Head of Customer Operations

Head of Customer Operations

• Compensation: $200,000–$300,000 total cash compensation (annual base salary + performance bonus), plus equity participation
• Location: Bay Area, California (Hybrid); must be in Pacific Time Zone (relocation assistance available)
• Reports to: CEO

About ARIVE

ARIVE is a privately held, founder-led fintech transforming digital mortgage originations with the industry’s first Wholesale Originations Marketplace. We empower local loan originators to deliver best-fit, personalized mortgages from a vast network of lenders - bringing efficiency, speed, and transparency to every step. Our complex, feature-rich origination platform is mission-critical: when ARIVE succeeds, our customers fund more loans, faster, with greater confidence.

Position Overview

We’re hiring our first Head of Customer Operations to unify Production Support, Implementation/Onboarding, and a new Enterprise Relationships function, reporting to the CEO. This isn’t relationship-only “customer success”- it's an operational leadership position for a builder who loves technology and innovation. You’ll use AI and automation to scale support, speed onboarding, drive adoption and education, and convert customer insights into product velocity. You’re as comfortable guiding brokers’ or lenders’ field teams as you are defining SLAs, orchestrating incident response, or partnering with Product, Compliance and Engineering on release readiness.

Key Responsibilities

Scale, Optimize & Lead Customer Operations: Lead and scale a distributed, remote organization spanning Production Support, Implementation/Onboarding, and Enterprise Relationships. Standardize and uplevel service standards so outcomes are consistent and fast, define clear career growth paths, and foster a culture of innovation, customer obsession, and continuous improvement. Set expectations and accountability for leaders and ICs while developing a strong talent pipeline for the next phase of growth.

Drive Customer-Centric Operational Excellence: Refine the end-to-end journey from onboarding through ongoing support and engagement. Tighten service expectations, speed time-to-value, and strengthen training and education for lender field teams and loan officers. Add dedicated enterprise coverage and a more proactive support model where needed so we anticipate needs, prevent issues, drive adoption, and reduce churn—while steadily improving customer satisfaction (CSAT/NPS) and lowering time to resolution (MTTR). Your leadership will ensure every customer interaction strengthens their commitment to ARIVE.

Champion Technology & Innovation: Leverage AI and automation to streamline internal workflows and improve customer experiences - speeding answers, scaling onboarding, reducing handle time, and scaling efficiently. Partner with Product and Engineering to roll out changes smoothly and keep enablement and knowledge up to date.

Drive Business Impact: Instrument the end-to-end customer journey with robust telemetry and turn metrics into action on retention risks, adoption gaps, expansion opportunities, and operational efficiency. Brief the CEO regularly, collaborate with Sales on expansion strategies, and pass qualified opportunities sourced from customer operations. Own the customer-ops tooling stack and budget across service desk, CRM, knowledge/LMS, analytics, and CS platforms.

Things We Look For

• 10+ years relevant experience, with recent focus leading customer-facing operations in B2B SaaS, multi-team leadership; ability to inspire, coach, and drive accountability. Bachelors degree or equivalent required.
• 5+ years in the mortgage industry with a deep understanding of the loan origination process. Strong familiarity with the mortgage tech stack - LOS (e.g. Encompass, Calyx Point, Blue Sage, Lender Portals) and common integrations.
• A track record of measurable improvements (e.g., shorter time-to-value, lower response/resolution times, higher CSAT/NPS, stronger retention/expansion).
• Fluency with CRMs (HubSpot preferred) and the customer-ops tech stack (service desk, knowledge/LMS, analytics) plus modern work-management and collaboration tools.
• Data-driven operator who sets targets, reads the signals, and turns insights into action - not just dashboards. Practical AI/automation experience in customer operations with quantified outcomes (higher first-contact resolution, faster onboarding, lower handle time).
• Executive-level communication with customers C-suite and internal leadership; active and engaged on social media
• High integrity and a builder’s mindset with commitment to building successful company and customer relationships
• Ability to travel up to 20% (corporate office visits, industry conventions, client meetings)

Benefits

Competitive total cash compensation with performance-based bonus; equity participation commensurate with experience and impact; comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage; 401(k) match; hybrid flexibility; and a supportive, inclusive culture.

Why This Role Matters

We’re not just improving workflows—we’re changing the industry itself. You’ll own customer operations end-to-end with a direct line to the CEO and a clear mandate to innovate using AI, data, and world-class execution. If building at scale in a complex, high-impact space excites you, let’s talk!