A director of operations job description has to say what the person owns across every channel the brand sells through, and which number tells you it is working. At a DTC or CPG brand, that number is usually in-stock rate, landed cost per unit or the working capital tied up in inventory. A posting that lists duties without one of them gives a senior operator nothing to measure the seat against.
A director of operations is the senior operations owner at a consumer brand that helps founders and COOs keep product in stock across every channel without letting landed cost or working capital slip.
The title is rarer than the search volume suggests. Six searches of Constant Hire's candidate database on November 3, 2026 surfaced 26 operations candidates at director or head level. Only 3 of them held the exact title director of operations or operations director. The rest called themselves supply chain, logistics, planning or fulfillment directors, so the posting has to describe the job well enough that those people recognize it.
The template comes first, followed by the decisions that change it: channel mix, category compliance, and the title and reporting line. This job description template is one of a set of ecommerce job description templates for DTC and CPG roles.
Use this director of operations job description as written and replace every bracketed field before you post. The summary table is the short version for internal sign-off. The copy template is the posting itself. Both assume a consumer brand that works with a contract manufacturer, ships through at least one third-party logistics (3PL) provider and tracks inventory by stock keeping unit (SKU).
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Role | Director of Operations, reporting to the COO, CEO or founder |
| What you own | In-stock rate across every channel, landed cost per unit and the working capital tied up in inventory. Owns manufacturing partners, the demand plan, the 3PL network and the operating budget lines for freight, warehousing, packaging and fulfillment |
| What you do not own | Product development, pricing and marketing. Customer service is a toggle in the template below; decide it before you post |
| Team | One to four managers or specialists, such as a planner and a logistics manager, plus external partners |
| Required | Operations ownership at a consumer brand with a comparable SKU count, lead time profile and channel mix. Manufacturing partners and a 3PL managed to a written service level. Builds the forecast and landed cost model personally |
| Preferred | Experience with the retailers, distributors or marketplaces you sell through. ERP implementation. Category compliance experience |
Team size is Constant Hire framing for this tier, not a published benchmark.
The number you ownIn-stock rate across every channel, landed cost per unit, and the working capital tied up in inventory.
Measured byIn-stock rate by channel, landed cost per unit against plan, fulfillment cost per order, weeks of cover, and [retail on-time in-full and chargeback rate, if you sell to retailers].
[One line on what you make and who buys it. One line on the operating shape: SKU count, where it is made, lead times, fulfillment setup and the channels you sell through.]
Give candidates SKU count and lead times and they will know within a line whether they have done this job.What this role does not own[Product development, pricing, marketing]. The role works with all three every week and decides none of them.
Customer service boundary[Customer service sits with [owner], and this role owns the fulfillment failures that create tickets / This role owns customer service end to end].
This role suits an operator who has run the function and wants to build the team underneath it.
State the band in the posting. Director-tier US operations candidates in Constant Hire's candidate data targeted a median base salary of $165,000, with the middle half between $141,250 and $182,500.
Source: Constant Hire candidate data, December 2024 to October 2026, 43 director-tier US operations candidates. Figures are candidate-stated target base salaries, not placement salaries.
A supply chain leader role on the Constant Hire ecommerce jobs board was posted at $140,000 to $160,000 in September 2026. Supply chain director targets run higher at brands where the function drives revenue, and our supply chain manager salary guide breaks them out by tier.
Federal data sits further out. BLS reports a median of $105,770 for general and operations managers in May 2025, with the top 10% earning more than $253,390. BLS has no director of operations category, so read those numbers as an outer boundary for the seat. Keep the salary range tight, too. Across US postings with pay information, Indeed Hiring Lab found the typical advertised range ran about 17% from bottom to top in April 2023, with wider spreads in higher-paid roles.
A director of operations owns the plan and the partners that get product made, stored and shipped across every channel, plus the budget lines that come with them.
At a consumer brand, that work splits four ways. The role manages contract manufacturers and co-packers on minimum order quantities (MOQs), lead times and terms. It runs forecasting and inventory management through a monthly planning meeting, where marketing and retail plans turn into purchase orders. For a hire that has to run a manufacturing transition, see how we found Nysonian's VP of operations.
It holds each 3PL to ship time, accuracy and cost per order. It also carries channel and category compliance, including Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) prep and retailer routing guides. Where planning scope overlaps a supply chain hire, the supply chain manager job description shows the split.
Generic templates list strategic planning, resource allocation, process improvement and operational efficiency. Those describe the job in the abstract. Performance metrics such as in-stock rate and landed cost per unit are what a candidate can actually be held to.
The role usually reports to a COO, CEO or founder and manages a small team of planners and logistics or fulfillment managers. Name the reporting line in the first hundred words of the posting. Senior operators decide whether to apply partly on that basis.
A director of operations sits between the manager who runs day-to-day operations and the VP or chief operating officer who designs the network and the org chart.
| Seat | Usually reports to | Team | Owns |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operations manager | Director, COO or founder | 0 to 2 | Runs purchase orders, the 3PL relationship and inventory counts day to day against someone else's plan |
| Director of operations | COO, CEO or founder | 1 to 4 | The operations plan, partner scorecards and the budget lines for freight, warehousing, packaging and fulfillment |
| VP of operations | COO or founder | 3 to 8 | Network design, inventory planning, supplier terms and hiring the layer below. COO page places this tier at $15M to $50M |
| COO | CEO | 8 to 30 | The operating P&L, the org chart and operating KPIs. COO page places this tier at $50M to $150M+ |
VP and COO rows: Constant Hire COO executive search page. Operations manager and director rows are Constant Hire framing.
The dividing line is decision rights, meaning who signs supplier terms, who approves purchase orders and who hires the layer below. An operations manager runs daily operations against a plan someone else wrote. A director writes that plan and answers for the budgets behind it.
The full COO and VP comparison, including revenue tiers, lives on the COO executive search page. The manager version of this posting is the Operations Manager template on the ecommerce job description templates hub. For where manager scopes split, see operations manager vs supply chain manager vs logistics manager.
Channel mix changes an operations director job description more than the title does. Two brands of the same size can need different hires because one sells through Amazon and the other ships to retail distribution centers.
A DTC and Amazon brand needs FBA inbound planning, prep and labeling, plus inventory allocation between the 3PL and Amazon. A brand selling to retailers or distributors adds purchase orders, electronic data interchange (EDI), routing guides and on-time in-full (OTIF) scorecards. Say which version you are hiring in the posting and keep the matching toggle.
Large retailers score suppliers on whether shipments arrive on time and in full, and they deduct fines or chargebacks when shipments miss. A candidate who has never worked a retailer scorecard or disputed a chargeback is a different hire for a retail-heavy brand, however strong their DTC record. The seats a brand adds as it moves into retail are covered in our CPG team structure guide.
Food brands need Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) and co-packer audit experience. Supplement brands need current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) and certificate of analysis (COA) review before inventory goes out. Beauty brands need ingredient and labeling compliance.
Shelf life and lot tracking change planning as well as quality, because a short-dated SKU limits how far ahead the forecast can buy. Keep the toggle that fits and delete the others.
Across 10 operations searches Constant Hire ran in 2025 and 2026, none was titled director of operations. The titles that were used did not predict the job.
A director of supply chain search came with a brief that described coordinator work. A head of supply chain and operations role reported to an operations lead, which placed it below director scope despite the title. Its budget opened at $110,000 to $115,000, under where the director tier's middle half starts. One VP of operations brief also covered human resources, payroll, company meeting cadence and insurance renewals. That search closed without a hire.
Source: Constant Hire search records, 2025 to 2026, 10 operations searches. Constant Hire candidate database, six searches run November 3, 2026, 116 candidates deduplicated. Directional, not a census.
Write the description for the decision rights the seat carries, then pick the title. If the brief reads like operations coordinator work, post a coordinator role. If it bundles HR and insurance, decide whether you are hiring an operator or a generalist before you call it a VP seat.
Candidates price the seat they are asked to fill, and our VP of operations salary guide covers how that shows up in targets. For a senior operations search run across a 9-figure DTC portfolio, see the Hollow Socks VP of Operations search.
A director of operations job description loses strong candidates fastest when it asks for credentials in place of operating shape. Five operations job descriptions from recent Constant Hire searches, for roles from associate to head of operations, show where the habit sits. None required a degree or a named ERP. Four of the five set a minimum years of experience.
Requiring an MBA, or any master's degree, screens on paper. BLS notes that top executives of large corporations may have a master of business administration. That says little about a brand with a few dozen SKUs. A bachelor's degree in business administration or supply chain management can sit under preferred.
Enterprise or national retailer operations experience often comes without gross margin ownership on a physical product. Our COO executive search page makes the same point about enterprise pedigree: enterprise operations experience on its own rarely transfers to a brand.
A named enterprise resource planning (ERP) or warehouse management system (WMS) screens out operators fluent in a different stack. The two job descriptions above that named systems at all listed them as a bonus. Forecasting carries across systems, so list yours under nice to have.
Project Management Professional (PMP), Six Sigma and Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP) credentials belong under nice to have. Roughly 20% of senior supply chain candidates in Constant Hire's database hold an APICS certification such as CSCP, so a credential is worth weighting without making it a filter. None of them tells you whether someone has held a co-packer to a lead time.
Stacking years of experience measures tenure, and it was the most common requirement in the sample. The four consumer-brand descriptions also named what actually screens: the channels, the manufacturer setup, shelf life or EDI. The real requirement is a comparable SKU count, lead time profile and channel mix.
A director of operations job description already contains the interview scorecard. It names the number the role owns and the 90-day outcomes. Ask how the candidate moved in-stock rate or landed cost at a comparable brand, and what they would need in 90 days to move the same number here. Constant Hire's first-interview filters for COO searches also work a tier down. Ask which SKUs they cut or discontinued last year and what it did to weeks of cover or landed cost. Ask which operating number they started reporting to the founder or COO that wasn't there before, and what decision it changed. Judge leadership by the people they actually hired.
Set the budget before the first interview using our VP of operations salary data.
Constant Hire recruits operations leaders for DTC and CPG brands, with first interviews in 5 business days for roles below VP. For a VP or COO seat, COO executive search runs to first interviews in 10 business days, and you can book a call to scope either search.
Start with the number the role owns, usually in-stock rate, landed cost per unit and the working capital tied up in inventory. Then add the reporting line, the team, the channels and manufacturing partners in scope, four requirements and a salary band. At a DTC or CPG brand, also name the channel compliance and category rules the role carries.
A COO owns the operating P&L, designs the org chart and manages the leaders below, and Constant Hire's COO tier map places the seat at brands from about $50M in revenue. A director of operations owns the operations plan and its budget lines, usually reports to the COO or CEO, and runs a small team.
Usually not at the same time. Constant Hire's tier map places COO hires at brands from about $50M in revenue, and below that one operations leader typically owns the function. Our COO executive search page names the clearest trigger for adding a COO above the director: a founder who still settles disputes between supply chain, customer service and finance every week. Our guide to hiring a COO covers the readiness checks before you add that seat.
An operations manager runs the daily work: purchase orders, the 3PL relationship and inventory counts. A director of operations owns the plan and the budget behind it, sets the scorecard for manufacturing and fulfillment partners, and manages the people doing the daily work. If the role executes someone else's plan with no reports, write a manager description.
First interviews in 5 business days,
or 10 for executive searches.
