Clinical Operations Manager

Role Description

The operational nerve centre between frontline clinical teams and leadership. Serves as the single point of accountability for the performance, quality, and health of the entire Ops-Clinical vertical. Acts as senior layer above OD leads — each OD lead manages 12 doctors of optometry. Directly enables the Head of Operations to make fast, informed decisions through structured daily reporting and real-time system health visibility. Critical role as the venture scales from 20 → 100 → 300 employees and expands from US clinics into EU and global markets

Responsibilities

Daily & Weekly Reporting Responsibilities

• Own and deliver a structured daily performance report to the Head of Operations covering:
• Overall Ops-Clinical vertical health — green / amber / red status
• Ownership of key KPIs such as Conversion rate
• Error log: type, frequency, and origin of errors flagged in the day
• Escalation summary: cases escalated, resolution time, and outstanding issues
• System health check: any platform issues, downtime, latency, or tooling failures reported by OD Leads
• OD Lead team status: attendance, capacity gaps, cover arrangements
• Any critical incidents or patient-safety-adjacent flags
• Maintain a live operational dashboard or tracker accessible to the Head of Operations at any time
• Prepare weekly trend reports highlighting patterns in quality, errors, throughput, and team performance
• Flag risks proactively — do not wait for the daily report cycle if something critical emerges

Quality & Accuracy Oversight

• Set and maintain quality standards for OD review outputs across all 6+ OD Lead teams
• Conduct regular calibration sessions with OD Leads to ensure consistency in review decisions across the full OD pool
• Track error rates at OD, OD Lead, and team levels — identify patterns and drive root cause analysis
• Own the quality audit process — define audit cadence, scoring rubrics, and feedback loops
• Ensure human-in-the-loop decisions meet the clinical accuracy benchmarks required by premium US ophthalmology clinic partners
• Work with product and clinical advisory teams to update quality standards as the AI model evolves
• Build and maintain a zero-tolerance escalation protocol for patient-safety-adjacent errors

Team Performance & Coaching

• Directly line-manage and develop 6+ OD Leads — hold daily/ weekly 1:1s, set performance goals, and run quarterly reviews
• Coach OD Leads on how to manage their teams of 12 ODs effectively — build their capability as people managers
• Identify high performers and create visibility pathways for them within the organisation
• Manage underperformance swiftly and constructively — support OD Leads in managing their own team issues
• Build a culture of clinical excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement across the 72+ OD workforce
• Partner with the L&D Leader on onboarding programs, role-specific training, and upskilling for ODs and OD Leads

Workflow & Process Improvement

• Own the end-to-end workflow of the Ops-Clinical vertical — from case ingestion to OD review to output delivery
• Identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and failure points and drive fixes
• Work with the product and engineering teams to improve tooling, reduce friction, and increase OD throughput without sacrificing quality
• Document and maintain SOPs for all OD and OD Lead workflows - ensure SOPs are updated as processes evolve
• Lead process adaptation ahead of EU market expansion - factor in regulatory, clinical, and operational differences
• Continuously track and improve key efficiency metrics: average review time, throughput per OD, queue clearance rate

Escalation Handling

• Serve as the final internal escalation point before the Head of Operations for all Ops-Clinical issues
• Own escalation triage — assess severity, assign ownership, and drive resolution within defined SLAs
• Maintain an escalation log with root cause notes and resolution outcomes
• Conduct post-mortems on significant escalations and share learnings with OD Leads to prevent recurrence
• Coordinate with customer success and clinic-facing teams when escalations have external clinic impact

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in clinical operations, healthcare operations, or a customer facing environment
• Prior experience managing team leads or supervisors — not just individual contributors
• Strong analytical mindset — comfortable reading operational data, spotting trends, and translating them into action
• Excellent written communication — daily reports to leadership must be crisp, structured, and decision-enabling
• Experience working in fast-scaling teams where processes are being built and broken simultaneously
• High ownership mentality — this role requires someone who treats the verticals performance as a personal responsibility
• Familiarity with clinical workflows, optometry, or ophthalmic diagnostics is a strong advantage
• Bonus: experience in AI-assisted clinical tools, healthtech, or B2B SaaS platforms serving medical providers
• Bonus: exposure to multi-market operations or US, EU healthcare regulatory context

What Makes This Role Unique

• You are the operational backbone of a product that sits at the intersection of AI and clinical care
• Direct line to the Head of Operations — your daily report shapes the decisions of the leadership team
• Oversee a team of 72+ qualified Doctors of Optometry — rare leadership scale at this stage of a venture
• Opportunity to define clinical ops function scales globally
• ZEISS-backed credibility with the pace and autonomy of a true startup