Senior Director of Commercial Operations

Role Overview

This position leads the company’s commercial front end, with ownership of estimating flow, customer experience, quote turnaround, bid quality, pricing, order transition, and related process improvement efforts. The objective is to create a scalable, transparent, and accountable operating model that supports growth, improves the customer journey, and tightens coordination across sales, estimating, operations, and finance.

The role works closely with executive leadership to shape and deliver commercial strategy, raise operational efficiency, strengthen customer satisfaction, and keep Sales, Operations, and Finance aligned. It also involves building and guiding a high-performing team, setting clear accountability structures, implementing repeatable processes, and improving visibility into the commercial metrics that inform business decisions.

Strategic Commercial Leadership & Performance

• Improve speed, quality, responsiveness, conversion, and workload visibility in the bid and quote process.
• Create scalable operating standards, workflows, priorities, metrics, and accountability across the commercial front end.
• Collaborate with technical specialists to confirm estimates and customer commitments are accurate, complete, and commercially viable.
• Set up KPIs, dashboards, and reporting cadences that give leadership clear insight into quote status, bottlenecks, capacity, customer priorities, and team performance.
• Streamline the handoff from sales to estimating, from estimating to order entry, and from order entry to operations to improve customer outcomes.
• Build standard work, training materials, templates, and communication expectations for the team.
• Work with the CEO and senior leadership to support revenue growth, margin discipline, customer satisfaction, and consistent execution.

Operational Excellence

• Define and improve customer-facing communication standards, issue resolution practices, and internal follow-through.
• Lead process improvement work aimed at simplifying workflows, increasing automation, and driving continuous improvement.
• Create reporting and dashboard rhythms that produce actionable insights and help with resourcing and forecasting.
• Partner with Sales, Engineering, Finance, and Operations to align priorities and ensure smooth cross-functional execution.
• Break down silos and strengthen collaboration, accountability, and communication across the customer lifecycle.
• Make sure pricing and positioning support profitability goals and broader business strategy.

Leadership

• Provide strategic direction and operational oversight for estimating, customer experience, and commercial operations.
• Lead, coach, organize, prioritize, and develop a high-performing team.
• Protect and use the team’s technical knowledge while introducing more scalable processes, clearer accountability, and stronger management discipline.
• Set priorities and performance expectations while fostering a culture of accountability, coaching, and feedback.
• Address team issues proactively, including interpersonal conflicts.
• Coordinate and prioritize design-related workload tied to estimating, bid support, and customer deadlines.
• Champion organizational change and continuous improvement initiatives that raise operational maturity.

Qualifications

A bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Construction Management, Business, or a related field is preferred. The company is looking for someone with 10 or more years of experience in commercial operations, estimating, sales operations, or similar functions. Background in technical environments such as mechanical systems, piping, or construction-related work is strongly preferred.

The ideal candidate has a track record of leading teams through change and growth, and of improving processes in ways that deliver measurable business results.

Preferred Experience

• Ability to read, interpret, and analyze drawings and specifications, with an understanding of how design choices affect estimating, fabrication, delivery, and customer commitments.
• Experience across several commercial functions, ideally including sales operations and bidding.
• Experience developing KPIs and metrics that support business strategy and improve performance.

Key Competencies

• Process and systems thinking
• Strong attention to detail and execution discipline
• Customer-focused and engineer-aware mindset
• Leadership and team development
• Cross-functional collaboration

About the Hiring Context

Spyglass Talent Solutions is a retained recruitment firm based in the Southeastern United States. The firm has been retained by a leading manufacturer of commercial piping systems to fill this senior commercial operations role.