Writing Operations Lead

Airbnb was born in 2007 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe. Every day, hosts offer unique stays and experiences that make it possible for guests to connect with communities in a more authentic way.

The community you will join:

UX Writing is a core design discipline at Airbnb. Our team of 40+ writers works closely with  Experience Design, Experience Research, and Design Program Management to support the product development process from beginning to end. Whether you excel in upfront storytelling, end-to-end systems design, or nitty-gritty execution you'll find your people here.

The difference you will make: 

As the first Writing Operations Lead at Airbnb, you’ll partner closely with, Design Operations, Design, Product Management, Program Management, Engineering, Marketing, and business leaders to help drive the UX Writing team’s priorities through seamless day-to-day operations and strong stakeholder alignment, with an eye towards scale and efficiency.

We’re looking for someone who brings creativity to the operational aspects of our craft, deals with solving the “how” to free up our writers to focus on crafting the “what,” anticipates how decisions are made, explores and uncovers new ways of doing things, and works collaboratively with stakeholders. You should have experience setting high-level goals to improve productivity and driving operational excellence for internal teams, allowing them to focus on delivering successful products for our guests and hosts.

In this role, you’ll be responsible for establishing and improving workflows and processes to ensure that we deliver excellence with predictability at scale. You’ll focus on our toolset (Airtable, Asana, Google Drive) and optimize how and when we use each tool. Responsibilities range from day-to-day operational execution to monthly planning to developing future state enhancements that meet our long term goals.

A typical day:

• Partner with UX Writing and Design Ops leadership on resourcing strategies, tool optimization and education, and process improvements that help us scale and operate efficiently and effectively.
• Shape, drive, and document processes and tools for effective org planning workflows by assessing current tools and gaps and iterating on improvements toward a longer-term vision for more seamless workstreams.
• Collaborate with internal and cross functional (XFN) teams to simplify, unify, and streamline both UX Writing and XFN processes and tools (Airtable) to enhance productivity.
• Support overarching planning processes (e.g. monthly planning) to ensure headcount staffing and contractor resourcing plan meets larger skillset needs of team and business. 
• Collaborate with Design Ops, Design Program Managers (DPMs), and Program Managers to ensure consistency in overarching ways of working to drive successful program delivery.
• Coordinate periodic reporting on team output and key metrics, manage work plans, analyze data, and ensure recommendations are effectively implemented.
• Develop a system to regularly update and maintain accuracy of documentation relative to the team's operating system, onboarding, process, and tools.
• Support the development of capacity planning, scoping, and roadmap planning standards across the UX Writing team. 
• Participate in and support cultural moments for the UX Writing team.

Other operational responsibilities may be required but will be considered and determined based on experience, capability, organizational need, and bandwidth. 

Your expertise:

• 9+ years consulting, program management, product management, project management with demonstrated experience establishing methods and processes, implementing systems, and supporting org-wide operations.
• Proactive approach with a demonstrated ability to work through ambiguity to detailed simple solutions. You can take a vague problem, crisply frame the challenge, identify a path forward, and drive an initiative over the finish line with limited oversight. 
• Highly tactical operator with a focus on tracking, reporting, and process improvement.
• Proficiency in optimizing program management tools for enhanced efficiency.
• Highly organized with a talent for structuring and implementing initiatives at scale.
• Deep u