COO Jobs in Tennessee
COO jobs in Tennessee draw consistent demand across healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, and financial services, with openings at every level from director of operations stepping into a first COO role through seasoned executives leading multibillion-dollar enterprises. Nashville, Memphis, and Knoxville anchor most of the hiring, with major employers like HCA Healthcare, FedEx, and Pilot Flying J regularly seeking senior operational leaders. The most sought-after specialties in Tennessee are healthcare operations, supply chain leadership, and multi-site manufacturing management. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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MARYVILLE COLLEGE STAFF POSITION DESCRIPTION
Position Title: Director of Advancement Operations and Prospect Research
Department: Advancement
Title of Immediate Supervisor: Assistant Vice President for Advancement
Funded Term / Work Cycle: 12 months
Expected Daily Work Hours: 8 hours
Expected Weekly Work Schedule: 40 hours; occasional evening and weekend work may be required
Pay Grade: 12S
Starting Salary Expectations: $78,575.19 - $88,397.09 with starting salary determined based on relevant experience, qualifications, and demonstrated competencies.
About Maryville College:
Maryville College is a nationally ranked institution of higher learning and one of America’s oldest colleges. For more than 200 years, we’ve educated students to be giving citizens and gifted leaders to study everything so that they are prepared for anything. Our graduates are equipped to address complex problems, engage with diverse communities, and launch meaningful careers.
Nestled in Maryville, Tennessee, between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the city of Knoxville, our campus combines the beauty of a rural setting with the advantages of an urban center. With a wide range of academic programs and a strong tradition of career preparation, our alumni live “strong of mind and brave of heart,” carrying forward our Presbyterian founder’s charge to do good on the largest possible scale.
Mission
At Maryville College, we offer more than a mission—we offer support. Our employees receive a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision coverage; a generous paid time off program; a retirement plan with an employer match of up to 5%; tuition benefits for employees, spouses, and dependents; and the opportunity to grow in a collaborative community that values professional excellence and personal well-being.
“Maryville College prepares students for lives of citizenship and leadership as we challenge each one to search for truth, grow in wisdom, work for justice and dedicate a life of creativity and service to the peoples of the world.”
Values:
- Scholarship: We commit ourselves to lifelong curiosity and learning, to the search for knowledge, and to intellectual creativity.
- Respect: We commit ourselves to honor the worth, dignity, and freedom of ourselves and all creation, and to treat others as we wish to be treated.
- Integrity: We commit ourselves to truth, honesty, dependability, and responsibility in all our actions and relationships.
Position Purpose
The Director of Advancement Services and Prospect Research provides strategic leadership for the data, technology, research, reporting, and operational infrastructure that supports Maryville College’s philanthropic program. The Director is responsible for maximizing the strategic use of the College’s advancement CRM; ensuring accuracy, integrity, accessibility, and appropriate use of constituent and philanthropic data; developing a comprehensive prospect research and management program; and providing actionable intelligence that strengthens fundraising strategy and donor engagement.
The Director transforms institutional data into fundraising intelligence by identifying philanthropic capacity and affinity, supporting portfolio development, tracking movement through the donor lifecycle, and developing reporting and analytics that allow Advancement and College leadership to make informed decisions. The position also establishes processes through which relevant relationship intelligence from across the College can appropriately inform prospect identification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship.
SUMMARY
This position serves as the strategic owner of Advancement data and prospect intelligence and is a key partner to the Vice President, Assistant Vice President, frontline fundraisers, and campus leaders. The Director will help move Raiser’s Edge NXT beyond gift processing and recordkeeping toward a consistently used system for moves management, segmentation, pipeline analysis, portfolio strategy, institutional relationship mapping, and performance reporting. The Director will lead improvements in data governance, wealth screening, prospect research, CRM adoption, and cross-campus collaboration while maintaining strong Advancement Services operations.
Education and Experience required to ensure success in this position:
Education required to ensure success in this position: Bachelor’s degree required. Advanced degree or relevant professional certification preferred.
Experience required to ensure success in this position: Five or more years of progressively responsible experience in advancement services, prospect development/research, fundraising operations, CRM/database management, analytics, or a related field. Higher education advancement experience strongly preferred. Demonstrated experience with Raiser’s Edge NXT or a comparable advancement CRM, reporting and analytics, data governance, and prospect management is strongly preferred.
ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS
Leadership and Collaboration:
- Serve as the strategic leader for Advancement Services, prospect research, prospect management, CRM utilization, and fundraising intelligence.
- Partner closely with the Assistant Vice President and Vice President to translate fundraising strategy into measurable, data-informed execution.
- Establish clear service standards, workflows, documentation, and accountability for Advancement data, research, reporting, and operational processes.
- Provide training, consultation, and support to Advancement staff so the CRM is used consistently as the system of record for donor strategy and moves management.
- Participate in regular portfolio, pipeline, prospect strategy, and fundraising performance meetings and provide analysis that informs decisions.
Data, Technology, and Compliance
- Serve as the functional owner and subject-matter expert for Raiser’s Edge NXT and associated Advancement technologies.
- Develop and maintain CRM governance standards, including required fields, standardized coding, constituent and relationship standards, action/contact-report protocols, proposal tracking, prospect stages, assignments, interests, ratings, and next actions.
- Partner with Business, Financial Aid and related departments to ensure data integrity and reporting are accurate
- Conduct regular data audits and establish corrective processes to address duplicate records, incomplete fields, inconsistent coding, historical data gaps, and other issues that reduce confidence in reporting.
- Develop dashboards and recurring reports that provide visibility into fundraising revenue, portfolio size and quality, meaningful contacts, visits, proposals, solicitations, pipeline value, donor retention, prospect movement, and progress toward goals.
- Strengthen use of CRM segmentation, queries, lists, analytics, and reporting to support proactive fundraising and strategic prioritization.
- Partner with Information Technology and Blackbaud or other vendors as appropriate to evaluate integrations, system enhancements, security, permissions, and technology needs.
- Ensure Advancement data practices comply with College policies, donor privacy expectations, applicable regulations, gift documentation standards, and appropriate CASE reporting practices.
Prospect Research and Pipeline Development
- Build and lead a proactive prospect research and identification program for individuals, corporations, foundations, and other potential philanthropic partners.
- Lead or coordinate comprehensive wealth screening and ensure screening results are appropriately reviewed, validated, rated, documented, and incorporated into the CRM.
- Develop and maintain consistent capacity, affinity, inclination, and prospect-status methodologies to support qualification and prioritization.
- Analyze the College’s constituent base to identify previously unrecognized high-capacity and high-affinity prospects among alumni, parents, friends, trustees, volunteers, corporate partners, and other constituents.
- Prepare timely prospect profiles, briefings, relationship maps, philanthropic histories, and strategy summaries for fundraisers, the President, trustees, and senior leaders.
- Partner with Advancement leadership to maintain strategically balanced portfolios, identify prospects for qualification or reassignment, and ensure portfolio decisions are documented in the CRM.
- Monitor pipeline health and identify gaps, stalled prospects, unassigned high-capacity prospects, and opportunities for increased engagement or solicitation.
Stakeholder and Institutional Support
- Develop a cross-campus prospect referral and relationship-intelligence process that enables appropriate philanthropic information to flow into Advancement.
- Build collaborative relationships with the President’s Office, Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, Athletics, Admissions, Career Services, Finance, the Clayton Center for the Arts, Marketing and Communications, and other areas to identify meaningful constituent and organizational relationships.
- Maintain relationship mapping in the CRM to document connections among prospects, alumni, trustees, faculty, staff, volunteers, corporations, foundations, and community partners.
- Support coordinated engagement when multiple College representatives have relationships with the same individual or organization.
- Develop practical tools and protocols for campus partners to share prospect referrals and relationship intelligence without requiring broad, unnecessary CRM access.
- Provide leadership with accurate, timely briefings and data for donor meetings, travel, events, institutional priorities, and fundraising planning.
Operations and Technical Oversight
- Provide oversight for gift and pledge processing, constituent records, fund/designation coding, acknowledgments, documentation, database integrity, and related Advancement Services workflows.
- Ensure timely and accurate recording of gifts, pledges, soft credits, matching gifts, planned gift information, donor restrictions, and other relevant philanthropic activity.
- Partner with Finance to maintain reliable reconciliation processes and alignment between Advancement and financial records.
- Maintain written procedures and documentation for core Advancement Services functions to ensure continuity, consistency, and audit readiness.
- Support gift agreements, fund establishment, donor intent documentation, stewardship tracking, annual reporting, and institutional or external reporting as assigned.
- Evaluate Advancement workflows and recommend process or technology improvements that reduce manual work and increase strategic capacity.
Fiscal Oversight
- Support accurate philanthropic revenue reporting and reconciliation and provide data needed for budgeting, forecasting, and institutional planning.
- Assist Advancement leadership in evaluating technology, screening, research, data enrichment, and vendor investments based on strategic value and return.
- Monitor assigned technology and service expenditures and participate in annual budget planning for Advancement Services and prospect development
Strategic Planning and Sustainability
- Develop and maintain a multi-year roadmap for CRM optimization, prospect research, data governance, analytics, reporting, and Advancement technology.
- Establish measurable standards for CRM adoption and data quality and report progress regularly to Advancement leadership.
- Use data to help Advancement evaluate donor acquisition, retention, movement between giving levels, pipeline development, solicitation activity, and long-term philanthropic opportunity.
- Support implementation of the College’s 2026 Development Audit recommendations related to wealth screening, prospect management, CRM utilization, reporting, data governance, and Advancement infrastructure.
- Continuously evaluate emerging advancement-services and prospect-development practices and recommend improvements appropriate to Maryville College.
First Year Leadership Priorities
- Complete or lead implementation of comprehensive wealth screening and establish a process for validating and integrating results into Raiser’s Edge NXT.
- Conduct a comprehensive CRM data-quality and coding review and implement standardized data-entry, required-field, and audit practices.
- Establish consistent prospect stages, ratings, portfolio assignments, contact-report expectations, proposal tracking, and next-action standards.
- Develop executive and frontline fundraising dashboards that provide reliable visibility into activity, pipeline health, portfolio performance, solicitation, and revenue.
- Establish a regular portfolio-review and prospect-management process in partnership with the AVP and frontline fundraisers.
- Create and launch a cross-campus prospect referral and relationship-intelligence process.
- Develop a multi-year CRM and Advancement technology roadmap, including training, analytics, integrations, data enrichment, and reporting priorities.
Key Performance Expectations
- Maintain documented data-quality standards and demonstrate measurable improvement through routine CRM audits.
- Ensure 100% of managed prospects have an assigned fundraiser or owner, prospect stage/status, and document next action according to established standards.
- Deliver accurate monthly Advancement dashboards and quarterly portfolio/pipeline analyses to Advancement leadership.
- Complete comprehensive wealth screening integration and establish an ongoing process for prospect identification, research, qualification, and prioritization.
- Achieve consistent frontline fundraiser adoption of established CRM moves-management and contact-reporting standards.
- Establish defined turnaround/service standards for prospect research, executive briefings, gift processing, reporting, and data requests.
- Track and report prospects and opportunities originating through cross-campus referrals and institutional relationship intelligence.
- Provide regular recommendations for portfolio optimization, including qualification, reassignment, removal, and newly identified prospects.
Other
- Perform other responsibilities and special projects assigned to advance the College’s mission and maintain a respectful, collaborative learning environment.
NOTE: Other roles/duties will be assigned as necessary to assist the College in the attainment of the goals set forth and the enhancement of a positive, respectful learning environment for all staff, faculty, and students.
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
- Advanced knowledge of advancement CRM systems, preferably Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT, and the ability to translate system functionality into fundraising strategy.
- Strong knowledge of prospect research, wealth screening, prospect management, moves management, portfolio strategy, and donor lifecycle practices.
- Demonstrated skill in data governance, database administration, reporting, analytics, segmentation, and data visualization/dashboard development.
- Ability to synthesize complex information into concise, actionable prospect intelligence for fundraisers and senior leaders.
- Strong analytical judgment and attention to accuracy, confidentiality, donor privacy, and data integrity.
- Ability to build collaborative relationships across organizational boundaries and translate campus relationships into appropriately managed philanthropic intelligence.
- Strong project-management, documentation, process-improvement, and training skills.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills and the ability to explain technical or data concepts to non-technical colleagues.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities, meet deadlines, exercise sound judgment, and work independently in a fast-paced environment.
License, Certification, or Registration Necessary:
No specific license required. Relevant Blackbaud, Jenzabar (SIS), CASE, Power BI, Tableau, data analytics, or prospect development credentials are preferred but not required
Work Environment and Physical Requirements:
- Must be able to lift/move up to 10 pounds.
- Prolonged periods sitting at a desk and working on a computer.
- Ability to travel between campus buildings or off-campus locations as needed
Ability to operate the following vehicles or equipment:
Standard office equipment and computer systems. Valid driver’s license may be required for occasional College-related travel.
MARYVILLE COLLEGE STAFF POSITION DESCRIPTION
Position Title: Director of Advancement Operations and Prospect Research
Department: Advancement
Title of Immediate Supervisor: Assistant Vice President for Advancement
Funded Term / Work Cycle: 12 months
Expected Daily Work Hours: 8 hours
Expected Weekly Work Schedule: 40 hours; occasional evening and weekend work may be required
Pay Grade: 12S
Starting Salary Expectations: $78,575.19 - $88,397.09 with starting salary determined based on relevant experience, qualifications, and demonstrated competencies.
About Maryville College:
Maryville College is a nationally ranked institution of higher learning and one of America’s oldest colleges. For more than 200 years, we’ve educated students to be giving citizens and gifted leaders to study everything so that they are prepared for anything. Our graduates are equipped to address complex problems, engage with diverse communities, and launch meaningful careers.
Nestled in Maryville, Tennessee, between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the city of Knoxville, our campus combines the beauty of a rural setting with the advantages of an urban center. With a wide range of academic programs and a strong tradition of career preparation, our alumni live “strong of mind and brave of heart,” carrying forward our Presbyterian founder’s charge to do good on the largest possible scale.
Mission
At Maryville College, we offer more than a mission—we offer support. Our employees receive a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision coverage; a generous paid time off program; a retirement plan with an employer match of up to 5%; tuition benefits for employees, spouses, and dependents; and the opportunity to grow in a collaborative community that values professional excellence and personal well-being.
“Maryville College prepares students for lives of citizenship and leadership as we challenge each one to search for truth, grow in wisdom, work for justice and dedicate a life of creativity and service to the peoples of the world.”
Values:
- Scholarship: We commit ourselves to lifelong curiosity and learning, to the search for knowledge, and to intellectual creativity.
- Respect: We commit ourselves to honor the worth, dignity, and freedom of ourselves and all creation, and to treat others as we wish to be treated.
- Integrity: We commit ourselves to truth, honesty, dependability, and responsibility in all our actions and relationships.
Position Purpose
The Director of Advancement Services and Prospect Research provides strategic leadership for the data, technology, research, reporting, and operational infrastructure that supports Maryville College’s philanthropic program. The Director is responsible for maximizing the strategic use of the College’s advancement CRM; ensuring accuracy, integrity, accessibility, and appropriate use of constituent and philanthropic data; developing a comprehensive prospect research and management program; and providing actionable intelligence that strengthens fundraising strategy and donor engagement.
The Director transforms institutional data into fundraising intelligence by identifying philanthropic capacity and affinity, supporting portfolio development, tracking movement through the donor lifecycle, and developing reporting and analytics that allow Advancement and College leadership to make informed decisions. The position also establishes processes through which relevant relationship intelligence from across the College can appropriately inform prospect identification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship.
SUMMARY
This position serves as the strategic owner of Advancement data and prospect intelligence and is a key partner to the Vice President, Assistant Vice President, frontline fundraisers, and campus leaders. The Director will help move Raiser’s Edge NXT beyond gift processing and recordkeeping toward a consistently used system for moves management, segmentation, pipeline analysis, portfolio strategy, institutional relationship mapping, and performance reporting. The Director will lead improvements in data governance, wealth screening, prospect research, CRM adoption, and cross-campus collaboration while maintaining strong Advancement Services operations.
Education and Experience required to ensure success in this position:
Education required to ensure success in this position: Bachelor’s degree required. Advanced degree or relevant professional certification preferred.
Experience required to ensure success in this position: Five or more years of progressively responsible experience in advancement services, prospect development/research, fundraising operations, CRM/database management, analytics, or a related field. Higher education advancement experience strongly preferred. Demonstrated experience with Raiser’s Edge NXT or a comparable advancement CRM, reporting and analytics, data governance, and prospect management is strongly preferred.
ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS
Leadership and Collaboration:
- Serve as the strategic leader for Advancement Services, prospect research, prospect management, CRM utilization, and fundraising intelligence.
- Partner closely with the Assistant Vice President and Vice President to translate fundraising strategy into measurable, data-informed execution.
- Establish clear service standards, workflows, documentation, and accountability for Advancement data, research, reporting, and operational processes.
- Provide training, consultation, and support to Advancement staff so the CRM is used consistently as the system of record for donor strategy and moves management.
- Participate in regular portfolio, pipeline, prospect strategy, and fundraising performance meetings and provide analysis that informs decisions.
Data, Technology, and Compliance
- Serve as the functional owner and subject-matter expert for Raiser’s Edge NXT and associated Advancement technologies.
- Develop and maintain CRM governance standards, including required fields, standardized coding, constituent and relationship standards, action/contact-report protocols, proposal tracking, prospect stages, assignments, interests, ratings, and next actions.
- Partner with Business, Financial Aid and related departments to ensure data integrity and reporting are accurate
- Conduct regular data audits and establish corrective processes to address duplicate records, incomplete fields, inconsistent coding, historical data gaps, and other issues that reduce confidence in reporting.
- Develop dashboards and recurring reports that provide visibility into fundraising revenue, portfolio size and quality, meaningful contacts, visits, proposals, solicitations, pipeline value, donor retention, prospect movement, and progress toward goals.
- Strengthen use of CRM segmentation, queries, lists, analytics, and reporting to support proactive fundraising and strategic prioritization.
- Partner with Information Technology and Blackbaud or other vendors as appropriate to evaluate integrations, system enhancements, security, permissions, and technology needs.
- Ensure Advancement data practices comply with College policies, donor privacy expectations, applicable regulations, gift documentation standards, and appropriate CASE reporting practices.
Prospect Research and Pipeline Development
- Build and lead a proactive prospect research and identification program for individuals, corporations, foundations, and other potential philanthropic partners.
- Lead or coordinate comprehensive wealth screening and ensure screening results are appropriately reviewed, validated, rated, documented, and incorporated into the CRM.
- Develop and maintain consistent capacity, affinity, inclination, and prospect-status methodologies to support qualification and prioritization.
- Analyze the College’s constituent base to identify previously unrecognized high-capacity and high-affinity prospects among alumni, parents, friends, trustees, volunteers, corporate partners, and other constituents.
- Prepare timely prospect profiles, briefings, relationship maps, philanthropic histories, and strategy summaries for fundraisers, the President, trustees, and senior leaders.
- Partner with Advancement leadership to maintain strategically balanced portfolios, identify prospects for qualification or reassignment, and ensure portfolio decisions are documented in the CRM.
- Monitor pipeline health and identify gaps, stalled prospects, unassigned high-capacity prospects, and opportunities for increased engagement or solicitation.
Stakeholder and Institutional Support
- Develop a cross-campus prospect referral and relationship-intelligence process that enables appropriate philanthropic information to flow into Advancement.
- Build collaborative relationships with the President’s Office, Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, Athletics, Admissions, Career Services, Finance, the Clayton Center for the Arts, Marketing and Communications, and other areas to identify meaningful constituent and organizational relationships.
- Maintain relationship mapping in the CRM to document connections among prospects, alumni, trustees, faculty, staff, volunteers, corporations, foundations, and community partners.
- Support coordinated engagement when multiple College representatives have relationships with the same individual or organization.
- Develop practical tools and protocols for campus partners to share prospect referrals and relationship intelligence without requiring broad, unnecessary CRM access.
- Provide leadership with accurate, timely briefings and data for donor meetings, travel, events, institutional priorities, and fundraising planning.
Operations and Technical Oversight
- Provide oversight for gift and pledge processing, constituent records, fund/designation coding, acknowledgments, documentation, database integrity, and related Advancement Services workflows.
- Ensure timely and accurate recording of gifts, pledges, soft credits, matching gifts, planned gift information, donor restrictions, and other relevant philanthropic activity.
- Partner with Finance to maintain reliable reconciliation processes and alignment between Advancement and financial records.
- Maintain written procedures and documentation for core Advancement Services functions to ensure continuity, consistency, and audit readiness.
- Support gift agreements, fund establishment, donor intent documentation, stewardship tracking, annual reporting, and institutional or external reporting as assigned.
- Evaluate Advancement workflows and recommend process or technology improvements that reduce manual work and increase strategic capacity.
Fiscal Oversight
- Support accurate philanthropic revenue reporting and reconciliation and provide data needed for budgeting, forecasting, and institutional planning.
- Assist Advancement leadership in evaluating technology, screening, research, data enrichment, and vendor investments based on strategic value and return.
- Monitor assigned technology and service expenditures and participate in annual budget planning for Advancement Services and prospect development
Strategic Planning and Sustainability
- Develop and maintain a multi-year roadmap for CRM optimization, prospect research, data governance, analytics, reporting, and Advancement technology.
- Establish measurable standards for CRM adoption and data quality and report progress regularly to Advancement leadership.
- Use data to help Advancement evaluate donor acquisition, retention, movement between giving levels, pipeline development, solicitation activity, and long-term philanthropic opportunity.
- Support implementation of the College’s 2026 Development Audit recommendations related to wealth screening, prospect management, CRM utilization, reporting, data governance, and Advancement infrastructure.
- Continuously evaluate emerging advancement-services and prospect-development practices and recommend improvements appropriate to Maryville College.
First Year Leadership Priorities
- Complete or lead implementation of comprehensive wealth screening and establish a process for validating and integrating results into Raiser’s Edge NXT.
- Conduct a comprehensive CRM data-quality and coding review and implement standardized data-entry, required-field, and audit practices.
- Establish consistent prospect stages, ratings, portfolio assignments, contact-report expectations, proposal tracking, and next-action standards.
- Develop executive and frontline fundraising dashboards that provide reliable visibility into activity, pipeline health, portfolio performance, solicitation, and revenue.
- Establish a regular portfolio-review and prospect-management process in partnership with the AVP and frontline fundraisers.
- Create and launch a cross-campus prospect referral and relationship-intelligence process.
- Develop a multi-year CRM and Advancement technology roadmap, including training, analytics, integrations, data enrichment, and reporting priorities.
Key Performance Expectations
- Maintain documented data-quality standards and demonstrate measurable improvement through routine CRM audits.
- Ensure 100% of managed prospects have an assigned fundraiser or owner, prospect stage/status, and document next action according to established standards.
- Deliver accurate monthly Advancement dashboards and quarterly portfolio/pipeline analyses to Advancement leadership.
- Complete comprehensive wealth screening integration and establish an ongoing process for prospect identification, research, qualification, and prioritization.
- Achieve consistent frontline fundraiser adoption of established CRM moves-management and contact-reporting standards.
- Establish defined turnaround/service standards for prospect research, executive briefings, gift processing, reporting, and data requests.
- Track and report prospects and opportunities originating through cross-campus referrals and institutional relationship intelligence.
- Provide regular recommendations for portfolio optimization, including qualification, reassignment, removal, and newly identified prospects.
Other
- Perform other responsibilities and special projects assigned to advance the College’s mission and maintain a respectful, collaborative learning environment.
NOTE: Other roles/duties will be assigned as necessary to assist the College in the attainment of the goals set forth and the enhancement of a positive, respectful learning environment for all staff, faculty, and students.
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
- Advanced knowledge of advancement CRM systems, preferably Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT, and the ability to translate system functionality into fundraising strategy.
- Strong knowledge of prospect research, wealth screening, prospect management, moves management, portfolio strategy, and donor lifecycle practices.
- Demonstrated skill in data governance, database administration, reporting, analytics, segmentation, and data visualization/dashboard development.
- Ability to synthesize complex information into concise, actionable prospect intelligence for fundraisers and senior leaders.
- Strong analytical judgment and attention to accuracy, confidentiality, donor privacy, and data integrity.
- Ability to build collaborative relationships across organizational boundaries and translate campus relationships into appropriately managed philanthropic intelligence.
- Strong project-management, documentation, process-improvement, and training skills.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills and the ability to explain technical or data concepts to non-technical colleagues.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities, meet deadlines, exercise sound judgment, and work independently in a fast-paced environment.
License, Certification, or Registration Necessary:
No specific license required. Relevant Blackbaud, Jenzabar (SIS), CASE, Power BI, Tableau, data analytics, or prospect development credentials are preferred but not required
Work Environment and Physical Requirements:
- Must be able to lift/move up to 10 pounds.
- Prolonged periods sitting at a desk and working on a computer.
- Ability to travel between campus buildings or off-campus locations as needed
Ability to operate the following vehicles or equipment:
Standard office equipment and computer systems. Valid driver’s license may be required for occasional College-related travel.
See All 106+ COO Jobs in Tennessee
Find roles in Tennessee that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find COO JobsCOO Jobs by City in Tennessee
Where Tennessee roles are concentrated, by current openings.
COO Job Market in Tennessee
A snapshot from current Tennessee openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
- BayMark Health Services14
- University of Tennessee3
- Corpay2
- Oracle2
- Aramark2
Top Industries Hiring
- Fintech
- Education
- Banking & Financial Services
- Consulting & Professional Services
- Construction & Real Estate
What Tennessee Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in COO jobs across Tennessee.
- Bachelor's degree in business administration, operations management, or a related field required
- Ten or more years of progressive leadership experience in a relevant Tennessee industry
- Demonstrated experience overseeing P&L, budgets, and cross-functional teams at scale
- Proven ability to build operational strategy aligned with Tennessee market conditions
- Strong background in compliance, regulatory reporting, and risk management frameworks
- MBA or advanced degree strongly preferred by most mid-to-large Tennessee employers
COO Jobs in Tennessee: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a coo in Tennessee?
Becoming a coo in Tennessee typically starts with a bachelor's degree in business, operations, or a related discipline, followed by progressive leadership roles in finance, supply chain, or general management. Tennessee does not issue a state license for coos, so the path runs through accumulated operational experience and results. An MBA from an institution like Vanderbilt Owen or the University of Tennessee Haslam School of Business carries weight with Tennessee employers and accelerates advancement into the C-suite.
Which companies hire coos in Tennessee?
Employers hiring coos in Tennessee right now include BayMark Health Services, University of Tennessee, and Corpay, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. Tennessee's concentration of healthcare systems, logistics firms, and manufacturing headquarters creates a steady pipeline of senior operational leadership openings throughout the year.
Which Tennessee cities have the most coo jobs?
Nashville, Memphis, and Brentwood hold the most coo openings in Tennessee. Nashville leads because of its dense cluster of healthcare systems, corporate headquarters, and financial services firms, while Memphis draws operational leadership roles tied to logistics and distribution given its position as a major freight hub, and Knoxville reflects demand from manufacturing and energy sector employers concentrated in East Tennessee.
Are there remote coo jobs in Tennessee?
Yes, but they're rare. The coo role is fundamentally tied to on-site leadership, culture-setting, and real-time operational decision-making, which limits full remote arrangements. About 50% of coo openings tied to Tennessee are remote or hybrid as of November 2026, and those tend to involve portfolio company oversight or holding-company structures where the executive leads distributed teams rather than a single physical operation.
How can I get hired as a coo in Tennessee with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is moving into a director of operations or VP of operations role first, then building toward the COO title over time. Large Tennessee employers like HCA Healthcare and Nissan's Smyrna plant run structured leadership development programs that take high-potential managers and rotate them through operational functions. Targeting operations manager or general manager roles at Tennessee-based mid-market companies, where the path to the executive team is shorter, is also effective. An MBA or lean operations certification gives candidates a measurable edge in competitive applicant pools.
Where can I find and apply to coo jobs in Tennessee?
You can find and apply to coo jobs in Tennessee on Migrate Mate, which lists current Tennessee openings updated regularly. Find roles that fit your experience and industry background, then apply directly to each employer through the listing.
See All 106+ COO Jobs in Tennessee
Find roles in Tennessee that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
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