Operations and delivery
What does a Business Operations Manager do?
Making work happen reliably across people, process, and time.
What the day is like
- Indoors, under a roof.
- A screen and a keyboard.
- People all day.
- Right or wrong, to a standard.
- Responsible for other people.
The facts
- Pay
- $105,770 a year, median
- General and operations managers, May 2025
- Usually needs
- Bachelor's degree
- Weeks to months. Most people can start from where they are.
- Jobs
- +5% projected change in jobs, 2025-2035 projections
- Demand looks growing slowly
What is good about it
- It pays well against the rest of the work on this site.
What people find hard about it
- Repeated firefighting
- Process work that others resist
- Low visibility for good outcomes
Much of the work is invisible when it goes well, which is hard if you need visible recognition.
Will machines take this job?
What machines will do to this work. Routine coordination is increasingly automated; the judgement and people work is not.
How to find out whether it suits you
Map and improve one repeated workflow for a small business or team.
Would this actually suit you?
CareerDNA works that out from what you choose rather than from what you say about yourself: two minutes of choosing between real jobs, a few puzzles, and some questions about what you are like. It is free, it saves as you go, and it will tell you plainly where the answer is thin.