About the role
Job Description
Position summary
The Senior Director, Operational Excellence & Quality Improvement leads the strategic enhancement of Gracenote’s end-to-end global operating model. This executive establishes robust governance, metrics, quality systems, and cross-functional alignment to drive customer trust, data accuracy, scalability, operational efficiency, and resilience.
Translating growth, automation, and content-modernization strategies into high-impact operating plans, this role leads cross-functional teams across Content, Product, Engineering, Customer Success, Commercial, and Strategy to champion data-informed decisions and continuous improvement.
Key responsibilities
* Define and execute the global operational excellence and quality strategy across Gracenote. * Establish high-impact performance governance, risk management, QA protocols, and continuous improvement frameworks. * Align business goals with initiative portfolios, resource planning, and clear performance outcomes. * Proactively mitigate operational, technology, and transformation risks before they impact customers. * Own the end-to-end quality framework, including SOPs, audits, monitoring, alerts, and process QA. * Lead incident management, root-cause analysis (RCA), and corrective/preventive action (CAPA) tracking. * Eliminate customer-impacting defects, rework, and process variation at the root cause level. * Build executive dashboards to track quality trends, SLA compliance, defect severity, and remediation progress. * Partner with Product & Engineering on release readiness, UAT, change control, and post-release reviews. * Drive data-driven transformation projects leveraging automation, process discovery, and change management. * Advance human-in-the-loop (HITL) automation to scale operations, improve speed, and ensure precision. * Coach, develop, and inspire high-performing global teams, embedding continuous learning and inclusion.
Measures of success
* Measurable reduction in customer defects, quality escapes, recurring incidents, and unnecessary rework. * Increased RCA completion velocity, CAPA effectiveness, SLA compliance, and risk resolution rates. * Enhanced throughput, cycle times, capacity management, productivity, and automation adoption. * Higher customer satisfaction, operational resilience, operational transparency, and organizational capabilities.
Qualifications
* 12+ years of progressive experience in operations, quality, process excellence, transformation, content/data operations, product operations, or a related field, including significant leadership experience. * Experience leading through multiple managers and/or senior functional leaders in a complex, global organization. * Demonstrated success building operational excellence, quality-management, continuous-improvement, or business-performance systems. * Strong knowledge of QA, process governance, root-cause analysis, corrective and preventive action, risk management, change management, KPIs, and executive reporting. * Track record leading technology-enabled transformation, automation, process redesign, or platform modernization. * Exceptional communication, influence, facilitation, decision-making, and stakeholder-management skills. * Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience required; advanced degree or relevant certification preferred. * Media, entertainment, metadata, data services, digital products, or complex content/technology experience preferred.
Leadership profile
* A systems thinker and pragmatic operator who moves comfortably between strategy and execution; creates clarity without waiting for certainty; balances quality, speed, efficiency, cost, and customer outcomes; and leaves teams stronger than they found them.
Additional Information
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