket reopen rates, chat abandonment, and escalation rates; proactively identify and address emerging quality issues
• Partner with Engineering to elevate bugs effectively and quickly; while keeping all stakeholders aligned

AI & Automation in Support Operations

• Build and own MCP connectors wiring AI tools into our operational systems (Zendesk, Slack, Salesforce, Google Drive, ChurnZero), enabling AI agents to act on real data rather than analyze it in isolation
• Write automation code using Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, or equivalent AI coding tools as a daily working practice - not as an occasional experiment
• Design and ship multi-step AI agents that handle defined support workflows end-to-end (e.g., rostering issue triage, FERPA-compliant ticket categorization, escalation routing)
• Update and tune the Amira customer-facing chatbot, including prompt engineering, knowledge base improvements, and continuous evaluation of containment and deflection rates
• Build a skill library of reusable AI instruction sets (SKILL.md files, custom GPTs, Cursor rules, or equivalents) that the BPO team and internal partners can use without your direct involvement
• Define and enforce human-in-the-loop quality standards for AI-generated responses, ensuring guardrails are in place given FERPA obligations and the sensitivity of educator communications
• Track AI deflection rates, containment rates, and handle time impact ; present findings in weekly and monthly reporting

Compliance & Data Governance

Ensure FERPA and COPPA compliance across all vendor operations: agent training certification, least-privilege data access, audit log oversight, and incident notification protocols

Own agent background check and approval workflows for all personnel with access to student PII

What Success Looks Like

In your first 90 days:

• You have a clear picture of current SLA performance, open gaps, and the vendor’s operational strengths and weaknesses
• You are running the weekly vendor operating rhythm independently: syncs, QA reviews, escalation tracking
• You are fluent in Amira’s product suite, user personas, and the K-12 needs
• You have inventoried the automation tools currently in use and have a point of view on what’s working and what’s missing
• You have personally shipped at least one working MCP connector or AI agent in our environment, with measurable impact (deflection lift, handle time reduction, or hours of manual work eliminated)

By end of Year 1:

• Answer accuracy is sustained across the full academic year
• First Contact Resolution rate is at or above 70%
• SLA compliance is tracked, reported, and managed without manual intervention from the Director
• You have shipped at least three production AI agents or MCP integrations actively in use by the BPO team or Amira's customers
• The Amira chatbot's containment rate has measurably improved under your ownership
• A documented skill library exists and is actively used by the BPO team and internal partners
• The vendor relationship is operating as a genuine partnership that is proactive, data-driven, and continuously improving

Qualifications (Education and Experience):

• 5+ years managing offshore or nearshore BPO vendor relationships in a SaaS or tech-enabled services environment, including SLA governance and vendor performance management
• Proven track record running QA frameworks, calibration cadences, and agent performance management for contractor teams you don’t directly employ
• Experience owning support operations reporting: daily summaries, weekly performance reports, monthly SLA analysis, and QBR facilitation
• Comfortable navigating matrix organizations
• Hands-on experience with CRM/ticketing platforms (Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom, or equivalent)
• Practical familiarity with AI-assisted support tools or support workflow automation

AI & Automation:

• MCP connectors or equivalent integration work — you have wired AI tools into operational systems (Slack, Zendesk, Salesforce, Drive, or similar) and can describe what you built
• Daily working fluency with AI coding tools — Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Codex, or equivalent. You build with these, not just experiment.
• At least one shipped AI agent or automation that is actively used by others — not a weekend project on your laptop. Something real people depend on.
• Chatbot or LLM application experience — you have tuned prompts, managed a knowledge base, or improved an LLM-powered customer interaction in production
• Reusable instruction sets — you have built SKILL.md files, custom GPTs, Cursor rules, system prompt libraries, or equivalents that others on your team have used

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in K-12 EdTech, education assessment, or a product serving teachers, administrators, or district IT staff
• Direct experience deploying or managing AI-assisted support tooling: response co-pilots, auto-tagging, deflection bots, or sentiment analysis
• Experience with ChurnZero, Salesforce, or similar CS/CRM platforms
• Familiarity with FERPA, COPPA, or other student data privacy regulations

Skills & Attributes

• You run a tight operation: you track what matters, hold vendors accountable with data, and don’t let performance drift go unaddressed
• You are a strong people manager of teams you don’t directly employ — you know how to motivate, develop, and hold accountable a contractor team through the vendor relationship
• You are genuinely curious about AI and automation in support workflows — not intimidated by it, not just tolerant of it, but actively interested in how it makes your team better
• You communicate clearly up and across: your reports are clean, your escalations are well-framed, and your Director rarely has to ask for status
• You understand the stakes of K-12: a frustrated district IT admin at 7am in August is not an abstract support ticket — it’s a school full of kids waiting to read

• Medical, dental, and vision benefits
• 401(k) with company matching
• Flexible time off
• Stock option ownership
• The opportunity to help children around the world reach their full potential

Commitment to Diversity:

Amira Learning serves a diverse group of students and educators across the United States and internationally. We believe every student should have access to a high-quality education and that it takes a diverse group of people with a wide range of experiences to develop and deliver a product that meets that goal. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer.

The posted salary range reflects the minimum and maximum base salary the company reasonably expects to pay for this role. Salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Individual pay is based on location, job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, marital status, military service, or any other status protected by law.