AI Operations Lead

ABOUT US OurRitual is a fast-growing digital platform reshaping how relationship therapy works. We combine expert-led therapy sessions with AI-powered support to create a blended experience — where clinical depth and intelligent technology weave together into something neither could deliver alone. A therapist brings depth. AI brings continuity. Together, they reshape what relationship support feels like in the 167 hours between sessions. We call it Continuous Therapy. We've reached product-market fit with strong growth, exceptional engagement, and retention that breaks the category. We have 200+ expert therapists on the platform and the largest dataset of clinically-annotated couples therapy sessions in existence. We're pre-Series A, where operations stops being something we run and starts being something we design. ROLE OVERVIEW As AI Operations Lead, you will own the engine that makes Continuous Therapy actually run — the expert network, the customer experience, and the systems that hold it all together as we scale. This role sits at the intersection of operations, people leadership, and product, and it exists because operations in an AI-native company looks fundamentally different from the playbook most ops leaders have run before. You'll lead our operations and customer success organization, manage a network of 200+ expert therapists, and build the performance management, supervision, and growth systems that help our experts do their best work. You'll have something rare to work with: every session on the platform is recorded and clinically annotated, which means the raw material for transcript-informed feedback, supervision, and quality systems is already in your hands. And you'll work in tight partnership with product — both as a builder shaping the internal tools and AI-powered workflows your team needs, and as the voice in the room advocating for what experts and customers are telling us. This is a hands-on role, not a manage-from-above one. We're a lean team and we want to stay that way — which means the person in this seat is in the weeds: writing the specs, running the experiments, shipping the changes, and building alongside the team rather than directing from a distance. You'll balance near-term execution with long-horizon system building, running the day-to-day operation while designing the scalable foundation underneath it. It's also a role that requires high EQ. You'll be leading change inside a workforce of therapists — people whose professional skill is reading emotional dynamics — in an environment where how change is introduced matters as much as what's being changed. The right person brings the sensitivity to match. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES EXPERT NETWORK LEADERSHIP - Lead the operations team responsible for our 200+ expert therapists, with a deliberate focus on keeping the team lean and leveraging AI to do more with less - Own expert hiring and onboarding, ensuring supply consistently meets customer demand across geographies, languages, and clinical needs - Manage expert compensation strategy — designing models that reward quality, continuity, and platform engagement over raw session volume PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT & SUPERVISION - Build a performance management system for expert therapists that combines AI-driven feedback from session transcripts with human supervision — the right system to help every expert grow into their best self - Define what quality looks like on the platform, and design the feedback loops, supervision structures, and growth pathways that move experts toward it - Partner with clinical leadership to ensure performance systems are both therapeutically sound and operationally efficient CUSTOMER SUCCESS & SERVICE - Lead the customer success function — onboarding, support, retention interventions, and the human touchpoints that surround the product - Leverage AI to build a customer service operation that's faster, more empathetic, and more scalable than traditional support models - Turn customer service into a learning engine — surfacing patterns, escalating signal to product, and closing the loop with members SYSTEMS & SCALE - Design and implement the operational systems, tooling, and processes that let us scale the model without losing what makes it work - Close the policy gaps — for both members and experts — that a fast-growing company inevitably accumulates, and build the muscle for creating, communicating, and maintaining clear policies as the org evolves - Identify where AI can replace, augment, or eliminate operational work — and build accordingly - Establish the metrics, dashboards, and operating rhythms that give the team and leadership real-time visibility into how the business is running PRODUCT PARTNERSHIP - Partner closely with product to shape the internal tools, expert-facing surfaces, and AI workflows that operations depends on - Advocate for the needs of experts inside product conversations — they're the supply side of a marketplace, and their experience compounds into customer experience - Translate frontline learnings from customer service and the expert network into product priorities SKILLS & QUALIFICATIONS - 5+ years of operations leadership experience with a track record of building and leading high-performing operations and/or customer success teams - Hands-on operator — you've been the one writing the spec, running the experiment, and shipping the change, not just the one assigning it - High EQ — you've managed sensitive workforces or changes before and know how to introduce change in ways that build trust rather than erode it - Genuine fluency with AI as an operational tool — you've used it, deployed it, or built around it, and you have a point of view on where it fits and where it doesn't - Strong product partnership instincts - you have worked closely with product organizations and know how to be an effective partner - Builder mentality — energized by designing systems from scratch rather than maintaining ones that already exist - Fluent English NICE-TO-HAVE SKILLS - 0-to-1 operations leadership at an early-stage company that scaled meaningfully - Experience scaling a marketplace, services business, or operationally complex consumer company - Background managing clinical or professional networks (therapists, coaches, doctors, lawyers) - Experience with AI-powered customer service tools, supervision systems, or workforce quality platforms - Personal experience with therapy — it builds intuition for what experts and customers actually need WHY THIS ROLE Most ops leaders inherit a playbook. You'll get to write one. What operations looks like inside an AI-native company is genuinely new territory, and this role gives you the mandate to shape it. You'll lead the team that delivers Continuous Therapy — the experts, the support, the systems — while designing what operations should look like when AI is a foundation rather than a feature. You'll work with a dataset and an expert network that don't exist anywhere else, and you'll have the mandate to build the systems that turn them into a durable advantage.