The Director of Operations provides firm-wide operational leadership for production planning, staff utilization, capacity management, workflow execution, and continuous improvement. This role converts the sales pipeline, accepted engagements, recurring work, client commitments, and available staff capacity into actionable weekly production plans and ensures that work is appropriately assigned, completed on time, and managed within budget.
The Director of Operations is the primary operational owner of the firm’s utilization ratio and is accountable for maximizing productive and billable capacity without compromising service quality, professional standards, employee sustainability, or the client experience.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Utilization, Capacity, and Workforce Planning
- Establish and monitor utilization expectations by role and level in coordination with executive leadership and Practice Leads.
- Track individual, departmental, and firm-wide utilization; identify underutilization, overcapacity, overtime risk, and skills gaps; and initiate corrective action.
- Maintain a forward-looking capacity forecast reflecting recurring engagements, new business, tax-season demands, project work, deadlines, PTO, employee departures, hiring plans, expected sales, and staff capabilities.
- Balance workloads based on qualifications, experience, complexity, industry knowledge, client needs, deadlines, budgets, current capacity, and employee-development goals.
- Provide data-supported recommendations regarding hiring, outsourcing, reassignment, staffing levels, and other resource needs.
Weekly Production Planning and Daily Execution
- Lead the weekly production-planning process with senior management and Practice Leads, reviewing new engagements, open tax returns and client matters, project work, prior-week carryover, upcoming deadlines, client priorities, employee availability, PTO, capacity constraints, and high-priority matters.
- Finalize weekly staff schedules and ensure each professional employee has specific assignments, expected hours, priorities, budgets, completion dates, and reviewers, when applicable.
- Monitor progress throughout the week; identify work that has not started, is behind schedule, is approaching budget, or is at risk of missing a deadline.
- Reallocate qualified resources, adjust schedules, remove operational blockers, coordinate additional support, and escalate technical or professional issues to the appropriate Practice Lead.
- Conduct a weekly completion review comparing planned and completed work, actual and budgeted hours, utilization, deadlines, carryover, production exceptions, client delays, and capacity issues.
- Require documented explanations and approved completion plans for unfinished work rather than allowing assignments to roll forward without accountability.
New Business and Engagement Handoff
- Own the operational handoff from accepted quote or engagement to production, ensuring scope, required work, skills, staffing, budgets, responsibilities, deadlines, and review requirements are confirmed.
- Ensure accepted engagements are promptly entered into the firm’s workflow, assigned to qualified staff, placed on schedules, and advanced to production without unnecessary delay.
- Coordinate with Sales, Client Experience, Account Management, Billing, and Practice Leads to align client commitments with capacity and delivery requirements.
Budget, Workflow, and Bottleneck Management
- Compare budgeted hours with actual hours and investigate material variances arising from scope, efficiency, staffing, complexity, workflow, or client delays.
- Coordinate with Billing regarding financial implications and with Account Managers or Practice Leads regarding scope, technical, or client issues.
- Identify and resolve production bottlenecks, including information gaps, review delays, unclear assignments, administrative burden, technology problems, capacity shortages, client communication delays, and unbalanced workloads.
- Determine and implement the appropriate operational response, including reassignment, process improvement, management escalation, client follow-up, technology support, training, or staffing adjustments.
Operational Systems and Continuous Improvement
- Develop, document, and improve standard operating procedures, workflow standards, scheduling practices, case-management procedures, training materials, and recurring processes.
- Identify opportunities to automate work, eliminate unnecessary administrative activity, strengthen operational systems, and improve the amount of high-quality billable work produced with available resources.
- Partner with IT and system owners to improve the reliability, visibility, and effectiveness of operational tools and data.
- Measure the impact of operational changes and make further adjustments based on results.
Performance Accountability and Timekeeping
- Work with managers to promote accountability for assigned work, deadlines, accurate time entry, complete case notes, utilization expectations, reasonable budgets, prompt issue escalation, and compliance with production procedures.
- Use recorded time to evaluate utilization, productivity, work allocation, capacity, and operational performance.
- Provide management and Human Resources with objective operational performance information while respecting the direct manager’s authority over personnel matters.
- Coordinate with Human Resources on timekeeping policy and employee compliance, with Billing on billing validation and budget analysis, and with the CFO on financial reporting and controls.
Management Reporting and Business Insight
- Maintain regular reporting on utilization, billable and scheduled capacity, planned-versus-completed production, open and overdue work, budget variances, deadline risks, staffing needs, reassignments, bottlenecks, and productivity trends.
- Produce weekly dashboards addressing utilization, capacity, work completion, open or overdue matters, and material budget exceptions.
- Produce monthly trend reporting addressing revenue-producing capacity, departmental productivity, staffing forecasts, and operational efficiency.
- Interpret operational data, identify emerging risks and trends, recommend action, and follow through on approved changes rather than merely reporting historical results.
Operational Continuity
- When an employee leaves or becomes unavailable, identify affected clients and projects, determine outstanding work, reassign responsibilities, update schedules, and mitigate deadline and service risks.
- Coordinate operational transition activities with Human Resources, IT, managers, and client-facing personnel to minimize disruption.
Qualifications & Experience
Required
- Bachelor’s degree in business administration, operations, accounting, finance, management, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.
- Seven or more years of progressively responsible operations experience, including leadership responsibility in an accounting firm, tax firm, professional-services organization, or similarly deadline-driven environment.
- Demonstrated experience with utilization management, capacity planning, resource allocation, workflow management, project delivery, and operational reporting.
- Strong analytical ability, business judgment, and proficiency using workflow, practice-management, timekeeping, reporting, and productivity systems.
- Proven ability to influence across functions, make timely operational decisions, manage competing priorities, and hold teams accountable while maintaining constructive working relationships.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, sound discretion, and the ability to handle confidential and sensitive information.
Preferred
- Advanced degree or relevant operations, project-management, process-improvement, or accounting credential.
- Experience with accounting, tax, CAS, payroll/HR, advisory, or outsourced CFO service lines.
- Experience leading automation, systems implementation, process redesign, or organizational scaling initiatives.
Core Competencies
- Operational leadership and accountability
- Capacity planning and resource optimization
- Data analysis and business insight
- Workflow and project management
- Process improvement and systems thinking
- Cross-functional collaboration and conflict resolution
- Decisiveness, organization, and follow-through
- Client-service and quality orientation
- Change leadership and employee development
Job Type: Full-time
Pay: $115,000.00 - $145,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- 401(k) matching
- Dental insurance
- Health insurance
- Paid time off
- Vision insurance
Education:
Experience:
- progressively responsible operations: 7 years (Required)
- accounting firm or professional service: 5 years (Required)
License/Certification:
- project management certification (Preferred)
Ability to Commute:
- Rockville, MD 20852 (Required)
Ability to Relocate:
- Rockville, MD 20852: Relocate before starting work (Required)
Work Location: In person
