Customer Operations Lead

The role

Elayne is hiring a Customer Operations Lead to own the post-loss family experience and harden the operating system behind it.

This is a senior, hands-on, user-facing operations role for someone who can operate at the intersection of family experience, product operations, service design, legal and financial process mapping, and AI-enabled workflow automation.

This is not a traditional customer success, account management, or support role. It is also not a back-office CS Ops role. You will work directly with families, understand where the experience is confusing or emotionally difficult, and translate those insights into workflows, service standards, product requirements, escalation paths, and automation opportunities that help Elayne scale.

This role will report to the CEO and work closely with Growth, Product, Engineering, and external professional partners.

Why this role matters

Estate settlement is complicated, but it is not unknowable. Beneath the emotional complexity are patterns, rules, decision points, and recurring moments where users struggle. Elayne’s opportunity is to understand those patterns deeply enough to turn a confusing process into a guided, scalable system.

This role sits at the center of that work. You will be close enough to users to understand what they actually need, and structured enough to translate those insights into workflows, service standards, escalation paths, product requirements, and automation opportunities.

The goal is not to solve every case as a one-off. The goal is to identify the branches that matter, systematize the repeatable work, and make sure humans are present for the moments that require judgment, empathy, and trust. Done well, every family we support makes Elayne smarter, more consistent, and more capable of delivering care at scale.

What you’ll build

As Elayne’s Customer Operations Lead, you will turn the family experience into an operating model the company can trust, improve, and scale.

1. A service model families can rely on

You will define how Elayne shows up for families across the estate settlement journey: what we explain, when we intervene, how we set expectations, and how we create confidence in moments that are confusing or high-stakes.

2. A decision architecture for complex workflows

You will help break estate settlement into clearer branches, rules, handoffs, and escalation points, so the team is not reinventing the process case by case. The goal is to turn complexity into a system that is understandable for families and usable by the company.

3. A product feedback loop rooted in user feedback

You will translate what happens with families into sharper product priorities: where the experience breaks down, where software should do more, where AI can reduce manual work, and where human touch still matters.

4. A customer operations function built for leverage

Over time, you will build the foundation for the function itself: the standards, training, quality bar, metrics, and operating rhythms that allow Elayne to support more families without scaling headcount linearly or losing trust.

How we work

We are a small, high-trust team building in a category where the work is complex, personal, and urgent. We care deeply about the people we serve, but we are not precious about process. We move quickly, communicate directly, and hold a high bar for the quality of the experience we deliver.

The work here is highly collaborative. The best ideas often come from being close to the details: a family conversation, a product gap, an operational edge case, or a partner need. We expect people to take ownership of outcomes, pull in the right teammates, and turn what they learn into better systems for everyone.

Location and expectations

This is a full-time role based with the rest of the team in New York City. We work in person 3–4 days per week because the pace, ambiguity, and cross-functional nature of the work require close collaboration. Remote days are intended for deeper focus work.

This is not a passive 9-to-5 role. We are not looking for performative intensity or round-the-clock chaos, but there will be moments when families, partners, or internal priorities require responsiveness outside typical working hours. The right person is energized by meaningful, high-ownership work and is willing to do what it takes with judgment and care.

What you’ll bring

• At least one work experience at a Seed-stage or Series A company: you understand what it means to build in an environment where systems are rapidly evolving, priorities shift quickly, and speed matters more than perfection
• 5 to 10 years of experience, in customer operations, product operations, service design, complex case management, services-plus-software, or another high-trust user-facing environment
• Strong systems-building ability, with a track record of turning ambiguity into workflows, documentation, operating processes, product requirements, or repeatable service standards
• Judgment in sensitive user moments, especially in situations where clarity, empathy, privacy, money, family dynamics, or trust matter.

What would make you stand out

• Ability to learn complex domains quickly, especially legal, financial, operational, or administrative processes that need to become understandable to users, internal teams, and product partners.
• Strong cross-functional execution, with the ability to turn frontline user insights into product, engineering, growth, or operating priorities that actually ship.
• You use AI as leverage, already using AI tools to move faster and produce better work across messy operational problems.
• Experience with complex professional or institutional workflows, especially in categories involving legal, financial, healthcare, insurance, government, or other regulated stakeholders.

The person who will thrive

• High stamina and high ownership. You understand that early-stage work can be intense, urgent, and underdefined. You do not need perfect instructions to make progress, and when something important needs to get done, you take responsibility for getting to the right outcome.
• Highly empathetic, but not soft on structure. You can support people through emotionally difficult moments while still creating the systems, boundaries, and processes required to scale.
• Comfortable with ambiguity, but unwilling to leave things ambiguous for others. You can enter an unfamiliar legal, financial, or administrative process, ask the right questions, and turn it into something clear and usable.
• Energized by building from the ground floor. You want to be close to users, product, and the operating details that determine whether a company can scale with quality.

Compensation

The expected salary range for this role is $110 to $180k annually, plus equity. This range represents Elayne’s good-faith estimate for this position at the time of posting. Final compensation will depend on your experience, scope, and fit for the role.

Elayne also offers health insurance and a 401(k) plan.

Equal opportunity

Elayne is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants based on ability, experience, and potential, and do not discriminate on the basis of any protected characteristic under applicable federal, state, or local law.

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Interview Process

1. Introductory conversation

A quick conversation with a member of the team, focused on motivation, judgment, relevant experience, and mutual fit for the role.

2. Experience deep dive

A detailed walkthrough of prior work building operations, supporting users, mapping complex workflows, partnering with product and engineering, or working in high-empathy environments.

3. Scenario-based practical exercise (take-home)

A short, time-boxed exercise focused on a realistic, complex workflow.

4. Cross-functional interview

A conversation with the CTO, focused on how you translate user needs into product requirements, operating systems, and Product/Engineering priorities.

5. Final conversation

A final conversation with the CEO focused on scope, reporting structure, operating cadence, and what success looks like.