Vice President of Operations

Vice President of Operations

Commercial Real Estate • Practice & Business Transitions • Valuations • An AI-Forward Firm

• Reports to: Chief Executive Officer

• Team: Lead and scale the operations team — currently lean; building toward ~20–25 across transaction managers / junior brokers, virtual assistants, financial analysis, and office operations — plus operational support to broker and advisor teams in both practice areas

• Practice areas: Practice & Business Transitions (M&A advisory) • Commercial Real Estate • Valuations & Appraisals

• Location: Tempe, Arizona — on-site / in-person (not remote)

• Employment type: Full-time, exempt

• Compensation: Commensurate with experience

ABOUT MENLO GROUP

Menlo Group is a specialty advisory firm built for owners making one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives. Our practice areas span practice and business transitions, commercial real estate, and valuations, giving clients specialized expertise on both their operating business and the real estate behind it.

We represent dental and healthcare practice owners, privately held business owners, and commercial property owners as they sell, transition, acquire, or reposition their assets. Our services include sell-side and buy-side transaction advisory, commercial real estate brokerage and leasing, and practice, business, and property valuations and appraisals. Many of our clients own both an operating business and the real estate it sits in — and few firms can guide them through both sides of that transaction the way we can.

We are building Menlo Group to be an AI-forward firm. We believe AI and intelligent automation will reshape how transaction advisory and brokerage work gets done, and we intend to lead that shift in our industry, not follow it.

POSITION SUMMARY

The Vice President of Operations is the operational leader of Menlo Group and the CEO’s integrator. This person translates the CEO’s vision into clear priorities, processes, accountability, and execution across the company — and provides oversight, standards, and accountability for the transaction lifecycle from signed engagement to closing.

This role arrives at a defining moment. Menlo Group is entering a period of significant growth and organizational change, and the VP of Operations will lead the operational side of that change: aligning teams, systems, workflows, terminology, and expectations across our practice areas while respecting the real differences between selling a dental practice, a privately held business, and a commercial building. The guiding principle is simple: standardize where possible, specialize where necessary.

Just as important, this person will be the architect of an AI-powered operating model. We are looking for a leader who is fluent in today’s major AI platforms, who builds automated, AI-driven workflows hands-on, and who will make AI a core part of how every transaction is processed — so our team can handle more volume, deliver a better client experience, and scale without adding proportional headcount.

Scope: This role owns operations, not sales. Sales KPIs, sales scorecards, and sales training are owned by the sales manager, and HR administration such as payroll and benefits is handled elsewhere in the organization.

Location: This is an on-site / in-person role based at our Tempe, Arizona office — not a remote position.

We are looking for a builder — someone energized by creating the infrastructure for the firm Menlo Group intends to become, not someone expecting a mature corporate structure to already exist.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Organizational Change Leadership

• Lead the operational changes that come with growth and reorganization, including new structures, roles, reporting lines, and ways of working across the firm.

• Align teams across practice areas on common systems, processes, terminology, roles, and performance expectations, and strengthen a shared culture in the process.

• Determine where transaction workflows should be unified and where practice-area specialization should remain, and document both.

• Communicate change clearly and steadily to staff and advisors, especially as roles, responsibilities, and reporting lines evolve.

AI Strategy, Automation & Adoption

• Own Menlo Group’s AI and automation roadmap: identify where AI can remove manual work, speed up transactions, and improve quality, then prioritize, build, and deploy those solutions.

• Personally design and build AI-powered workflows — not just purchase tools. Use leading AI platforms (such as ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini) together with automation platforms (such as Zapier, Make, n8n, or Power Automate) to connect systems and automate multi-step processes end to end.

• Deploy AI agents and assistants that take on real operational work: drafting CIMs, prospectuses, offering memorandums, and marketing packages; summarizing financials, leases, and diligence documents; organizing data rooms and needs lists; answering routine buyer and tenant inquiries; preparing valuation and appraisal drafts; tracking deal milestones; and generating client updates and management reports.

• Integrate AI with the CRM, transaction management, and document systems so information flows automatically from lead to close with minimal re-keying.

• Build AI fluency across the organization: train transaction managers, junior brokers, VAs, and advisors to use AI tools effectively every day, and create shared prompt libraries, templates, and playbooks.

• Stay ahead of rapidly advancing AI capabilities, including increasingly autonomous agents, and continuously evaluate new tools and models for practical value to the firm.

• Establish AI governance: protect client confidentiality and sensitive financial data, set human-review standards for anything client-facing or contractual, and ensure accuracy and compliance.

• Measure the impact of every AI initiative — hours saved, cycle time reduced, capacity gained, error rates — and report results to the CEO.

Transaction Operations

• Provide oversight, guidance, standards, and accountability for the end-to-end transaction lifecycle across all practice areas — engagement and onboarding, valuation, marketing package and prospectus/CIM preparation, buyer and tenant inquiries, NDAs, data rooms, offers and LOIs, due diligence, financing, escrow, and closing — led day-to-day by transaction managers and the operations team.

• Ensure the transaction operations function effectively coordinates the many parties involved in a closing — attorneys, CPAs, lenders (including SBA lenders), title and escrow, landlords, appraisers, buyers, and sellers — so deadlines and conditions are met, intervening on escalations rather than running day-to-day deal coordination.

• Manage deal-flow capacity across the transaction management team, balancing dedicated advisor support with shared overflow support as volume shifts.

• Oversee the valuation and appraisal workflow so reports are timely, consistent, and high quality.

• Establish standard checklists, timelines, and milestone tracking for practice sales, business sales, CRE sales, and leasing transactions.

• Step in to resolve escalated deal issues, stalled timelines, and difficult multi-party situations.

Process Architecture & Continuous Improvement

• Map current workflows across the firm; identify bottlenecks, duplication, handoff failures, and inefficiencies.

• Design scalable, documented processes and standard operating procedures without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.

• Build processes that support geographic expansion, additional brokers and advisors, higher transaction volume, and potential new service lines.

• Continuously ask how every process can be easier, faster, more consistent, more profitable, and better for the client.

Systems & Technology

• Evaluate, consolidate, and optimize the firm’s technology stack — CRM (e.g., Pipedrive), transaction and project management, document management and data rooms, communication, and reporting tools — with AI-readiness and integration as core selection criteria.

• Keep systems connected and data clean so that automation and AI tools have reliable information to work from.

People Leadership

• Lead, coach, and develop the operations team — currently lean and scaling toward ~20–25 — including transaction managers / junior brokers, virtual assistants, financial analysis, and office operations.

• Define clear roles, ownership, and expectations; hold people accountable while maintaining trust and strong relationships.

• Build career paths within operations — including the transaction manager to junior broker to broker/advisor progression.

• Partner with the CEO and outside providers on staffing plans and hiring decisions for the operations team.

Operating Rhythm, KPIs & Accountability

• Serve as the integrator in the company’s operating system. Familiarity with EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System) is a significant plus — including Level 10 meetings, Rocks, the company Scorecard, the Accountability Chart, and IDS problem solving.

• Establish and run the weekly, quarterly, and annual operating cadence that keeps leadership and teams aligned on priorities, owners, milestones, and deadlines.

• Build and maintain operations scorecards (transaction timelines, capacity, closing performance, client experience); follow up consistently when commitments are not met.

• Sales KPIs and scorecards are outside this role: setting, tracking, and coaching to sales metrics belongs to the sales manager. The VP of Operations may draw on sales data to improve processes and handoffs, but does not own sales performance.

• Prepare operational reporting for the CEO, leadership team, and board.

Financial & Capacity Management

• Manage the operations budget and partner with the CEO and fractional CFO on forecasting, margins, staffing models, and resource allocation.

• Understand transaction economics and commission structures; provide oversight of invoicing, accounts receivable, and commission tracking for accuracy and timeliness — partnering with finance and operational owners (and automation or virtual AR support where appropriate), not personally processing invoices or AR day-to-day.

• Use pipeline and capacity data to anticipate staffing needs before the team is overloaded.

Client Experience

• Design operations around a consistent, professional, high-touch experience for every client from first call to closing — and beyond, as a source of referrals.

• Serve as a professional, client-facing leader when needed: meeting with clients, advisors, and referral partners, and representing Menlo Group with credibility.

• Implement client feedback and satisfaction measurement and act on what it reveals.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Work closely with the CEO and business development, marketing, and finance leaders so operations directly supports revenue growth, transaction success, and enterprise value.

• Ensure smooth handoffs between lead generation, advisors, transaction management, and closing — including cross-referrals between practice transition and commercial real estate clients.

• Partner with the sales manager, who owns sales KPIs, scorecards, pipeline targets, and sales training; use sales data as an input to process improvement, not as a performance area this role manages.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

First 90 Days

• Learn every practice area, team member, and active deal pipeline; build trust with staff and advisors.

• Complete a current-state assessment of workflows, systems, and capacity across all practice areas and teams.

• Launch the operating rhythm and an initial operations scorecard.

• Deliver an operations roadmap with priorities, owners, and milestones, approved by the CEO.

• Deliver an AI and automation roadmap and launch the first AI-powered workflows (quick wins) in live use.

First 12 Months

• Aligned operations across the firm: common core systems, unified transaction workflows (with practice-specific variations documented), and consistent role definitions.

• Measurable improvements in transaction cycle time, closing rates, and team capacity.

• AI embedded in the core transaction workflow across all practice areas, with multiple automated workflows in production and documented time savings and capacity gains.

• An operations team that uses AI tools daily as a standard part of how work gets done.

• A scalable operations structure ready to support new advisors, new markets, and higher transaction volume.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 10+ years of operations leadership experience, including 5+ years leading teams of 15 or more.

• Meaningful operational experience in commercial real estate and in mergers & acquisitions, business brokerage, or practice transitions — deep expertise in one and strong working fluency in the other at minimum.

• Experience leading operations through major organizational change, such as a merger, acquisition, or significant restructuring, including aligning teams, systems, and processes.

• A proven track record of process improvement: mapping, redesigning, documenting, and scaling workflows with measurable results.

• Demonstrated AI-forward leadership: daily, hands-on use of major AI platforms (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini) and a track record of personally building and deploying AI-driven automated workflows in a business setting.

• Experience with workflow automation and integration platforms (e.g., Zapier, Make, n8n, Power Automate) and connecting business systems such as CRMs and document management tools.

• Proven ability to drive AI adoption across a team, with measurable results in time savings, capacity, or quality.

• Professional client-facing experience with business owners, professionals, or high-value clients.

• Strong financial acumen: budgets, margins, staffing models, forecasting, and transaction economics.

• Experience in a transaction-based professional services environment where multiple parties, deadlines, documents, and closing conditions must be coordinated.

• Bachelor’s degree in business, finance, real estate, or related field, or equivalent experience.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience operating within EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System), ideally in an Integrator or leadership team role.

• Experience building AI agents or custom AI assistants, working with AI APIs, or using retrieval-based tools that let AI work from company documents and data.

• Experience developing AI usage policies and data-security practices for confidential client information.

• Experience in dental, healthcare, or professional practice transitions.

• Familiarity with SBA lending, due diligence processes, CRE leasing, 1031 exchanges, or valuation and appraisal workflows.

• Experience with Pipedrive or comparable CRM, transaction management, and project management platforms.

• Experience scaling a growing firm across multiple markets or service lines.

• MBA, real estate license, or relevant M&A / business brokerage credentials (e.g., CCIM, CBI, M&AMI).

WHO YOU ARE

• Integrator — You turn vision into priorities, process, and execution.

• Process architect — You naturally see workflows, dependencies, and bottlenecks — and fix them without adding bureaucracy.

• Cross-functional thinker — You understand how brokerage, CRE, valuation, marketing, finance, and client service fit together.

• Change leader — You guide teams through change with steadiness, clarity, and trust.

• Client-experience obsessed — You know our clients are trusting us with one of the largest transactions of their lives.

• Accountability driven — You set clear KPIs, owners, and deadlines — and you follow up.

• Data-oriented — You manage by capacity, velocity, conversion, timelines, and satisfaction, not gut feel.

• AI-forward — You use AI every day, you build with it, and your first question about any manual process is “how could AI do this?”

• Systems- and technology-minded — You evaluate tools on whether they actually make the team better.

• High EQ — You hold people accountable while earning their trust.

• Detail-oriented, big-picture aware — You catch what matters in a closing file and see the patterns across a hundred of them.

• Commercially minded — You know operations exist to drive revenue, profitability, referrals, and enterprise value.

• Builder and owner — You are excited to create what doesn’t exist yet, and you never say “that’s not my department.”

• Calm under pressure — When deals hit turbulence, you bring stability, not noise.

• Continuously improving — You are always asking how to make it easier, faster, more consistent, and better for the client.

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

• Transaction cycle time (engagement to listing; listing to LOI; LOI to close) by practice area

• Closing rate and fall-through rate

• Transactions and revenue per transaction manager / team capacity utilization

• Milestone and deadline adherence

• Client satisfaction and referral rates

• Operating budget and margin performance

• Rock completion and operations scorecard health

• AI and automation impact: hours of manual work eliminated, share of core workflows that are AI-assisted or automated, and transactions handled per team member

• Team-wide AI adoption and proficiency

• Team retention and engagement

TO APPLY

If you are interested in this role, please apply through this posting with your résumé and a brief cover letter describing (1) an organizational change or process transformation you led and (2) an AI-powered workflow you personally built, with the results of each.

Menlo Group is an equal opportunity employer.