Hybrid Supply Operations Manager

at Forum Ventures

• Job title: Supply Operations Manager
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Senior, Lead
• Salary: Not specified
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: SQL, Tableau
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Toronto, Canada

About the role

• Supply Operations Manager managing global supplier network at Calico AI. Focus on capacity planning, risk management, and compliance across diverse international factories.

Responsibilities

• Own the health and performance view of Calico’s global supplier network across regions, categories, and capabilities.
• Build and maintain capacity models that account for MOQs, lead times, seasonal peaks, and factory line availability.
• Work with Commercial and Customer teams to translate brand demand forecasts into capacity plans, allocation decisions, and sourcing strategies.
• Recommend where to scale up, rebalance, or pause suppliers based on data (OTD, quality, responsiveness, cost, risk).
• Design and maintain dashboards that track key supply KPIs: on-time delivery, defect rates, quote turnaround, win/loss on RFQs, utilization, and margin contribution.
• Analyze trends across factories, countries, and product types to identify gaps, bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvement.
• Run deep dives on underperforming suppliers, categories, or lanes and recommend corrective actions.
• Partner with Product/Engineering to embed these metrics and triggers into Calico’s internal tools and AI agents.
• Maintain an up-to-date view of compliance status across the network (social, environmental, quality, security, certifications).
• Work with factories to ensure adherence to customer-specific and region-specific compliance requirements.
• Develop and refine a risk framework for country, factory, and category exposure (e.g. geopolitical, capacity, quality, logistics).
• Proactively flag and manage risk scenarios, recommending alternative capacity, dual-sourcing plans, or factory rotations when needed.
• Define and document standard operating procedures (SOPs) for supply operations: onboarding, capacity updates, performance reviews, remediation plans.
• Create scalable, repeatable processes for collecting and validating factory data (capacity, pricing, compliance, capabilities).
• Collaborate with internal teams to streamline RFQ flows, allocation logic, and exception handling (e.g. rush orders, reallocations, escalations).
• Continuously refine how we work with factories — from communication cadences to scorecards and quarterly business reviews.
• Partner with Product and Data teams to shape how supply-side data flows into Calico’s platform and AI agents.
• Help define data schemas, standards, and tags for factories, capabilities, and orders to ensure accurate matching and analytics.
• Identify and implement tools or integrations (BI, workflow, data quality) that improve visibility and reduce manual work.
• Serve as the internal point person for all questions related to network capacity, fit, and risk.
• Work with Commercial teams to match brands with the right factories based on capabilities, price, and risk tolerance.
• Support customer conversations with clear, data-backed perspectives on network strategy and contingency plans.
• Build strong working relationships with strategic factories, focusing on continuous improvement and long-term growth.

Requirements

• 8–10 years of experience in apparel or apparel-adjacent supply chain, sourcing, production, or vendor management roles.
• Proven experience managing or optimizing a diverse, international supplier network (e.g. multiple regions, multiple factory types, multiple product categories).
• Strong analytical toolkit — comfortable working with large datasets, building dashboards, and using tools like Excel/Sheets, BI tools (e.g. Looker, Power BI, Tableau), or SQL.
• Deep understanding of apparel production fundamentals: lead times, critical paths, MOQs, capacity planning, costing, Incoterms, quality control, and compliance.
• Familiarity with social and environmental compliance standards (e.g. BSCI, WRAP, GOTS, Fair Trade) and how brands evaluate factory risk.
• Track record of designing and improving processes, not just operating within them — you can build systems that scale with growth.
• Strong communication skills, able to translate complex data and tradeoffs into clear narratives for both internal teams and external partners.
• Highly organized, detail-oriented, and comfortable operating in a fast-moving, high-growth startup environment.
• Based in Canada, with flexibility to occasionally travel to visit key suppliers or attend industry events as needed.

Benefits

• Flexible working hours
• Professional development opportunities