Operations Specialist

How You’ll Contribute

The National Geographic Society headquarters, based in Washington, D.C., is undergoing a significant renovation project on its campus (called Base Camp), which will be completed in 2026. The public-facing portion of this renovation will be the new National Geographic Museum of Exploration. Components of the new museum will include a state-of-the-art pavilion entrance, auditorium, iconic photo gallery, exhibition space, immersive walk-through attraction, retail, food and beverage, education center, archives, tours, and exciting new event space. The capstone of the renovation is a one-of-a-kind nighttime experience in the courtyard.

The Operations team provides all physical facilities maintenance for all buildings and systems on the Base Camp campus, including the Museum of Exploration, as well as all visitor and hospitality services, sustainability, mailroom and loading dock services, and interactive, audiovisual and multimedia exhibit experiences within the Museum. Additionally, the Operations team fabricates, maintains, and refurbishes large-scale National Geographic traveling exhibits The Operations team strives to provide an exceptional experience for all headquarters visitors, donors, tenants, internal customers, and other staff by flawlessly executing operations across our one-million-square-foot campus.

Functioning as the operational right-hand to the Vice President of Operations, you will be the central hub for monitoring the execution of internal and external customer-facing operational activities at Base Camp. This is a critical, hands-on role where you will act as the VP's “eyes and ears” using both on-the-ground observation and key performance indicators (KPIs such as visitor satisfaction, attendance, revenue, work order aging, etc.) to ensure standards of excellence are met. Your primary focus will be helping to actualize the VP's operational vision into daily, actionable, measurable results.

Your Impact

Responsibilities Include:

Campus Operations Execution & Quality Assurance (35%) This is the core of the role, requiring you to be a constant, proactive presence across the campus to ensure smooth and high-quality operations.

• Serve as the VP's primary proxy for operational assessment, spending significant time in public, office, and tenant areas to maintain situational awareness, proactively identify service gaps or logistical conflicts, and ensure new campus standards are consistently met.

• Working with team leaders, help to coordinate operational activities between key stakeholder groups, acting as a central point of contact to compile, assess, and elevate plans, issues, and circumstances to the VP in order to prevent space-use conflicts, to provide clash detection, and to ensure flawless execution of simultaneous internal, external, physical plant, visitor, and other events and daily activities

• Regularly walk public and staff spaces to perform quality checks on behalf of Operations leadership, documenting findings and coordinating directly with relevant teams to ensure swift remediation of any issues.

• Utilize tools like monday.com, CMMS, and a variety of other systems and dashboards to help the VP tell a complete story about operational performance, correlating operational data (like work orders) with other performance reports and dashboards to drive intelligent resource allocation and team alignment across the VP’s six reports and 200+ team members.

Operational Planning & Continuous Improvement (25%) You will use data and financial tracking as tools to help Operations actively improve the guest and staff experience.

• Analyze performance data from all Museum floor teams and other museum users and stakeholders, to identify friction points in the visitor and staff journey; translate these insights into concrete, actionable recommendations for the VP and their team leaders to improve workflows.

• Assist in the annual budget process by tracking assigned cost centers, tracking project spending, and working with operations team leaders to provide the VP with clear, concise updates on budget variances to inform strategic decision-making.

• Serve as an analytical partner to the VP and their operations team leaders, connecting your on-the-ground observations with performance data (KPIs, guest feedback) to propose tactical improvements that boost efficiency and satisfaction.

Executive Support & Administrative Management (15%) Yo