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operations team leader

title: Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Operations Team Leader
salary: $70,000 - $110,000
categories: [Operations, Management, Logistics, Customer Service, Supply Chain]
description: A comprehensive overview of the key responsibilities, required technical skills and professional background for the role of a Operations Team Leader.
Operations Team Leader — hands-on operations leadership role focused on driving operational excellence, meeting KPIs, coaching high‑performing teams and delivering process improvements. Ideal for candidates with strong people management, data-driven decision making, and experience with ERP/WMS/CRM systems. Keywords: operations team leader, operations manager, process improvement, Lean, Six Sigma, KPI, workforce management, supply chain, logistics, customer service.

🎯 Role Definition

The Operations Team Leader is a frontline leader responsible for planning, executing and continuously improving day‑to‑day operations across customer service, fulfillment, logistics or production teams. This role blends people leadership (coaching, performance management, hiring) with operational rigor (SOPs, capacity planning, KPI ownership, cost control) and cross‑functional influence (IT, supply chain, product, sales). The Operations Team Leader ensures teams consistently meet SLAs, quality standards and business objectives while identifying and delivering process and automation improvements to scale operations.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Operations Specialist / Senior Associate
  • Team Lead or Shift Supervisor in fulfillment, customer service, or production
  • Process Improvement Analyst or Workforce Planner

Advancement To:

  • Operations Manager / Senior Operations Manager
  • Site/Regional Operations Manager
  • Head of Operations / Director of Operations

Lateral Moves:

  • Supply Chain Planner / Lead
  • Continuous Improvement Lead
  • Program or Project Manager (Operations Transformation)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead, coach and develop a cross‑functional frontline team (e.g., 8–25 direct and indirect reports) to consistently meet daily and weekly KPIs such as on‑time delivery, order accuracy, cycle time, average handle time and first contact resolution.
  • Own operational performance for assigned shifts or sites by creating staffing models, managing schedules, and reallocating resources during demand spikes to meet SLAs while controlling labor cost and overtime.
  • Create, maintain and enforce standard operating procedures (SOPs), checklists and escalation playbooks; drive adherence through training, audits and corrective action plans.
  • Monitor real‑time dashboards and end‑of‑day reports (Power BI/Tableau/Excel) to analyze trends, identify root causes of performance gaps and implement targeted corrective actions.
  • Lead continuous improvement initiatives using Lean, Six Sigma or Kaizen methodologies to reduce waste, shorten cycle times and improve throughput and quality.
  • Conduct regular 1:1 coaching, performance reviews and development planning to raise team capability and retention; implement measurable performance improvement plans when needed.
  • Manage onboarding and training programs for new hires, including job shadowing, SOP sign‑off and competency assessments to reduce time‑to‑proficiency.
  • Partner with Workforce Planning and HR to forecast hiring needs, run recruitment cycles, support interviewing and ensure staffing aligns with business growth.
  • Lead incident and escalation management for customer complaints, production outages or logistics disruptions; coordinate cross‑functional response and communicate status to stakeholders.
  • Drive cost control and efficiency programs — identify opportunities to reduce spoilage, returns, rework and transportation costs while preserving service quality.
  • Manage day‑to‑day vendor and third‑party logistics relationships on performance, contractual obligations and scorecards; escalate vendor performance issues and coordinate remediation.
  • Coordinate inventory control activities including cycle counts, reconciliation, discrepancy investigations and reporting to minimize stock variances and shrinkage.
  • Facilitate cross‑functional planning with product, sales and supply chain teams to prioritize backlog, balance capacity and support new product or promotion launches.
  • Lead small to medium projects such as process automation, WMS/ERP configuration changes or new tool rollouts; define requirements, run UAT, and train end users.
  • Ensure compliance with regulatory, safety and quality standards (OSHA, ISO, internal policies) by conducting safety walks, audits and corrective action tracking.
  • Establish and track OKRs and SLA targets; prepare weekly/monthly executive summaries and present performance updates and improvement plans to senior leadership.
  • Implement quality control checkpoints, root cause analysis, CAPA and continuous monitoring to reduce defects, returns and customer escalations.
  • Plan and execute capacity planning, seasonal staffing and contingency planning for peak periods (holiday, promotions) to maintain service levels.
  • Use data and SQL or analytics tools to mine process data, generate insights and build predictive models for demand forecasting and workforce scheduling.
  • Lead change management efforts by communicating vision, building stakeholder alignment, delivering training and measuring adoption for any operational change.
  • Maintain a culture of high accountability, safety and continuous learning; create recognition programs and drive employee engagement and retention activities.
  • Support financial planning by contributing to budget setting, expense tracking and identifying areas for cost avoidance or savings.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Assist with audit preparation and respond to operational audit findings with corrective action plans.
  • Support product and process pilots, logging feedback and measurable outcomes to inform broader rollouts.
  • Facilitate cross‑site knowledge sharing and best practice documentation to scale successful operational improvements across regions.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Operations management and team leadership in high‑volume environments (fulfillment, customer service, manufacturing or logistics).
  • KPI ownership: designing, tracking and improving SLAs, OTIF, AHT, cycle time, accuracy and productivity metrics.
  • Workforce management: staffing models, scheduling, forecasting and capacity planning.
  • Data analysis: advanced Excel (pivot tables, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, Power Query), SQL for ad‑hoc queries, and experience with BI tools (Power BI, Tableau).
  • ERP/WMS/CRM systems experience (e.g., SAP, NetSuite, Oracle, Manhattan WMS, Salesforce) and system change request handling.
  • Process improvement methodologies: Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen or continuous improvement certification preferred.
  • Project management: scoping, requirement gathering, UAT, rollout and change management (Agile or Waterfall).
  • Vendor/3PL management and contract KPI tracking.
  • Inventory control and reconciliation processes including cycle counts and shrinkage mitigation.
  • Reporting and dashboard development with the ability to translate metrics into action plans.
  • Basic financial acumen: budgeting, cost analysis and P&L awareness.
  • Knowledge of compliance and safety requirements relevant to the operation (OSHA, GDPR for data handling where applicable).

Soft Skills

  • Strong people leadership and coaching skills with a focus on developing others and building resilient teams.
  • Excellent verbal and written communication; able to present complex operational data to stakeholders and senior leaders.
  • Problem-solving and analytical mindset with a bias for action and measurable outcomes.
  • Stakeholder management and cross‑functional collaboration skills.
  • Prioritization and time management in fast‑paced, ambiguous environments.
  • Conflict resolution and de‑escalation skills for handling customer and team escalations.
  • Change agent mentality: persuasive, resilient and organized when leading operational change.
  • Attention to detail while maintaining big‑picture operational strategy.
  • High emotional intelligence and a commitment to creating an inclusive team culture.
  • Coaching orientation: ability to give candid feedback and build development plans.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Operations Management, Supply Chain, Industrial Engineering or related field (or equivalent work experience).

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor’s + professional certifications (Lean Six Sigma Green/Black Belt, PMP, APICS/CPIM/CSCP) or MBA preferred.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Operations Management
  • Supply Chain / Logistics
  • Industrial or Systems Engineering
  • Business Administration
  • Data Analytics / Information Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–7 years of progressive experience in operations, logistics, customer service or manufacturing with at least 1–2 years in a supervisory or team lead role.

Preferred: 5+ years of operations experience with demonstrated success leading teams, owning KPIs, driving process improvement projects and working with ERP/WMS systems. Experience managing seasonal peaks, vendor relationships and implementing automation or system changes is highly desirable.

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