Operations Manager

Aspire Research runs a 16-week research fellowship for high school students. Each student is paired with a PhD mentor who guides the science and an ISEF finalist who guides competition strategy, and produces original research they present at an ISEF-affiliated science fair.

Our program design is strong. Our operational systems need consolidation, and that is this role.

Enrollment currently spans Stripe, Zapier, Airtable, and a custom Replit backend. Each piece works, but the connections between them are not monitored, some communications duplicate, and several failure modes are silent. There is no single view of where a student stands.

Responsibilities

• Map and consolidate the enrollment and onboarding pipeline into one coherent flow with a clear source of truth
• Instrument failure points and build a single operational view of student status, deadlines, and blockers
• Own the student pipeline from enrollment through fair day against defined service standards
• Document the system so it can run without founder involvement

Requirements

• Operations experience at an education company, mentorship program, bootcamp, or similar
• Strong Airtable and Zapier proficiency, or comparable automation tooling
• Comfortable working alongside a technical system without writing code
• A demonstrated bias toward simplification

You will work directly with the founder.