Student Operations Team Leader

Job Description This is a remote position. Student Operations Team Leader, India Remote (India) | Full-Time Also searched as: Customer Support Team Leader, Operations Team Leader, CX Team Leader, Team Leader Customer Service, Point of Contact, Student Operations Point of Contact Can you run a pod that does not need managing from above, where queries are assigned and cleared, the team keeps getting better, and your lead's involvement is the exception rather than the norm? On a typical day you might triage the inbox and assign the pod's work before they start, run the day so first responses go out inside fifteen minutes and the queue clears to zero, audit a sample of your team's replies to catch a pattern early, and send your pod's numbers up before you log off. About Contour We started in 2020 with a handful of students and a belief that great education should not be out of reach. Today we operate across three brands with 8,000+ students and 425+ team members: roughly 100 in India and 325 onshore in Australia. The India team runs publishing, student experience, CRM and technology, operations, and people and culture. Every reply your pod sends is Contour talking to a family, often about their money and their child's enrollment. You are the person who makes sure that the whole operation runs to standard, every day. About This Role You are the point of contact for a Contour customer experience pod. This is a management role: you do not carry a personal query target, your pod's results are your results. You own the quality chain, every response sent, every process followed, every query cleared. The disciplines in the CX block span billing, service, and student experience, and the pod you run works one of them. Billing is the most built-out example, so much of what follows uses it, but the standard is the same across the block. A great POC runs a pod that does not need managing from above. Queries are assigned and cleared, the team is developing, processes are current, and issues are caught and resolved at pod level. Your lead stepping in is the exception, not the norm. That is the bar the whole role is built around. Your day is built on triage and queue ownership. You clear each triage window with zero unassigned queries, you keep first response inside the fifteen-minute standard for every query type except policy questions, and you drive the pod's queue to zero every day, approving and tracking the rare carry-over yourself. You keep full platform coverage at all times across Missive, Podium, and the ticket queue, with a trained backup actively carrying every responsibility, and you flag volume that outruns capacity at the first sign, not after the backlog forms. You own pod quality and the audits that protect it. You audit enough of your team's work to see error patterns as they emerge, flag them within the day, and get resources corrected so an outdated step is never in active use. You own development: every pod member trained across all query types, with a documented plan for any gap, so a family never receives a wrong answer from someone who was never taught the right one. And you are reachable and accountable, responding to your pod, your lead, and senior stakeholders inside fifteen minutes, and running the pod so cleanly that day-to-day operations do not need your lead in them. You report to the delivery manager for the CX block, who runs the wider operation. The onshore teams own policy and the harder approvals; you own the daily operation, the pod's output, and its ramp. The North Star is Resolution Integrity: the share of queries actually resolved for the family at first attempt, and your pod's number rolls up into it. By the checkpoint, your pod runs to standard on its own: work assigned and cleared, quality holding, development on track, and your lead checking in rather than stepping in. The standard is high and it is explicit. Your pod's numbers are shared every week, there are no surprises, and flagging a problem early is treated as exactly the right move, not a mark against anyone. The targets are firm, and the support to hit them is always there. What You Will Do Own triage and the queue . Clear every triage window with zero unassigned queries, hold the fifteen-minute first-response standard, and drive the pod's queue to zero daily, approving and tracking carry-overs yourself. Hold platform coverage. Keep Missive, Podium, and the ticket queue covered at all times, with a trained backup actively carrying every responsibility. Run pod quality and audits. Audit enough of the pod's work to catch error patterns early, flag them within the day, and keep every resource current. Develop the pod. Train every member across all query types, and put a documented plan behind any gap. Stay reachable and report up. Respond to your pod, your lead, and stakeholders inside fifteen minutes, and send your pod's numbers up on schedule. Flag capacity early. Raise volume that outruns the pod at the first sign, so staffing and routing get sorted before families wait. Requirements What You Need Demonstrated experience running or coordinating a support, billing, or operations pod or small team, in a professional setting. Sharp triage and prioritization: you can look at a full queue and know what matters and who should take it. An owner's instinct: your pod's output is your responsibility, and you run to it without being prompted. A coach's habit: you train people across a full range of query types and give feedback that lands. Comfort with a ticketing tool, a CRM, and a payments tool, enough to audit your team's work and resolve the hard cases. Calm accuracy under volume, and reliable reporting without being chased. Cross-timezone comfort, with overlap into Australian time. Nice to Have Experience with Missive, Podium, Suptask, or similar inbox and ticketing tools. Hands-on with Stripe or another payments or billing platform. Background in education, edtech, fintech, or a high-volume student- or customer-facing operation. Experience building SOPs, audit routines, or onboarding and training plans for a team. The Kind of People Who Thrive Here The people who do well here run toward a backlog and toward accountability. They would rather build the system and coach the team than do every task themselves, they catch a slide before it reaches their lead, and they are careful with money and detail because a wrong number lands on a real family. They give direct feedback, keep their numbers honest, and run a pod that quietly works. As the CX operation scales, the strongest leads take on more of the block. What good looks like The pod runs itself: queries assigned and cleared, quality holding, your lead checking in rather than stepping in. The queue hits zero: every day, first responses inside the standard, carry-overs rare and tracked. Patterns get caught early: your audits surface an error before it reaches a string of families. The team keeps growing: every member trained across the work, with a plan behind every gap. Benefits Fully remote, anywhere in India. Compensation is competitive and bench marked to the role and your experience. We discuss it openly early in the process. Apply with a CV and one paragraph on a time you took a team's output or a backlog and got it running to a standard: what you changed, and how you kept it there.