Operations Lead (Customer Operations)

About the role The Servicing Operations team is the engine room of Thatch – the people who make sure reimbursements land in members' accounts on time, that employers get onboarded and stay paid up, and that the workflows behind every customer interaction work the way they should. It's the work most people never see when it goes well, and the work everything depends on when it doesn't. As Operations Lead, you'll own daily execution across our member and employer ops pods. Work streams like reimbursements, substantiations, Medicare, KYB/KYC, billing collections, and employer churn fall under your domain. You'll also build. The ops function at Thatch is still being shaped: new workstreams need to be stood up, existing ones refined, metrics and SLAs defined, and the infrastructure put in place to track outcomes consistently. You'll be the operational and cultural backbone of the team — coaching specialists, owning escalations, jumping into the queue when it counts, and partnering cross functionally to remove the friction in our customer experience caused by missing or inefficient processes, and to build an ops function ready for the scale ahead. This is a role for leaders who find genuine satisfaction in process design, coaching people into their next chapter, and the operational work that lets a fast-growing benefits platform deliver a great customer experience today and be ready for what comes next. What you'll do Own daily execution across customer operations teams – oversee day-to-day operation of core workstreams: reimbursements, card transaction substantiations, and Medicare on the member side; employer onboarding (KYB/KYC), billing collections, and churn on the employer side. Meet quality and SLA bars, and adapt quickly as volume and complexity grow. Build and mature the operations function – our operations work streams are still being built. You'll develop new processes, refine the ones we have, define the metrics and SLAs that hold the team accountable, and put the infrastructure in place to track outcomes consistently. Drive operational efficiency and unit economics – partner with product, engineering, and tooling teams to automate manual work, fix upstream gaps, and bring our cost-to-serve down. Identify where contractors, vendors, and automation each unlock the most leverage, and own the planning required to handle 10x volume without 10x headcount. Coach and develop your team – invest in specialists' careers, grow the next generation of ops leaders at Thatch, and deliver direct, timely feedback on the accuracy, judgment, and throughput that make ops work great. Drive cross-functional impact on the customer experience – partner with teams across Thatch to address upstream issues, reduce manual workload on the team, and surface opportunities to build a better customer experience that also improves operational economics. Cultivate a culture that drives the team and company forward – build a supportive, collaborative environment, recognize hard work and difficult moments, and make the team's contributions visible across the company. Own escalations end-to-end – serve as the escalation point for complex casework, exceptions, and incidents, and see problems through to resolution. Stay connected to the work and the frontline – jump into team queues and take on difficult cases. Stay close to the actual operational work so you can spot where processes break, where the product needs to evolve, and where the next investment should land. Background we're looking for Minimum 7 years of relevant experience, including 3+ years as a people manager. Minimum 3 years of experience in an operations, back-office, or processing role at a complex benefits, healthcare, or finance product. Experience managing multiple operational workstreams in parallel, with clear SLAs and quality bars, including high-volume, seasonal periods. Track record of building and maturing ops processes from scratch. You've defined metrics, written SOPs, and built the