Senior Director of Operations (Western US)

About BurnBot

BurnBot provides systematic fuels treatment services to prevent destructive wildfires. We're firefighters, scientists, engineers, prescribed fire practitioners, ecologists, and community members who are answering the call to scale fuel treatment capacity. Our modern fuel treatment system recognizes and supports conservation efforts with a clean, smoke-free process. We need technology to amplify our workforces with targeted use of synthetic fire to treat fuel loads 10x faster than previously possible.

The Role

The Senior Director of Operations leads BurnBot's field execution across the Western US. This is a focused role: own production, quality, and safety on the ground. The Senior Director takes projects handed off from Program Managers: scoped, contracted, and ready to execute, and runs them through the regional structure with relentless discipline. As BurnBot scales, this role will be the model for peer Senior Directors of Operations in additional regions.

Reporting structure: COO → Senior Director of Operations → Regional Directors (with the Field Quality & Production Coach as a peer to Regional Directors). The Senior Director does not own customer capture, scope shaping, or pricing; those live with Programs. The Senior Director owns delivery: best product, safely, on time, on budget.

This role is exempt with a salary range of $160,000 to $200,000. However, we do consider many factors when creating job offers, including (but not limited to), the role, location, responsibilities, experience, training, education, and skillset.

Job Duties/Responsibilities

• Own production, quality, and safety performance for all field execution across the Western US

• Take handoffs from Program Managers and execute projects to scope; raise scope or assumption issues back to the relevant Program Director, but execute against the agreed scope

• Lead the Regional Directors: coach them, set expectations, hold accountability, and run the operating cadence (weekly and monthly reviews, KPI rollups, problem-solving)

• Lead the Field Quality & Production Coach: set deployment priorities and use the Coach as the centralized intervention and coaching arm

• Own operational doctrine and standards: mechanized crew models, regional frameworks, training and qualifications, quality checklists, production benchmarks

• Drive field safety performance, own the safety management system, incident reporting, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement

• Build and maintain the field talent pipeline, hiring strategy, onboarding, training, and advancement for crews and crew leaders across the region

• Partner with the Director of Intel Programs to ensure Ember is the operating system for the field and that field data flows back cleanly

• Partner with the Head of Engineering & Product on field tooling, equipment readiness, and the productionization of new technology in the field

• Run capacity planning across regions — broker shared resources, balance crew loadings, surface bottlenecks

• Maintain operational performance reporting to the COO and leadership team — production rates, quality outcomes, safety metrics, financial performance vs. plan.

• Partner with Program Directors on bid feasibility, production assumptions, and post-mortems on completed projects

• Partner with Finance on cost reporting, equipment economics, and labor productivity

• Partner with People & Culture on workforce planning, performance, and field-team engagement

• Represent Operations in customer-facing settings when needed — major job kickoffs, escalations, executive customer reviews

• Maintain and promote a safe, productive, and positive working environment

• Strong bias for action and the ability to execute assigned tasks with or without guidance

• Can adapt to a fast-changing environment and work priorities

• Willingness to learn, seek clarification, and embrace new responsibilities as required

• Work long and flexible hours as necessary to fulfill business needs, while providing support to employees and ensuring project success

• Other duties as assigned

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Forestry, Natural Resources, Operations Management, or related field, or equivalent experience

• 10+ years of progressive field operations leadership in forestry, fuels, fire, or similarly equipment-intensive field operations

• Proven track record leading multi-crew, multi-region field operations at scale

• Deep understanding of Western US fuels and forestry operations

• Experience with equipment + crew models, equipment economics, and production benchmarking

• Strong safety leadership track record — ideally with formal safety management system experience

• Demonstrated ability to coach and develop senior field leaders at the Regional Director level

• Demonstrated ability to partner with Programs and Sales counterparts in a matrixed environment without owning their work

• Willingness to travel extensively across the Western US

• Travel up to 75% of the time to project sites

• Ability to communicate effectively

• Passion for BurnBot's mission

It would be cool if…

• Background in mechanized forestry, mastication, or utility vegetation management at scale

• NWCG qualifications and experience with prescribed fire operations

• Experience standing up new regions or scaling field operations into new geographies

• Operations Excellence / Lean / formal Operating System experience (TPS, Lean Construction, etc.)

Still interested? Please apply by sending your resume to careers@burnbot.com or visiting our job postings on Indeed.

Burnbot is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including but not limited to, pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with one or more disabilities, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

If you need assistance or accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at 415-795-9124 x 1010 or people@burnbot.com.