Jobs

Do you want to help improve research communications in all corners of the globe? Come and join the world of nonprofit open infrastructure and be part of improving the creation and sharing of knowledge as our new Head of Operations.

• Location: Remote and global, availability from 14 - 17 UTC to ensure sufficient overlap with the rest of the team.
• Type: Full-time, Monday-Friday
• Remuneration: 120k USD or local equivalent. We pay salaries in the currency of the country in which you’re based. We arrive at the local USD-equivalent salary by determining the average 5-year USD exchange rate, to stabilize currency fluctuations.
• Benefits: Check out our Employee Handbook for more details on paid time off, unlimited sick time, paid parental and medical leaves, and more.
• Reports to: Chief Operating Officer, Lucy Ofiesh
• Timeline: Advertise in March-April and offer by May.

Crossref runs open infrastructure to link research objects, entities, and actions, creating a lasting and reusable scholarly record. As a not-for-profit with over 24,000 members in 166 countries, we drive metadata exchange and support nearly 2 billion monthly API queries, facilitating global research communication.

What is ‘operations’ at Crossref? The Operations group focuses on how we build organizational capacity and resilience, how we translate big ideas into practical solutions for our community, and how we align and support the work across teams. The Operations group includes the data science, finance, human resources, and technology teams. It also works closely with the board of directors and external legal counsel. The team’s work complements and supports the work of the Programs group, which includes our programs & services, membership, and community teams.

About the role

Head of Operations is a new role at Crossref. In 2024 we reorganized our work around three program areas – open & sustainable operations, contributing to the research nexus, and co-creation and community trends. This approach has helped foster more cross-function coordination across our teams. Plus, as a global organization that has grown to nearly 60 people, our operational needs have grown more complex.

This role would suit a generalist with strong organizational and project management skills, who likes to understand how the details fit together to support a big-picture goal. Experience in a nonprofit setting would be ideal. Interest in working in ways that promote openness and transparency is important.

This position will oversee the development and implementation of operating policies, adn work across teams to help ensure that our work is coordinated, tracked, and communicated consistently in a way that makes it easy for our colleagues and the community to see. Working openly and collaboratively, success in this role will mean that we are more effectively working together to complete projects that benefit the community. This position will help us keep on track, moving towards our vision of a research nexus.

Key responsibilities

Operations management: work across the teams to ensure we have the internal structures and processes we need to support our mission, work, and people

• Support team meetings, including the senior management team meeting and some all-staff meetings, facilitate and Chair meetings and working groups as needed.
• Establish and maintain a vendor management program
• Identify gaps in our operations and help solve them
• Support best practices in data privacy and security
• Manage the quarterly internal risk review process
• Assess and advise on our approach to systems. We rely on several systems to work together (e.g., CRM, support, finance, email, our custom metadata database) that are managed by various teams throughout the organization. This role should understand and support improving our network of systems, and coordinate with technology services as needed. Provide guidance on prioritizing open source solutions when possible.
• Support the work of board meetings, board committees, and community/advisory group meetings

Project management: work closely with the program groups to support coordination and communication

• Develop progress reports that can be used to update the board, committees and advisory groups, and the community at large on progress. Work with colleagues to keep the strategic agenda page up to date.
• Coordinate projects across the organization by working with your colleagues to develop and track project timelines and resource needs. Establish habits and tools that can support better coordination across the team. Develop and ensure consistent internal communication on progress and timelines.

Compliance support:

• In collaboration with the Membership team and external counsel, this role will manage our international sanctions compliance program and other elements of legal compliance with our membership terms
• This position will support our ongoing compliance with EU GDPR and other data protection regulations. You would oversee internal controls and processes for data protection, ensuring we are mindful of privacy safeguards and best practices in data protection within our business operations.
• Work with the Infrastructure and HR teams on our security audits

About you

This role is for someone who gets the big picture and wants to understand how the various pieces fit together. You might not have all the skills we list below. With a broad role like this, we are not looking for someone who has necessarily done all of these things. We are looking for someone who is comfortable taking on new projects, asking questions, gathering input, and making a plan.

We encourage you to apply if some or all of this sounds like you:

• 5-7 years experience in operations, project management, process design, information architecture, business analysis, or similar work requiring attention to detail and people skills
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills. Experience working across multiple teams
• Experience in a nonprofit setting
• Experience working with boards or advisory groups
• Project management certification
• Experience working in scholarly communications and/or open infrastructure organizations
• Commitment to openness and transparency in everything you do and in how you communicate both with colleagues and with our community
• Comfort leading and participating in internal and external meetings
• Experience with CRM, support, project management systems and processes
• Experience managing a budget or providing a perspective on the financial impact of a decision
• *omfortable with digital tools and technology, such as Google Workspace, Slack, and Git for website and data management
• Comfortable working with teams across timezones (that doesn’t mean we expect you to work at all hours. Quite the opposite! We expect that people work their working hours and can wait to hear from their colleagues or rely on written communication from staff in different timezones)

About Crossref and the team

We’re a non-profit membership organisation that exists to make scholarly communications better. We rally the community; tag and share metadata; run an open infrastructure; play with technology; and make tools and services—all to help put research in context.

We envision a rich and reusable open network of relationships connecting research organisations, people, things, and actions; a scholarly record that the global community can build on forever, for the benefit of society. We are working towards this vision of a ‘Research Nexus’ by demonstrating the value of richer and connected open metadata, incentivising people to meet best practices, while making it easier to do so. “We” means 24,000+ members from 166+ countries, 170+ million records, and nearly 2 billion monthly metadata queries from thousands of tools across the research ecosystem. We want to be a sustainable source of complete, open, and global scholarly metadata and relationships.

Take a look at our strategic agenda to see the planned work that aims to achieve the vision. The sustainability area aims to make transparent all the processes and procedures we follow to run the operation long-term, including our financials and our ongoing commitment to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI). The governance area describes our board and its role in community oversight.

It also takes a strong team – because reliable infrastructure needs committed people who contribute to and realise the vision, and thrive doing it. We are a distributed group of 56+ dedicated people who take our work seriously, but don’t take ourselves seriously - we like to play quizzes, measure coffee intake, and create 100s of custom slack emojis. We do this through fair policies and working practices, a balanced approach to resourcing, and accountability to each other.

We can offer the successful candidate a challenging and fun environment to work in. Together we are dedicated to our global mission and we are constantly adapting to ensure we get there. Take a look at our organisation chart, the latest Annual Meeting recordings, and our financial information.

Thinking of applying?

We especially encourage applications from people with backgrounds historically under-represented in research and scholarly communications. You can be based anywhere in the world where we can employ staff, either directly or through an employer of record.

We will invite selected candidates to an initial call to discuss the role. Following that, shortlisted candidates will be invited to an interview. You will receive all information in advance, and the interview will include some questions and/or exercises you’ll have a chance to prepare for. All interviews will be held remotely on Zoom.

The link below will take you to a portal to submit your cover letter and CV. There will also be a few questions to answer. The answer will help us review your application, but there is no specific answer that would be disqualifying. The questions will include:

• Full name
• What do you prefer we call you?
• Email address
• In which country and timezone are you based?
• Does your local time zone allow you to work with team members during 14-17 UTC?
• Do you have remote working experience?
• Do you have experience working in nonprofits and/or open infrastructure organizations?
• In 2-3 sentences, what elements or qualities of the job are most appealing to you?

Click here to apply!

Applications close on April 8th, 2026.

Anticipated salary for this role is 120k USD-equivalent, paid in local currency.We calculate the local salary by using the five-year average exchange rate between your currency and USD. This helps balance out exchange rate fluctuations.

Crossref offers competitive compensation, benefits, flexible work arrangements, professional development opportunities, and a supportive work environment. Check out our Employee Handbook for more details on paid time off, unlimited sick time, paid parental and medical leaves, and more.

Equal opportunities commitment

Crossref is committed to a policy of non-discrimination and equal opportunity for all employees and qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, pregnancy or a condition related to pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, uniform service member status, or any other protected class under applicable law. Crossref will make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with known disabilities in accordance with applicable law.

Thanks for your interest in joining Crossref. We are excited to hear from you!