J-1 Visa Customer Operations Manager Jobs
Customer Operations Manager roles in the U.S. are accessible to qualified international professionals through the J-1 Trainee or Specialist program category, both requiring a designated sponsor organization to issue your DS-2019 and confirm your training plan. Securing sponsorship means finding a host employer willing to partner with a State Department-designated sponsor on your behalf.
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About Gusto
At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 400,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve. All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success. Offer amounts are determined by role, level, and location. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy. AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto. We expect all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role and grow their fluency as the technology evolves. AI experience requirements vary by role and will be assessed during the interview process.
About The Role
Are you looking for an opportunity to transform a business? Gusto is looking for a strategic, customer-focused leader to leverage customer feedback and operational key metrics to develop actionable insights and strategies that shape our product and service, and positively impact customer love. Working with the Product, Engineering, Design and Customer Experience teams, you will be expected to tackle both highly strategic and deeply operational initiatives to deliver value for customers and Gusto. You’ll be customer-obsessed, business-minded, strategic, detail-oriented, and highly creative. In this role, you'll help stand up the operational and service foundation for a new Gusto product, using both deep human judgment and emerging AI tools to move faster and make better decisions. If this sounds exciting to you, we’d love to connect!
About The Team
The Benefits Product Operations team at Gusto is made up of committed, creative, collaborative people who care deeply about our mission to enable Benefits for all small and mid-sized businesses and their employees. We’re a highly cross-functional team focused on ensuring our product and service are co-designed and co-developed along the product lifecycle to deliver a best in class customer experience; Gusto is listening to, synthesizing and acting on customer and front-line team feedback; and that cross-functional teams are collaborating and swimming together to build the best version of Gusto for our customers.
Here’s What You’ll Do Day-to-day
- Shape and support product development and its integration into service strategy for existing customers across the product lifecycle, in collaboration with Engineering, Design, Product Management, and Customer Experience teams.
- Understand our product and end-to-end service experience and organizations in intimate detail, including internal and external pain points and feedback. Collaborate to ensure customer support considerations are integrated into broader company decisions.
- Lead and partner on product launches between Product Management and Customer Experience (CX) teams to ensure readiness and deliver insights post-launch to ensure a positive experience for customers and internal teams.
- Provide business insights and recommendations based on quantitative and qualitative data to influence strategy and operational design in both product and service roadmaps.
- Identify and drive cross-functional initiatives that will deliver value for customers and Gusto. Help develop and communicate a clear roadmap for enhancing service capabilities and experiences.
- Hypothesis-driven problem solving to drive our business.
- Contribute to advancing the Product Operations craft at Gusto and build AI fluency within the team:
- Model how to use AI tools to accelerate service design, insight synthesis, and agent-driven operational workflows.
- Identify and build AI-assisted operational workflows, including agents, to accelerate VoC synthesis, launch readiness monitoring, and cross-functional signal aggregation.
- Use AI tools to prototype service solutions and surface requirements faster, compressing the feedback loop between customer signal and product/service response — before full engineering investment.
Here’s What We're Looking For
- 10+ years of relevant work experience at growing startups in operating roles (i.e., biz ops/strategy roles, product operations, project/program management, and/or consulting):
- Experience scaling service strategy alongside growing SaaS products, including incubating products, building and managing product betas, and/or integrating new products into a scalable best-in-class service model.
- Highly adaptable and resilient to changes in business needs or requirements, with the ability to navigate challenges and make decisions even when information is incomplete.
- Demonstrated self-starter and organized problem-solver. Self-sufficient, resourceful, and bias for action towards continuous improvement.
- Experienced with managing a variety of cross-functional stakeholders on complex strategic initiatives, including influencing senior leaders in Product or Customer Experience orgs.
- Strong data literacy and results-orientation, with the ability to identify the right questions, interpret quantitative and qualitative signals, and translate findings into decisions — including comfort using AI-assisted tools for analysis and synthesis.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to effectively communicate complex subjects to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Demonstrated AI fluency in an operational and product context — comfort using AI tools to synthesize qualitative data, identify automation opportunities in service workflows, and building or directing AI agents to reduce manual operational lift:
- Experience prototyping with AI (e.g., Claude, Cursor, Codex or similar) is a plus.
- Experience with service design and/or service blueprinting.
- Experience working in the healthcare or benefits space (PEO, health insurance, etc.) is a plus; candidates with new product incubation experience in any complex regulated space are strongly encouraged to apply.
Compensation
- Our cash compensation amount for this role is $148,000/yr to $182,000/yr in Denver, and $167,000/yr to $217,000/yr for San Francisco & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate location, experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.
Location
Gusto has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees who are based in those locations will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week (or more depending on role). The same office expectations apply to all Symmetry roles, Gusto's subsidiary, whose physical office is in Scottsdale. Note: The San Francisco office expectations encompass both the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas. When approved to work from a location other than a Gusto office, a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection is required. This includes non-office days for hybrid employees.
Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for small businesses, you will find a home at Gusto.
Gusto is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Gusto considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Gusto is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. We want to see our candidates perform to the best of their ability. If you require a medical or religious accommodation at any time throughout your candidate journey, please fill out this form and a member of our team will get in touch with you.
Gusto takes security and protection of your personal information very seriously. Please review our Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer. Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.
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Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding J-1 Visa Sponsorship as a Customer Operations Manager
Document your operations management credentials clearly
Assemble a training proposal that maps your prior customer operations experience to specific U.S. workplace competencies. Designated sponsors like Cultural Vistas require a detailed training plan before issuing your DS-2019, so vague credentials slow approvals significantly.
Target host employers with established sponsor relationships
Search for Customer Operations Manager openings at companies that have previously hosted J-1 Trainees or Specialists. Use Migrate Mate to filter roles by employers already familiar with the host-sponsor model, cutting your outreach time considerably.
Verify the two-year home residency requirement early
Certain J-1 Trainee placements tied to government funding or skills on the Exchange Visitor Skills List trigger a two-year home-country residency requirement after your program ends. Confirm your field and funding source with your designated sponsor before accepting any host offer.
Align your training plan with Trainee category timelines
The J-1 Trainee category caps at 18 months for most fields. Structure your training objectives so your core customer operations competencies are demonstrably acquired within that window, since extensions beyond the statutory limit are not available.
Confirm the host employer's willingness to file supporting paperwork
Your host employer must co-sign the training or internship plan and cooperate with the designated sponsor's compliance monitoring. Raise this expectation explicitly during the offer stage, as some operations teams are unfamiliar with their obligations under the J-1 host model.
Use O*NET to benchmark your role classification
Pull the O*NET occupation profile for Customer Operations Manager to confirm your proposed duties align with recognized U.S. occupational standards. Designated sponsors use this classification when evaluating whether your placement qualifies under the Trainee or Specialist category.
Customer Operations Manager jobs are hiring across the US. Find yours.
Find Customer Operations Manager JobsCustomer Operations Manager J-1 Visa: Frequently Asked Questions
Which J-1 program category applies to Customer Operations Manager roles?
Most Customer Operations Manager candidates fall under the J-1 Trainee category if they have a degree plus at least one year of relevant experience, or the Specialist category if they have five or more years of specialized operations experience and no related degree. The Intern category applies only to current students or recent graduates within 12 months of graduation. Your designated sponsor confirms which category fits based on your specific background and the host employer's proposed training plan.
Who actually sponsors my J-1 visa if an employer offers me a Customer Operations Manager role?
The hiring employer is your host, not your visa sponsor. Your J-1 visa sponsor is a U.S. Department of State-designated organization, such as Cultural Vistas or AIPT, that reviews your training plan, issues your DS-2019 form, and monitors your program compliance. The host employer and the designated sponsor work together, but they are separate entities with distinct legal responsibilities under State Department regulations.
How do I find Customer Operations Manager positions where the host employer already understands the J-1 host model?
Search on Migrate Mate, which surfaces U.S. employer roles aligned with J-1 sponsorship pathways. Employers unfamiliar with the host-sponsor distinction often stall or withdraw offers once they learn a third-party designated sponsor must be involved. Targeting employers with prior J-1 hosting experience dramatically reduces that friction and accelerates your onboarding timeline.
Does the J-1 two-year home residency requirement affect Customer Operations Manager roles?
It can. If your J-1 program is funded by the U.S. or your home-country government, or if your occupation appears on the Exchange Visitor Skills List, you may be required to return home for two years before changing to another visa status like H-1B or a green card. Customer operations is not universally on that list, but the determination depends on your specific country and funding source. Confirm this with your designated sponsor before signing any host offer.
What does the host employer actually have to do to support my J-1 Trainee placement?
Your host employer co-signs a formal training or internship plan, designates a workplace supervisor responsible for your development, and cooperates with periodic check-ins from your designated sponsor. They do not file immigration paperwork directly with USCIS, but they must maintain records and participate in any compliance reviews the sponsor conducts throughout your program period.
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