Innovation Operations Manager

About BiOptimizers

BiOptimizers exist to help people go from baseline health to peak biological performance. We develop science-backed supplements and wellness tools that deliver measurable results. As a remote-first company, our globally distributed team focuses on clarity, autonomy, and operational excellence. Every role is designed to support the health and performance of both our customers and our organization.

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced Innovation Operations Manager to lead the exploration and evaluation of new product and business opportunities that extend beyond our core competency of creating and commercializing capsule and powder dietary supplements across categories such as minerals, digestion, and more. This role will also manage the operations aspect of all new products, allowing us to get the products to commercialization stage.

This is a highly cross-functional role for a natural investigator and organizer—someone who can take an early-stage innovation concept, dig into its technical and commercial feasibility, engage the right internal and external partners, and provide stakeholders with clear, evidence-based recommendations on whether a concept can be successfully commercialized and made profitable, or whether it should be shelved.

If you thrive on ambiguity, love connecting the dots between science, operations, and market opportunity, and can drive structured decision-making, we'd love to hear from you.

This role exists specifically to handle novel, high-ambiguity concepts — the ideas that fall outside what we already know how to make. Just as important as finding the winners is closing out the losers. We are looking for someone who reaches a defensible answer quickly and is comfortable recommending that we stop. A fast, well-evidenced “no” is a successful outcome in this role, not a failure — concepts that sit in permanent exploration are the specific problem this role is being created to solve.

Key Responsibilities

• Research & Investigate: Identify, research, and investigate new innovation ideas and concepts to assess their technical and commercial feasibility, including opportunities outside our existing product formats and categories.

• Collaborate with R&D & Formulators: Work closely with our formulators and R&D teams to deeply understand each innovation concept, its scientific underpinnings, and its technical requirements and constraints.

• Conduct Feasibility Analyses: Design and execute structured feasibility analyses covering technical viability, manufacturability, cost, regulatory considerations, timelines, and commercial potential.

• Source & Manage External Partners: Identify, vet, and manage relationships with external parties—such as vendors, contract manufacturers, labs, consultants, and specialists—to fill capability gaps and validate concepts. Prepare RFQs and manage the quote and aware process with contract manufacturers.

• Enable Decision-Making: Synthesize findings into clear business cases and recommendations that help stakeholders determine whether a concept can be commercialized profitably or should be deemed unviable.

• Manage Projects End-to-End: Own project plans, timelines, budgets, milestones, and stakeholder communications across multiple concurrent innovation initiatives. This is a hands-on, in-the-weeds role with no supporting staff — you will personally do the research, build the models, chase the vendors, and run the trials.

• Report & Communicate: Present findings, risks, and recommendations to leadership and cross-functional stakeholders in a clear, actionable format.

• Own the Innovation Intake Queue: Serve as the single point of entry for concepts from any source — founders, leadership, R&D, or the field. Log every idea, run a fast initial screen, and work with leadership to maintain a ranked, capacity-bound queue with an agreed limit on how many concepts are under active investigation at once.

• Apply Stage-Gate Discipline: Establish and enforce a phased evaluation process with defined time and spend budgets per phase, pre-agreed kill criteria, and formal gate reviews. Escalate for a decision when a concept exceeds its budget rather than letting it drift.

• Build the Business Case & Unit Economics: Develop COGS build-ups, MOQ and landed-cost scenarios, pricing and margin models, break-even volumes, and required capital investment, so every recommendation is tied to a defensible financial picture and measured against our margin hurdles.

• Own Regulatory, IP & Claims Due Diligence: Assess patent landscape and freedom-to-operate (particularly relevant for novel delivery technologies), ingredient regulatory status (NDI, GRAS, novel food), label and claims substantiation requirements, and any category that falls outside DSHEA — including devices, equipment, and non-ingestible products.

• Coordinate Sampling, Pilot Runs & Validation: Manage bench samples, pilot and scale-up trials, stability and shelf-life testing,…