Retail Operations Manager

At Meta Lab, we're building immersive environments that blend culture, technology, and hands-on experiences. Our retail teams are at the forefront of this mission, creating people-first experiences designed to make our products easy to experience and understand. Meta Lab stores are experiential retail spaces that put people and community first — a reinvention of the traditional shopping experience and

As our retail footprint grows, we're looking for a Retail Operations Manager to build and run the operating systems behind our stores. You'll own operational processes and tools within the Meta Lab locations including inventory management, allocations, back-of-house operations, labor scheduling, retail technology and performance reporting.

Additionally, you’ll act as a liaison with key cross-functional partners who support the retail teams.

Our retail business is early-stage and growing fast. This role is for a builder: someone who can bring structure where it's missing, make sound calls with incomplete information, and set up processes that work across a few stores and then many. You'll design the processes and also run them day to day.

You'll work closely with store and field leaders, Merchandising and Planning, Supply Chain, Retail Technology, Finance and Data teams so our stores can open, operate and grow smoothly.

Responsibilities

• Build and lead the operating systems for store inventory, from planning and allocation to receiving, stock accuracy and loss reduction, including for launches and seasonal peaks
• Own allocations and replenishment for every store. Work with Planning and Supply Chain to turn demand signals, new product introductions and store growth plans into allocation strategies by store
• Set the inventory operations standards: receiving, transfers, cycle counts, returns, damages, demo units and reconciliation. Drive inventory accuracy and shrink performance
• Write, launch and maintain back-of-house standard operating procedures. Make them simple to follow, easy to train and consistent across locations, and update them as the business changes
• Act as the main operations liaison for retail technology partners. Turn store needs into requirements for systems like POS, inventory management, workforce management and in-store devices. Partner with Retail Tech team on testing, rollout and adoption of new tools
• Own labor scheduling standards and tools. Build scheduling models that match staffing to traffic, launches, events and service goals while managing labor costs
• Build and maintain operational dashboards and reports on inventory health, allocation performance, labor efficiency and store KPIs. Use AI and automation tools to get timely insights to store and leadership teams with less manual work
• Take proven store pilots and turn them into repeatable processes that work across the full fleet
• Partner with new store opening and training teams so inventory, back-of-house operations, systems and scheduling are ready on day one and every new store reaches steady state quickly
• Find gaps in operations and lead improvement projects with clear owners, timelines and success measures. Report progress and risks to retail leadership
• Support stores with day-to-day questions and needs to enable excellent customer experiences and smooth operations

Qualifications

• Bachelors Degree or equivalent work experience
• 5+ years of experience in corporate (HQ) retail operations, inventory management, or allocation in a multi-unit or specialty retail environment
• Experience building and putting standard operating procedures and operational processes in place from scratch
• Hands-on experience with inventory and allocation processes, including replenishment, stock accuracy and shrink management
• Experience working with retail technology such as POS, inventory management or workforce management systems, including gathering requirements and leading rollouts
• Experience using data to drive decisions, including building reports or dashboards
• Experience leading cross-functional projects and influencing partners without direct authority
• Experience communicating clearly with audiences from store teams to senior leaders Experience adhering to and implementing responsible, ethical AI practices (e.g., risk assessment, bias mitigation, quality and accuracy reviews)
• Experience with consumer electronics, technology or premium retail, including managing demo inventory and high-value or serialized products
• Experience acting as an operations liaison to retail technology or product teams during system implementations
• Demonstrated ongoing AI skill development (e.g., prompt/context engineering, agent orchestration) and staying current with emerging AI technologies
• Demonstrated ability to integrate AI tools to optimize/redesign workflows and drive measurable impact (e.g., efficiency gains, quality improvements)
• Experience with labor modeling and workforce management tools
• Experience scaling operations for a retail concept in a growth or early-stage phase, including new store openings
• Experience with SQL, BI tools or AI-powered analytics and automation to scale reporting and workflows
• Background in process improvement methods such as Lean or Six Sigma