Operations Developers generally don’t live within specific functions of an organization like sales or marketing. Instead, OpsDevs move throughout organizations, moving from function to function, working with individuals and teams to improve their processes. You can think of them as genies of sort, answering the “I wish when I did this over here, that happens”, or as process developers that reduce frustration and entropy wherever they go.
Who does an operations developer report to?
The answer to this question will vary from company to company, depending on their size and for other more idiosyncratic reasons. Generally speaking, however, OpsDevs report to the CEO, Chief of Staff, COO or Head of Operations. This is mainly due to the fact that the role of an OpsDev is to build and refine the business’ operating system itself; understanding, unblocking, and channeling information flows across the organizations to achieve the its goals.
You can a bit more about this rationale here
Here’s Brian Sowards, Founder of The Supersynchronous Guild, talking about why it’s so important for OpsDevs to not really ‘fit’ anywhere.
At the moment, not all companies could actually benefit from having an Operations Developer embedded within them. This is because they’re not using tools like Notion or Coda, these incredible sandbox no-code tools that allow the creation of custom processes and dashboards that span the entire organization.
We’re anticipating that the companies of today and tomorrow will adopt business OS tools like these as time moves on, as they can dramatically improve an organization’s operational efficiency while cutting down on SaaS subscription costs. For organizations to really make the most of these tools and build their own business operating systems, they will need to hire operations developers to craft these systems so that they can seamlessly scale with the organization.