Vice President of Operations - Custom Manufacturing & Fabrication

About the job

Vice President of Operations – Custom Manufacturing & Fabrication

Location: Kansas City, Kansas
Schedule: Full-Time | On-Site
Compensation: Competitive base salary, plus bonus and long-term incentive opportunity

About Our Client

Our client is a growing, family-owned custom manufacturing and architectural fabrication company specializing in made-to-order architectural products, millwork, and custom fabrication. With generations of craftsmanship behind its work, the company brings complex customer concepts from design and pre-construction through fabrication, project execution, and delivery.

With strong momentum and continued growth ahead, the company is entering its next stage of evolution. Leadership is investing in the people, systems, technology, and operational infrastructure needed to scale the business while protecting the craftsmanship, culture, and customer experience that have driven its success.

The Opportunity

Our client is seeking an experienced Vice President of Operations - Custom Manufacturing & Fabrication to lead day-to-day operations and help build the infrastructure required for the company's next stage of growth.

This is not a traditional plant-management role, nor is it a turnaround assignment. The company has an established team, strong demand, and experienced functional leaders already in place. What it needs now is an operational executive who has seen what the next level looks like and can help build it.

Reporting to executive leadership, the VP of Operations will oversee the operational lifecycle from pre-construction and estimating through production, project management, coordination, quality, and shipping. This leader will develop existing managers, strengthen accountability, modernize processes, improve capacity and scheduling visibility, and introduce scalable systems into an operation that has historically relied heavily on manual processes.

The right person will bring both operational discipline and an entrepreneurial mindset. They will be equally comfortable developing leaders, evaluating technology and processes, digging into job costs and margins, and helping the company evaluate new capabilities and revenue opportunities.

What You'll Do

Lead the Operation

• Own day-to-day operational performance across pre-construction, estimating, production, scheduling, quality, project management, coordination, and shipping.
• Lead and develop key functional leaders, including the Director of Production and Director of Pre-Construction.
• Provide clear priorities, expectations, and accountability across a growing organization.
• Build alignment between the office, shop floor, and customer-facing teams.
• Create a culture of ownership in which problems are surfaced early, commitments matter, and leaders are empowered to lead.

Build Scalable Systems & Processes

• Evaluate current workflows and build the operating systems and processes required to support continued growth.
• Lead improvements to production planning, capacity management, scheduling, inventory visibility, and cross-functional project tracking.
• Help transition critical operational processes away from manual and spreadsheet-dependent workflows toward more integrated, technology-enabled systems.
• Establish meaningful operational KPIs and create visibility into performance across departments.
• Build and document SOPs while preserving the flexibility required in a highly customized, made-to-order manufacturing environment.
• Reduce key-person dependency by capturing institutional knowledge and building repeatable processes.

Improve Capacity, Scheduling & Delivery

• Develop disciplined capacity planning that aligns incoming work with realistic operational capacity.
• Strengthen production scheduling and improve visibility into project status, constraints, and anticipated completion dates.
• Improve communication between operations and customer-facing teams so customers receive accurate information regarding timelines and delivery.
• Identify operational bottlenecks before they become emergencies and reduce dependence on reactive problem-solving.

Strengthen Financial & Operational Performance

• Partner with executive and financial leadership to connect operational decisions to revenue, margin, and profitability.
• Strengthen the feedback loop between estimating, job costing, and actual project performance.
• Identify opportunities to improve pricing discipline, cost control, scope management, and project profitability.
• Use operational and financial data to drive better decisions around capacity, staffing, workflow, and investment.
• Help ensure the company's operational infrastructure can consistently support continued revenue growth.

Develop People & Leadership

• Coach and develop managers and emerging leaders throughout the organization.
• Establish clear performance expectations and address underperformance directly, fairly, and consistently.
• Build structured onboarding, training, and cross-training programs that allow employees to ramp successfully and expand organizational capacity.
• Lead with integrity and earn credibility with employees at every level of the organization.
• Foster an inclusive environment across a highly diverse, multilingual workforce.

Help Build What's Next

• Bring an outside perspective and contemporary operating practices to a company that has historically developed much of its leadership internally.
• Partner with executive leadership as the company evaluates additional capabilities and revenue streams, including installation, design, and manufactured product opportunities.
• Help determine the operational requirements, resources, systems, and partnerships needed to successfully launch and scale new offerings.
• Build an operating model capable of supporting continued growth and future expansion.

What We're Looking For

• 8+ years of progressive operations leadership experience, with meaningful responsibility for a production, fabrication, project-based, or build-to-order environment.
• Experience leading operations within custom manufacturing, architectural fabrication, architectural millwork, commercial fixtures, furniture manufacturing, design-build, specialty fabrication, or another made-to-order/project-based manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated success building or improving operational systems, processes, and infrastructure within a growing organization.
• Experience leading leaders and managing through multiple functional areas rather than solely supervising front-line production.
• Strong understanding of production scheduling, capacity planning, project execution, and on-time delivery.
• Experience using job costing, budgets, operational metrics, or P&L data to improve business performance.
• Proven ability to implement change while earning trust and developing the people already in the organization.
• Experience creating SOPs, accountability structures, training programs, and scalable operating processes.
• Strong business judgment with the ability to move between strategic planning and hands-on operational problem-solving.
• Comfort working in an entrepreneurial environment where not every system or process has already been built.

Highly Valued Experience

• Architectural fabrication or architectural millwork.
• Custom fixtures, furniture, signage, exhibits, specialty fabrication, or similar engineered-to-order manufacturing.
• Design-build or commercial construction environments with significant fabrication, subcontractor, or installation management.
• Scaling a business through a meaningful stage of revenue growth.
• ERP, production-management, inventory-management, or other operational technology implementation.
• Building or expanding installation, subcontractor, design, or other adjacent operational capabilities.
• Experience within a family-owned or owner-operated business.
• Bilingual English/Spanish communication skills.

The Leadership Style That Works Here

The successful VP of Operations will be direct, steady, entrepreneurial, and highly accountable without leading through ego or politics.

This person should be comfortable walking the shop floor, asking difficult questions, challenging existing assumptions, and making decisions while also respecting the knowledge and experience already within the organization.

They should know how to hold a high standard while maintaining trust. Integrity, transparency, and follow-through are essential.

The company has a highly diverse workforce representing numerous nationalities and languages, so this leader must be comfortable building relationships and communicating effectively across backgrounds, functions, and levels of the organization.

Most importantly, this should be someone interested in building for the long term. The organization is not seeking a short-term turnaround executive. It is looking for a leader who wants to help shape the next generation of the company.

What Success Looks Like

During the first year, the VP of Operations will be expected to:

• Establish clear operational ownership, priorities, and accountability.
• Develop and strengthen the existing leadership team.
• Create greater visibility into capacity, scheduling, project status, and delivery commitments.
• Begin transitioning critical operational workflows from manual processes into scalable systems.
• Improve the connection between estimating, actual job costs, execution, and profitability.
• Build stronger onboarding, training, SOPs, and cross-training.
• Reduce operational firefighting through better planning and visibility.
• Establish the operating foundation required to sustain continued growth and support future business expansion.

Compensation & Location

This is a full-time, on-site leadership position based in Kansas City, Kansas.

The anticipated base salary range is competitive depending on experience and overall compensation structure. The company is open to developing a package that may include performance-based bonus opportunities, incremental compensation tied to company growth, and a long-term incentive component.

Additional benefits and compensation details will be discussed during the interview process.