Director of R&D Operations and Product Delivery

Description

Papaya Global is a rapidly growing, award-winning B2B tech unicorn with an ambitious mission to revolutionize the payroll & payments industry. With over $400M raised from multiple tier-one investors, our innovative technology provides a comprehensive solution for managing global workforces, encompassing everything from hiring and onboarding to managing and paying employees in over 160 countries.

We are seeking a dynamic and experienced Director of R&D Operations Product Delivery to lead and scale operational excellence across Papaya Global’s R&D and Product organization. This senior role sits at the intersection of strategy, execution, enablement, and delivery - driving focus, efficiency, and alignment across engineering and product. Your leadership will ensure that our roadmap planning, execution frameworks, and release delivery processes are optimized to support Papaya Global’s rapid growth and innovation.

Key Responsibilities

R&D Operations & Excellence

• Define and enforce product development and execution frameworks, including roadmap planning, quarterly planning, agile ceremonies, KPI governance, and retrospectives.
• Drive execution excellence by monitoring roadmap progress, identifying and removing blockers, and ensuring alignment across teams, groups and organizations.
• Own and optimize operational KPIs, major incident management processes, Jira workflows, and budget governance.
• Champion best practices in agile methodologies, continuous improvement, and cross-functional collaboration.

Product Delivery

• Lead and scale processes for go-to-market readiness, capability rollout planning, and feature release delivery.
• Establish and track KPIs for delivery success, adoption, and quality, ensuring continuous improvement in release velocity and impact.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, and GTM teams to align delivery plans with strategic objectives.
• Oversee internal communications and enablement, including crafting demos, playbooks, and cross-company updates that ensure alignment and engagement.

Leadership & Strategy

• Serve as a trusted thought partner to the Chief R&D Officer and Chief Product Officer , translating strategy into operational excellence and scalable delivery systems.
• Lead, coach, and grow a high-performing team of operations and delivery professionals.
• Drive a culture of high performance, accountability, and continuous learning.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in Product/R&D Operations, Program Management, or Product Delivery within a global SaaS or technology-driven environment.
• Proven track record scaling operations and delivery in fast-growing, high-velocity organizations.
• Strong expertise in product lifecycle management, agile methodologies, and software development workflows.
• Highly analytical, comfortable with KPIs, dashboards, and data-driven decision-making.
• Excellent communicator with high emotional intelligence and strong stakeholder management skills.
• Experience with tools such as Jira, Confluence , salesforce
• Demonstrated ability to lead and develop teams, including managers and cross-functional specialists.

Nice To Have

• Experience in B2B SaaS fintech or HR tech environments.
• Background in scaling global teams and processes across distributed organizations.