Do you like to solve problems and see the immediate results of your efforts? Do you want to help others succeed in their personal and professional lives?

Columbine Corporation is a privately held oil & gas service company providing mudlogging and wellsite geologic services across the contiguous US. Founded in Denver in 1980, our mission is to relentlessly pursue subsurface understanding and create leaders for a better future. Our core values of Service, Humility, and Respect aren't wall art; they're how we dispatch a job at 9pm on a Friday.

The Operations Manager is the air traffic controller of our field operations, overseeing scheduling and support for a field team of 40+ geologists and their equipment across the country. Scheduling that many people and equipment spreads is a massive board game: right people, right equipment, right rig, right time, every time while keeping crews and clients informed as the well drills. 

Make no mistake: this is a management job, disguised as a geology job. Your craft is scheduling, accountability, interpersonal conflict, goal setting, and carrying our culture to the front line.

• Driven individual to manage process-related aspects of the business
• Attention to detail is critical to have people and equipment in the right place for our customers
• Travel to field will be required
• Lots of time on the phone with field staff and clients across the country.

Read this before you apply

This position is work-from-home, but it is NOT a "remote job." It is an oilfield dispatch and people-management job that happens to run from a home office. If you found this searching for remote work and have never scheduled crews or equipment, or led field personnel, this is not your job.

• Drilling rigs run 24/7 and do not care about your evening plans. You will take calls at inconvenient hours and weekends, on a scheduled rotation with peer managers — this is not open-ended on-call.
• You WILL travel approximately 25-50%. This typically runs in blocks tied to drilling activity (for example, a recurring stretch in Midland, TX, plus periodic customer-office visits) rather than evenly spread across the year. We'll walk through the actual travel calendar in the interview.
• Most of your day is spent on the phone with field staff and clients across the country.
• Must be authorized to work in the U.S.

Ask yourself:

• A crew calls out sick Friday night and the rig spuds Sunday morning. What does your next hour look like?
• Two strong employees can't stand each other, and the schedule puts them on the same rig. Now what?
• Can you hold field employees accountable on safety and paperwork while still being the person they want to call?

The role

You'll report to VP of operations and work alongside a small peer group of managers who rotate weekend and after-hours coverage with you, you are never the only person holding the phone. You'll own scheduling and support for a team of 40+ field geologists, a team that is stable and seasoned as you step in.

Culture & Fit

• You own your team and your outcomes no waiting to be told, no passing the buck when a job goes sideways.
• You can give direct, honest feedback to a wide range of personalities from a 20-year field veteran to a first-year hire and you don't soften accountability into vague suggestions.
• You can receive feedback the same way you give it: without defensiveness, and you actually change behavior because of it.
• You work closely with multiple teams and peer managers, not just your own crew. This role only functions if you're a builder of relationships across the company, not a silo.

Skills

• Proven experience leading people and holding them accountable: dispatch supervisor, service/ops coordinator, crew chief, district scheduler, military NCO, or similar. Leadership is the job.
• Experience scheduling and dispatching people and equipment in a field-services environment (oilfield, trucking/logistics, utilities, or similar 24/7 operations)
• Outstanding oral and written communication: the job is mostly phone calls, texts, and emails, done well
• Confident in Microsoft 365: Excel, Word, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint
• Oil & gas familiarity strongly preferred. You don't need to describe rock — you need to earn the respect of the people who do.
• Calm, decisive prioritization when the plan changes: callouts, crew changes, weather, and rig moves are just Tuesday

Duties

• Develop predictive staffing requirements based on forecasted rig activity and current employee levels
• Dispatch equipment and personnel to job locations; own callout communication to crews and clients
• Track and verify utilization and deployment of equipment and personnel throughout the job
• Track completion of safety requirements and training modules with weekly accountability checks
• Review field tickets and daily reports; reconcile job tracking against invoicing and payroll inputs
• Assess and record field personnel performance; contact each assigned field employee on a prescribed rotation. Retention is part of this job, not an afterthought
• Train new employees in person or remotely, at a frequency determined by need (weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.)
• Communicate and coordinate schedules between employees and clients, including crew change notifications
• Cover scheduled weekend rotations alongside peer managers
• Uphold and demonstrate our company culture and core values: Service, Humility, and Respect

Compensation & Benefits

• Annual Salary Range: $60-75k
• Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance
• Life and AD&D Insurance
• 401(k)
• Work-from-home position (with up to 50% travel)