About the job
Company: Persist Brands
Job Title: Head of Operations
Location: Remote
Employment Type: Full-time / Contract
Compensation: Final compensation will be determined based on the candidate's qualifications, relevant experience, skills, location, internal equity, and other business-related factors
Reporting to: Founder / CFO
About Persist Brands
Persist Brands is a fast-growing direct-to-consumer eCommerce company that builds and scales aggressive direct-response consumer brands across categories like apparel, beauty, wellness, and lifestyle. We combine performance marketing, creative testing, data analysis, and operational execution to turn consumer products into scalable offers.
We are a performance-driven company built around speed, data, creative testing, and operational execution. Our team launches and scales products through paid media, high-converting funnels, strong creative strategy, customer retention, and disciplined backend operations.
At Persist Brands, we move fast, test aggressively, and optimize constantly. We are looking for ambitious, resourceful, and highly accountable people who want to join a lean, growth-focused company where their work has a direct impact on revenue, customer experience, and long-term brand value.
The Role
We are looking for a Head of Operations to oversee supplier management, compliance, regulatory requirements, and operational execution for a fast-growing eCommerce dropshipping business.
This role will own the end-to-end supplier lifecycle, from supplier identification and due diligence through onboarding, product approval, ongoing performance management, compliance monitoring, and offboarding.
The Head of Operations will work closely with Marketing, Payments, Finance, Customer Support, Legal/Compliance, and other teams to ensure that suppliers and products are operationally ready, commercially viable, compliant, and capable of supporting the company's growth.
The ideal candidate is a hands-on operator who can build processes from the ground up, manage multiple suppliers, identify operational and regulatory risks, and create scalable controls for a growing dropshipping business.
What You'll Do:
1. Supplier Identification & Sourcing
- Identify and evaluate potential dropshipping suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and fulfillment partners.
- Build and maintain a qualified supplier pipeline across relevant product categories and markets.
- Evaluate suppliers based on pricing, product quality, fulfillment capabilities, shipping timelines, geographic coverage, scalability, reputation, and compliance.
- Conduct supplier due diligence before approval and onboarding.
- Negotiate supplier pricing, SLAs, lead times, return policies, shipping requirements, and other operational terms.
- Maintain an approved supplier database and supplier documentation repository.
2. Supplier Onboarding & Due Diligence
- Own the end-to-end supplier onboarding process.
- Establish supplier onboarding checklists, approval criteria, documentation requirements, and workflows.
- Collect and validate business, tax, banking, product, certification, and other required supplier documentation.
- Conduct appropriate supplier background and risk checks.
- Ensure suppliers meet internal standards before products are approved for sale.
- Coordinate supplier setup across internal systems, CRM, payment platforms, and other operational tools.
- Establish clear onboarding SLAs and ensure timely supplier activation.
3. Supplier Lifecycle Management
- Manage suppliers throughout the complete lifecycle: Identification → Due Diligence → Onboarding → Product Approval → Activation → Performance Management → Review → Renewal/Offboarding.
- Establish supplier performance standards and SLAs covering fulfillment, shipping, product quality, order accuracy, returns, refunds, communication, and compliance.
- Monitor supplier performance and proactively address recurring issues.
- Conduct periodic supplier reviews and risk assessments.
- Develop corrective action plans for underperforming suppliers.
- Recommend supplier replacement, suspension, or termination when performance or compliance standards are not met.
- Maintain backup suppliers for critical products and categories.
4. Product & Regulatory Compliance
- Establish processes to ensure products and suppliers meet applicable regulatory and marketplace requirements.
- Review and maintain required product documentation, certifications, safety information, labeling requirements, and supplier declarations where applicable.
- Ensure appropriate compliance checks are completed before products are introduced to the store.
- Partner with Legal/Compliance or external advisors on regulatory requirements across relevant markets.
- Monitor regulatory changes that may impact products, suppliers, claims, shipping, returns, consumer protection, or eCommerce operations.
- Maintain audit-ready records of supplier and product compliance documentation.
- Identify and escalate potential regulatory, product, supplier, or consumer risks.
5. Product Approval & Compliance Controls
- Establish a structured product approval process before products are marketed or sold.
- Coordinate with Marketing to ensure product claims, descriptions, pricing, promotions, and marketing materials are supported by appropriate supplier/product information.
- Flag products with elevated regulatory, quality, safety, intellectual-property, or customer-risk concerns.
- Maintain documentation supporting approved products and suppliers.
- Establish processes for periodic review of active products and suppliers.
6. Marketing Collaboration
- Partner closely with Marketing during product research, supplier selection, product launches, and product optimization.
- Provide Marketing with verified supplier and product information.
- Review operational and compliance considerations for new products before launch.
- Support Marketing with supplier capabilities, product availability, lead times, shipping restrictions, and other operational inputs.
- Quickly communicate supplier changes, inventory issues, product discontinuations, or compliance concerns that may affect active campaigns.
- Help ensure marketing activities are aligned with available product documentation and supplier capabilities.
7. Payments & Finance Collaboration
- Work with the Payments team to support supplier, merchant, and payment-related operational requirements.
- Coordinate with Finance on supplier invoices, payments, pricing, refunds, chargebacks, reconciliations, and other supplier-related financial processes.
- Ensure required supplier financial and business documentation is available and current.
- Identify supplier/payment risks and coordinate appropriate mitigation.
- Support investigation and resolution of payment-related supplier issues.
8. Order Fulfillment & Customer Experience
- Monitor supplier fulfillment performance and shipping timelines.
- Establish processes for order exceptions, cancellations, lost shipments, product defects, and fulfillment failures.
- Work with Customer Support to resolve supplier-related customer issues.
- Track returns, refunds, replacements, and supplier responsibility.
- Identify recurring fulfillment or product-quality issues and implement corrective actions.
9. Compliance, Risk & Operational Controls
- Develop and maintain operational controls covering supplier onboarding, product approval, documentation, compliance, and supplier performance.
- Maintain centralized records of supplier agreements, certifications, compliance documents, and performance reviews.
- Conduct periodic supplier and process audits.
- Establish escalation procedures for compliance and operational risks.
- Identify single points of failure and develop appropriate contingency plans.
- Ensure critical suppliers have appropriate backup or replacement options.
10. SOPs, Systems & Process Improvement
- Build and maintain SOPs for supplier sourcing, onboarding, product approval, compliance reviews, supplier management, and offboarding.
- Improve workflows to reduce manual work and supplier onboarding time.
- Maintain accurate supplier data across CRM and internal systems.
- Develop dashboards and reporting to track supplier and operational performance.
- Identify process gaps and implement scalable solutions as the business grows.
What We're Looking For:
- 5–8 years of experience in eCommerce, dropshipping, supplier/vendor management, operations, supply chain, marketplace operations, or a related environment.
- Strong experience in supplier identification, due diligence, onboarding, and lifecycle management.
- Experience managing multiple suppliers across products, markets, or geographies.
- Working knowledge of eCommerce regulatory, product compliance, consumer protection, and supplier compliance requirements.
- Experience developing operational processes, SOPs, controls, and reporting.
- Strong cross-functional experience working with Marketing, Payments, Finance, Customer Support, Legal/Compliance, and Technology teams.
- Strong negotiation, analytical, problem-solving, and stakeholder-management skills.
- Comfortable working in a fast-paced startup environment with evolving processes and priorities.
- Strong Excel/Google Sheets and CRM/system proficiency.
Deal-Breakers
- A hands-on Operations leader who can build structure in a fast-growing dropshipping environment.
- Strong ownership of supplier relationships from sourcing through offboarding.
- High attention to detail around compliance, documentation, regulatory requirements, and operational risk.
- Ability to balance supplier cost, product quality, compliance, fulfillment performance, and business requirements.
- Strong commercial judgment and negotiation skills.
- Ability to work across multiple functions and drive issues to resolution.
- Comfortable building processes rather than simply following established ones.
- Strong sense of accountability, urgency, and operational discipline.
Note:- Pay range provided is for Full-time Employment. If you are a Global candidate and being interviewed for a Contract position, pay range will vary based on region, experience and other business factors. Do not consider same pay range for both Employment types.
Pay: $90,000.00 - $120,000.00 per year
Application Question(s):
- How many years of hands-on eCommerce/supplier operations experience do you have?
- Have you personally sourced, evaluated, and onboarded suppliers? Approximately how many suppliers have you managed?
- What supplier/product compliance and regulatory documentation have you personally handled?
- What supplier KPIs did you own, and how did you handle an underperforming supplier?
- Have you worked cross-functionally with Marketing, Payments, Finance, and Customer Support in managing suppliers/products?
- Have you developed supplier for DTC products? What category?
Work Location: Remote
