Senior Manager of Operations
Research Institute for the Study of Language in Urban Society
Flushing, NY 11367Remote$80,000 - $95,000 a yearFull Time
Job Description
The Research Institute for the Study of Language in Urban Society (RISLUS) is looking for our first Senior Manager of Operations. This isn't a "follow the manual" job—it’s a "write the manual" job.
We’ve spent years building a mission we’re proud of: equipping teachers across New York to leverage their multilingual students’ home language skills as students start their academic lives in the U.S. It’s vital work, and we’re looking to expand our reach and impact. As our team grows, we want to bring on a seasoned operational leader to help us rethink our internal infrastructure and oversee the technical process of getting our tests up online.
Our team runs the Multilingual Literacy SIFE Screener, a grant-funded project of the New York State Education Department, based at the City University of New York (Queens College) and administered by the Research Foundation of CUNY.
You’ll be our financial steward as well as the primary liaison to our fiscal agent in order to ensure our budget is spent in compliance with our grant, and everyone gets paid. You’ll be responsible for financial and personnel management in order to ensure we can put test materials developed by our content creation team into our digital environment.
We need someone who can bridge the gap between 'what needs to happen' and 'how it gets done.' You need to be able to not only craft a great strategy, but also be flexible and resourceful when things don’t go to plan. We are in the Educational Technology space. You don’t have to be a programmer, but comfort and excitement with learning new platforms and interfaces will help you thrive in this role. We’d love it if you’ve spent time in schools or managed grant-funded work before, but your ability to solve problems and communicate with the team (orally and in writing) is what matters most. You will report to the Project Director. Training and support are available as you spend the first few months getting up to speed.
*Responsibilities*:
*People & Operations*
As the Senior Manager of Operations, you will be the backbone of our team, ensuring that our internal systems and our people are aligned. You make sure the team has what they need so they can focus on doing their best work.
* Team Leadership & Supervision: Act as the primary supervisor for our part-time staff, providing clear direction, goal-setting, and performance management to ensure all projects remain on track.
* HR & Compliance Liaison: Serve as our lead point of contact for our fiscal agent regarding HR and compliance matters for our team of ~20. Oversee all personnel actions, such as hiring, onboarding, and payroll.
* Talent Development: Drive the full lifecycle of the employee experience, including recruitment, onboarding, and the design of training and professional growth initiatives to support a high-performing team.
* Systems Design & Strategic Mapping: Review our internal systems, policies, and workflows with a critical eye in order to ensure clarity and remove friction.
* Culture & Accountability: Foster a collaborative team culture rooted in accountability and continuous improvement, ensuring that the mission remains the focus while maintaining high standards of efficiency and compliance.
*Financial & Resource Management*
You’ll manage the flow of funds with a high degree of accuracy, maintaining internal records and ensuring all processes required by our fiscal agent are completed.
* Fiscal Stewardship: Serve as the primary liaison with the Research Foundation of CUNY. You’ll ensure payroll, contractor payments, and reimbursements operate smoothly and transparently.
* Budgetary Clarity: Maintain and monitor our internal budget as well as our reports within the OneRF Workday platform. Provide the clarity and reporting needed to ensure we are making smart, sustainable choices.
* Forecasting & Planning: You’ll lead financial planning and forecasting, ensuring we stay in full compliance with funder, university, and fiscal agent requirements while maximizing our impact.
* Vendor & Contract Oversight: Manage the full lifecycle of vendor relationships, from procurement to final delivery.
*Test Digitization Project Management*
You will oversee the journey of our assessments from the development stage to the production site, ensuring accuracy and reliability. This involves managing our multilingual team of part-time research assistants and overseeing our network of vendors who create art, audio and other materials to support our content development. You’ll learn about our digitization system so that you can direct our research assistants to move our content from google docs into our content management system, ensuring the content across our 19 languages displays correctly online, and that all test paths, reports, and other features are functioning properly before content and test updates are released to our users.
* Strategic Deliverables: Partner with the Project Director to map out the year’s milestones. You’ll take the lead on tracking deliverables, ensuring that our goals and timelines are achieved with a high standard of quality. You will coordinate moving parts across the team to remove bottlenecks and ensure that nothing falls through the cracks during the digitization process.
* Digitization Pipeline: Lead the planning and execution of our digital releases. You’ll manage the critical hand-off from content development to the production environment, ensuring every test functions correctly for the teachers and students who rely on them.
* Resource Coordination: Direct the work of contractors and short-term/part-time staff. You’ll develop clear Statements of Work (SOWs) for specialized art, audio, and content review, ensuring our external partners have the direction they need to produce their best work.
*Recommended Qualifications*:
* Experience in people management and/or operational leadership
* Bachelor’s degree in business administration, operations, management, or a related field (or equivalent experience)
* Experience in operations, administration, human resources, and/or project management
* Demonstrated ability to manage multiple priorities and deadlines
* Proficiency with operational tools and systems (e.g., project management software, spreadsheets, databases)
* Strong organizational, analytical, and problem-solving skills
* Ability to set up, monitor, and revise team workflows
* Detail-oriented with a big-picture mindset
* Excellent written and verbal communication skills
*To apply* please send a *cover letter and resume *to [email protected] with the subject line “MLS Operations Position”. Cover letters should describe which of the job responsibilities applicants have had experience with, and highlight experience relevant to the recommended qualifications.
*About Us:* RISLUS is based at the City University of New York. Read more at . RISLUS has developed multilingual educational assessments for over 25 years. This position will be responsible for supporting the Multilingual Literacy SIFE Screener (MLS), an online, semi-adaptive suite of assessments in 19 languages with an annual budget over one million dollars a year.
*Benefits*: Provided through Research Foundation of CUNY
*Target Start Date: *March or April, 2026
*Location*: Must be willing to commute to our office at CUNY Queens College, (Queens, NY) a few times a month. Daily work is done remotely.
*Authorization*: We are only able to hire individuals residing in and authorized to work in the US.
Pay: $80,000.00 - $95,000.00 per year
Benefits:
* 401(k)
* 401(k) matching
* Dental insurance
* Health insurance
* Paid time off
* Vision insurance
Work Location: Hybrid remote in flushing, NY
We’ve spent years building a mission we’re proud of: equipping teachers across New York to leverage their multilingual students’ home language skills as students start their academic lives in the U.S. It’s vital work, and we’re looking to expand our reach and impact. As our team grows, we want to bring on a seasoned operational leader to help us rethink our internal infrastructure and oversee the technical process of getting our tests up online.
Our team runs the Multilingual Literacy SIFE Screener, a grant-funded project of the New York State Education Department, based at the City University of New York (Queens College) and administered by the Research Foundation of CUNY.
You’ll be our financial steward as well as the primary liaison to our fiscal agent in order to ensure our budget is spent in compliance with our grant, and everyone gets paid. You’ll be responsible for financial and personnel management in order to ensure we can put test materials developed by our content creation team into our digital environment.
We need someone who can bridge the gap between 'what needs to happen' and 'how it gets done.' You need to be able to not only craft a great strategy, but also be flexible and resourceful when things don’t go to plan. We are in the Educational Technology space. You don’t have to be a programmer, but comfort and excitement with learning new platforms and interfaces will help you thrive in this role. We’d love it if you’ve spent time in schools or managed grant-funded work before, but your ability to solve problems and communicate with the team (orally and in writing) is what matters most. You will report to the Project Director. Training and support are available as you spend the first few months getting up to speed.
*Responsibilities*:
*People & Operations*
As the Senior Manager of Operations, you will be the backbone of our team, ensuring that our internal systems and our people are aligned. You make sure the team has what they need so they can focus on doing their best work.
* Team Leadership & Supervision: Act as the primary supervisor for our part-time staff, providing clear direction, goal-setting, and performance management to ensure all projects remain on track.
* HR & Compliance Liaison: Serve as our lead point of contact for our fiscal agent regarding HR and compliance matters for our team of ~20. Oversee all personnel actions, such as hiring, onboarding, and payroll.
* Talent Development: Drive the full lifecycle of the employee experience, including recruitment, onboarding, and the design of training and professional growth initiatives to support a high-performing team.
* Systems Design & Strategic Mapping: Review our internal systems, policies, and workflows with a critical eye in order to ensure clarity and remove friction.
* Culture & Accountability: Foster a collaborative team culture rooted in accountability and continuous improvement, ensuring that the mission remains the focus while maintaining high standards of efficiency and compliance.
*Financial & Resource Management*
You’ll manage the flow of funds with a high degree of accuracy, maintaining internal records and ensuring all processes required by our fiscal agent are completed.
* Fiscal Stewardship: Serve as the primary liaison with the Research Foundation of CUNY. You’ll ensure payroll, contractor payments, and reimbursements operate smoothly and transparently.
* Budgetary Clarity: Maintain and monitor our internal budget as well as our reports within the OneRF Workday platform. Provide the clarity and reporting needed to ensure we are making smart, sustainable choices.
* Forecasting & Planning: You’ll lead financial planning and forecasting, ensuring we stay in full compliance with funder, university, and fiscal agent requirements while maximizing our impact.
* Vendor & Contract Oversight: Manage the full lifecycle of vendor relationships, from procurement to final delivery.
*Test Digitization Project Management*
You will oversee the journey of our assessments from the development stage to the production site, ensuring accuracy and reliability. This involves managing our multilingual team of part-time research assistants and overseeing our network of vendors who create art, audio and other materials to support our content development. You’ll learn about our digitization system so that you can direct our research assistants to move our content from google docs into our content management system, ensuring the content across our 19 languages displays correctly online, and that all test paths, reports, and other features are functioning properly before content and test updates are released to our users.
* Strategic Deliverables: Partner with the Project Director to map out the year’s milestones. You’ll take the lead on tracking deliverables, ensuring that our goals and timelines are achieved with a high standard of quality. You will coordinate moving parts across the team to remove bottlenecks and ensure that nothing falls through the cracks during the digitization process.
* Digitization Pipeline: Lead the planning and execution of our digital releases. You’ll manage the critical hand-off from content development to the production environment, ensuring every test functions correctly for the teachers and students who rely on them.
* Resource Coordination: Direct the work of contractors and short-term/part-time staff. You’ll develop clear Statements of Work (SOWs) for specialized art, audio, and content review, ensuring our external partners have the direction they need to produce their best work.
*Recommended Qualifications*:
* Experience in people management and/or operational leadership
* Bachelor’s degree in business administration, operations, management, or a related field (or equivalent experience)
* Experience in operations, administration, human resources, and/or project management
* Demonstrated ability to manage multiple priorities and deadlines
* Proficiency with operational tools and systems (e.g., project management software, spreadsheets, databases)
* Strong organizational, analytical, and problem-solving skills
* Ability to set up, monitor, and revise team workflows
* Detail-oriented with a big-picture mindset
* Excellent written and verbal communication skills
*To apply* please send a *cover letter and resume *to [email protected] with the subject line “MLS Operations Position”. Cover letters should describe which of the job responsibilities applicants have had experience with, and highlight experience relevant to the recommended qualifications.
*About Us:* RISLUS is based at the City University of New York. Read more at . RISLUS has developed multilingual educational assessments for over 25 years. This position will be responsible for supporting the Multilingual Literacy SIFE Screener (MLS), an online, semi-adaptive suite of assessments in 19 languages with an annual budget over one million dollars a year.
*Benefits*: Provided through Research Foundation of CUNY
*Target Start Date: *March or April, 2026
*Location*: Must be willing to commute to our office at CUNY Queens College, (Queens, NY) a few times a month. Daily work is done remotely.
*Authorization*: We are only able to hire individuals residing in and authorized to work in the US.
Pay: $80,000.00 - $95,000.00 per year
Benefits:
* 401(k)
* 401(k) matching
* Dental insurance
* Health insurance
* Paid time off
* Vision insurance
Work Location: Hybrid remote in flushing, NY