VP of Operations

Billions have been invested into behavioral health innovations over the past years, yet the sum of these efforts have led to close to zero improvement at a population level. Why? Unlike other fields of medicine where there are clear markers for quality (e.g. blood tests for diabetes), behavioral health does not have meaningful quality metrics that can support true value-based care payment rails. The solution to this dire problem is not another app or service, but a novel AI-native infrastructure that realigns stakeholders’ incentives to focus on what matters most: meaningful outcomes for patients. Benchmark is a true category creator that incentives providers to provide better care, reduces costs for payors, and most importantly, prioritizes meaningful results for patients.

Benchmark Health is a public benefit corporation that realizes this mission by helping patients find the right mental health care through triage and navigation. Every patient is paired with a dedicated Advocate who assesses their needs, matches them to the right resources, handles the logistics, and stays with them throughout their journey. The service is offered through partnerships with health systems, primary care providers, and health plans.

In a little over a year, Benchmark has built a growing base of contracted patients and started building the systems to measure the quality of care it delivers. The model is grounded in a simple principle: treat every patient the way you would a family member. Our PCPs trust us so much that many of them refer their own family members to Benchmark’s service. The company was founded by two doctors: Dr. David Mou, a serial entrepreneur, and Dr. Tom Insel, the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health.

Benchmark is entering its next chapter. The founders are both clinicians, and the company has reached the point where it needs a senior operating leader to run the business day to day, build scalable infrastructure, and serve as a strategic thought partner. This role reports directly to the CEO and serves as his operating counterpart, freeing him to focus on clinical strategy, fundraising, and growth. You will own operations and finance end to end and work closely across Clinical Operations, Data, Product, Engineering, alongside an outsourced finance partner. This is a full-time role.

As Head of Operations, you will own the operations, financial discipline, and scaling systems that carry Benchmark through its next stage of growth, while keeping the day to day off the CEO's desk. The work falls into four areas:

Company Operations

• Own day-to-day operations across the company, and build the operating cadence that keeps a growing team aligned.

• Close the gaps that fall between Clinical Operations, Data, and Product, so nothing important sits unowned.

• Own vendor management, and handle legal and compliance on day-to-day matters, escalating only what genuinely needs the founders.

Financial Ownership

• Own the financial model, with a clear view of the metrics that drive the business, managing runway with discipline.

• Partner with the outsourced finance team to keep operations and finance tightly connected, so spending stays tethered to the plan.

• Build hiring and capacity models, and bring them into the same conversation as the financials.

Growth & Value-Based Care Strategy

• Serve as thought leader to CEO and President.

• Build the operational and financial backbone for growth across primary care, health system, and payer partnerships.

• Own the metrics that prove quality and unit economics, the foundation for value-based contracts.

Team & Organization

• Design the org as it scales, and own hiring, leveling, and the people systems that come with a growing team.

• Set the KPIs and operating rhythms that let the team understand how decisions get made, even when leadership is not in the room.

• A senior operating leader: You have built and run operations inside an early-stage company, and you are at home with the ambiguity, the speed, and the gaps that come with the territory. You do not need a playbook handed to you.

• Fluent with numbers and fundraising: You can break a business into its core components, read the business through its metrics, and sit across from investors and a finance team as a peer. You have helped carry a company through a fundraise.

• A builder of teams and systems: You have designed orgs, hired ahead of growth, and put in the cadence and metrics that let a company scale.

• Trusted within the company: You are the person a founder can hand the business to and stop worrying. You know which decisions are yours and which to bring back.

• Drawn to the mission: You want your work to matter, and a company changing how people find mental health care is a mission you’re proud of.

Preferred qualifications:

• 10+ years of operations experience, including a senior operating role at an early-stage startup.

• Comfort with financial modeling, planning, and supporting a fundraise.

• A track record of scaling a company through a growth stage, ideally from seed through Series A or B.

• Experience operating as a senior leader with real autonomy, owning outcomes without close oversight.

• Healthcare or behavioral health experience, and familiarity with value-based care, are a plus.

• Hours: Full-time.

• Compensation: Competitive, commensurate with experience.

• Location: Boston, with the ability to come to the office, is highly preferred.