Program Operations Lead

About The Organization

Adventure Scientists is a nonprofit organization on a mission to protect the planet by pairing scientists with individuals uniquely capable of gathering difficult-to-obtain data. Our team collaborates with scientists worldwide to solve pressing environmental challenges, from biodiversity to climate change. Every role here offers a chance to make an impact on a global scale!

We're looking for a strategic and hands-on Program Operations Lead to join our full-time team!

One day you may be helping the team untangle a portfolio-wide capacity challenge; the next, you may be improving a workflow, helping design a project, solving a cross-functional bottleneck, or stepping in to keep an important piece of work moving.

As our international portfolio grows, you'll also help the team deliver complex conservation work across countries, cultures, time zones, and operating environments, building systems that create consistency while remaining responsive to local context.

That's why this is a role for someone who genuinely enjoys making good work easier to do. Someone who can coach, organize, simplify, troubleshoot, build, and execute - sometimes all in the same week - and have fun doing it!

If you love the outdoors, team leadership, operational problem-solving, and the deeply satisfying art of helping great people do great work, this role is for you!

• Support the Programs team, creating an environment where people feel trusted, empowered, and equipped to own their work.
• Provide thoughtful guidance on priorities, decisions, stakeholder coordination, project challenges, and professional growth, adapting support to different working styles and experience levels.
• Strengthen communication, feedback, and decision-making practices so the team has the clarity, context, and support needed to succeed.

• Maintain a clear view of the full domestic and international portfolio, identifying capacity gaps, competing priorities, operational risks, and opportunities to better connect work across teams, geographies, and time zones.
• Partner with the team on assignments, timelines, staffing, and tradeoffs, considering workloads, strengths, interests, and development goals.
• Help the organization assess new opportunities and significant project changes through transparent, participatory decisions grounded in available capacity and resources.

• Build and improve practical systems, tools, workflows, documentation, and operating rhythms that make project delivery more consistent, visible, and sustainable.
• Develop clear processes and standard operating procedures for moving projects from organizational consideration into implementation, including the operational, logistical, and cross-cultural considerations involved in international delivery.
• Create feedback loops, address recurring challenges, and reduce operational friction while preserving flexibility across different countries, cultures, partners, geographies, volunteers, and field realities.

• Help the team navigate complex delivery challenges, shifting priorities, dependencies, and cross-functional needs.
• Step in selectively with problem-solving, hands-on capacity, or temporary coverage during absences, high-demand periods, and unexpected project needs.
• Review plans and materials for operational readiness and support effective collaboration across Programs and other organizational functions.

• Help the team understand and actively manage budgets, spending, forecasts, and resource needs in partnership with Finance.
• Ensure financial considerations and tradeoffs between scope, timelines, staffing, and resources inform planning and prioritization.
• Surface financial risks or inconsistencies early and support timely, responsible decision-making.

• 7+ years of hands-on experience in project or program management in a remote or hybrid, dynamic environment.
• 5+ years of experience in people leadership, with demonstrated success coaching, developing, and supporting a team with varied roles and working styles.
• Proven experience overseeing a portfolio of concurrent programs, including some exposure to international program management, capacity planning, and prioritization
• Strong experience navigating the operational complexities of international work, including cross-cultural collaboration, multiple time zones, local partner contexts, and differing logistical, financial, or regulatory environments.
• Strong experience building and improving operational systems, including workflows, planning tools, documentation, dashboards, standard operating procedures, and team rhythms.
• Demonstrated ability to translate organizational priorities into practical plans while balancing strategy, team capacity, budgets, timelines, and delivery realities.
• Solid financial fluency, including experience working with program or project budgets, forecasts, spending,…