Director of Operations Excellence

Director, Operations Excellence, based in Austin, TX

We're looking for a Director of Operations Excellence to build and lead a new centralized organization that drives operational maturity, reliability, and efficiency across Realtor.com's 600+ developer engineering organization. This role will establish and scale our Operations Excellence function, bringing together Platform Reliability Engineering, Quality Engineering Operations, Financial Operations, and Release & Change Operations into a unified, strategic capability.

You will be responsible for defining the vision, strategy, and execution roadmap for operational excellence at scale. This includes building high-performing teams, establishing operational frameworks and standards, driving adoption of operational best practices, and delivering measurable improvements in site reliability, product quality, cost efficiency, and release velocity. You'll partner closely with engineering leadership, product teams, and platform engineering to elevate operational maturity across the entire technology organization.

This is a unique opportunity to build something from the ground up - shaping culture, processes, and systems while strategically integrating existing talent from across Realtor.com into a cohesive, high-impact organization.

What You'll Do

Organization Building & Leadership

• Build and lead the Operations Excellence organization, scaling teams across Platform Reliability Engineering, Quality Engineering Operations, Financial Operations, and Release & Change Operations
• Recruit, develop, and retain top engineering and operations talent while fostering a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and operational discipline
• Establish team structures, roles, and responsibilities that balance centralized expertise with embedded support models
• Integrate existing Realtor.com employees strategically into the new organization, leveraging institutional knowledge while establishing new operational standards
• Create career development frameworks and technical growth paths for operational excellence team members
• Drive cultural transformation around operational excellence, making reliability, quality, and efficiency core engineering values

Strategy & Vision

• Define and communicate the long-term vision and strategy for operational excellence across reliability, quality, cost optimization, and release management
• Establish operational excellence frameworks aligned with industry best practices including SRE principles, DORA metrics, FinOps methodologies, and quality engineering standards
• Set strategic priorities and investment roadmaps across all operational excellence domains
• Partner with executive leadership to align operational excellence initiatives with business objectives and technology strategy
• Drive the integration of AI-augmented operational tools and developer productivity enhancements into operational workflows
• Influence engineering and product roadmaps to prioritize operational health, reliability improvements, and technical debt reduction

Operational Execution & Delivery

• Own operational KPIs and SLAs across site reliability, quality metrics, cloud cost efficiency, and release management performance
• Drive measurable improvements in MTTR, change failure rates, incident reduction, deployment frequency, and cost optimization targets
• Establish governance models and operational review cadences with engineering leadership to maintain visibility and accountability
• Build and maintain operational dashboards, scorecards, and reporting systems that provide real-time visibility into operational health
• Lead incident response coordination, blameless postmortems, and systemic reliability improvement initiatives
• Oversee implementation of operational tooling ecosystems including monitoring platforms, quality tools, cost management systems, and CI/CD pipelines
• Champion chaos engineering, resilience testing, and proactive operational readiness practices

Cross-Functional Partnership & Influence

• Partner with Platform Engineering, Infrastructure, Security, and product teams to embed operational excellence practices into development workflows
• Collaborate with engineering leadership to drive adoption of paved path platforms, standardized tooling, and operational best practices
• Serve as the voice of operational excellence in technology leadership forums, advocating for operational investments and architectural improvements
• Build strong relationships with product portfolio leaders to understand domain-specific operational challenges and tailor support accordingly
• Work closely with Developer Productivity and AI Initiatives teams to integrate operational excellence with broader engineering productivity goals
• Engage with vendor partners and industry peers to stay current on operational excellence trends and emerging practices

Financial & Resource Management

• Own budget planning and resource allocation across the Operations Excellence organization
• Build business cases and secure funding for operational excellence initiatives, tooling investments, and headcount growth
• Drive cloud cost optimization initiatives, working with FinOps team to reduce AWS spend while maintaining reliability and performance
• Demonstrate ROI on operational excellence investments through metrics on incident reduction, deployment velocity, quality improvements, and cost savings
• Manage vendor relationships and contract negotiations for operational tooling and services

How We Work

We balance creativity and innovation on a foundation of in-person collaboration. For most roles, our employees work three or more days in our office in Austin, TX, where they have the opportunity to collaborate in-person, adding richness to our culture and knitting us closer together.

Who You Are

You're a proven engineering leader who knows how to build organizations from the ground up while driving operational transformation at scale. You understand that operational excellence isn't just about tooling—it's about culture, discipline, and making the right things easy to do. You've led teams through the journey from fragmented operational practices to mature, centralized capabilities.

You're someone who:

• Builds high-trust, high-performance teams that deliver both strategic vision and tactical execution
• Balances technical depth with executive presence, able to debug production incidents and present to C-suite leadership
• Drives change through influence and partnership, not mandates, earning credibility through demonstrated value
• Understands the interconnections between reliability, quality, cost, and velocity—and knows how to optimize across all dimensions
• Thrives in ambiguity and can establish structure, process, and accountability where none exists
• Champions operational discipline while remaining pragmatic about tradeoffs and business priorities

What You'll Bring

• 10+ years in engineering, operations, or platform leadership roles with significant experience in operational excellence domains
• 5+ years leading engineering teams, with proven ability to build, scale, and develop high-performing organizations
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience
• Deep expertise across multiple operational excellence domains: Site Reliability Engineering, Quality Engineering, FinOps/cost optimization, and/or Release Management
• Strong understanding of AI-enhanced operational and development tools and their strategic application
• Demonstrated success establishing operational excellence frameworks, KPIs, and governance models at scale
• Experience with modern operational tooling ecosystems including monitoring and observability platforms (NewRelic, Datadog, Splunk), quality tools (SonarQube, test automation), cost management tools (AWS Cost Explorer, FinOps platforms), and CI/CD systems
• Track record driving measurable improvements in DORA metrics, MTTR, incident reduction, deployment frequency, and operational costs
• Proven ability to influence without authority and drive organizational change across engineering teams
• Strong business acumen with experience building budgets, business cases, and ROI models for operational investments
• Excellent communication and executive presence, with ability to translate operational complexity into business impact

Bonus Points

• Experience building or scaling centralized operational excellence, SRE, or platform engineering organizations from the ground up
• Background in both product engineering and operational roles, bringing empathy for developer experience
• Deep expertise in cloud architecture and AWS operational best practices
• Experience with large-scale incident management, crisis response, and operational resilience programs
• Knowledge of chaos engineering frameworks and resilience testing methodologies
• Familiarity with developer productivity measurement and engineering effectiveness frameworks
• Technical certifications in SRE, cloud architecture, or operational excellence domains
• Experience working in high-growth technology companies or digital marketplace platforms
• Track record publishing thought leadership on operational excellence, SRE practices, or engineering effectiveness