Director of Client Operations

Energy Data + AI Platform (Confidential Search) | Remote, Continental US

Climate People is running a retained search for a seed-stage AI energy & sustainability software company.

The Opportunity Our client is a revenue-generating, capital-efficient AI platform for energy and utility data management, with a growing base of public-sector and commercial clients. The product ingests utility and building data and proactively surfaces anomalies, savings opportunities, and recommendations rather than waiting for someone to open a dashboard.

The constraint on growth is operational capacity, not demand. This hire owns the client delivery lifecycle end to end, builds the systems and metrics to scale it, and personally does the hands-on data and client work required to get there. You will build and lead the delivery team, with a realistic path for growth for a strong performer.

This is a player-coach role. Expect to spend your first months doing the delivery work yourself, processing data, onboarding clients, sitting in the client meetings, while you build the processes and metrics that let you delegate it.

What You Will Own

• Client onboarding from signed contract through go-live and ongoing delivery
• Utility bill and energy data quality: pipeline monitoring, edge cases, and QA run on a defined cadence and tracked to resolution
• Client relationships: running meetings, owning deliverables, and building a support model that catches issues before clients report them
• Operational KPIs, SLAs, and dashboards, with baselines and targets that drive decisions
• Hands-on analysis in SQL (BigQuery preferred) and Python, and client-facing work including rate and tariff analysis, using AI methods to deliver it at scale
• The working boundary between operations and engineering, in partnership with the data team
• AI adoption across the operations function, so manual effort falls as the client base grows

Who You Are

• Experienced in energy, utilities, utility data, or sustainability (energy data focus) with enough depth to engage energy managers credibly: bills, rates, tariffs, buildings, and the economics of energy
• Proven owner of client delivery and operations at a data-intensive B2B company
• A hands-on manager who has set expectations, measured productivity, and developed a small team while continuing to do the work personally
• Proficient in SQL (BigQuery preferred) and comfortable in Python; able to investigate data issues and improve tooling yourself
• A demonstrated AI-first operator: you use AI tools to rebuild workflows and deliver client work, and you can show it
• A process builder: you turn informal workflows into documented, measurable systems that teams follow in practice
• Startup or growth-stage experience, comfortable with ambiguity and a high rate of change

Hiring Process Apply through Climate People. Candidates advancing past the initial screen learn the company's identity before meeting the team. The interview process is streamlined, three to four conversations including a short presentation on a project you owned.

Climate People is a recruitment firm dedicated to climate careers. Our client is an equal opportunity employer.