Deal operations lead

ABOUT WATERSHED Watershed https://watershed.com/ is the enterprise sustainability platform. Companies like Airbnb, Carlyle Group, FedEx, Visa, and Dr. Martens use Watershed to manage climate and ESG data, produce audit-ready metrics for voluntary and regulatory reporting including CSRD, and drive real decarbonization. We are looking for team members who love product-building, want to work hard at a mission-oriented startup, and will collaborate with us in shaping the culture of a growing team. We have offices in San Francisco, New York, Denver, London, Paris, Berlin, Sydney, Mexico City, and remote team members across the US and Europe. We hope that you'll be interested in joining us! THE ROLE Watershed is on a mission to help companies measure, reduce, remove, and report their emissions. As our go-to-market organization continues to scale, we’re looking for a Deal Operations Lead to design and operate the commercial infrastructure behind how deals get done. This role sits at the intersection of sales strategy, pricing, contracts, and systems. You’ll partner closely with Sales, Finance, Legal, and RevOps to structure complex deals, design scalable commercial frameworks, and build the operational infrastructure that supports our quote-to-close process. Success in this role requires strong commercial judgment, operational rigor, and the ability to design systems that scale. As AI and automation reshape how teams operate, we’re especially excited about candidates interested in leveraging automation and emerging technologies to improve how commercial teams structure, analyze, and execute deals. This role is based in our New York office. You will: - Design and maintain Watershed’s commercial policies, including pricing guardrails, discount frameworks, approval processes, booking policy, and other deal governance standards that balance deal velocity with long-term business outcomes. - Serve as the operational owner of the order form, accountable for what is executed with customers and ensuring alignment between commercial agreements, CRM data, and downstream billing systems. - Design and scale the quote-to-close operating model and supporting systems, including CPQ configuration, contract workflows in our CLM system (Ironclad), and integrations connecting sales workflows to downstream billing infrastructure. - Own and evolve Watershed’s contract and order form language library, maintaining standard terms and custom clauses while identifying opportunities to streamline contract drafting, order preparation, and approval workflows through automation and AI-assisted tooling. - Partner with Sales leadership to structure complex deals, guiding pricing, packaging, and commercial terms to ensure deals are competitive and aligned with company strategy. - Drive commercial programs such as offers, promotions, and SPIFFs, ensuring they are operationalized cleanly across pricing structures, approval frameworks, and systems. - Develop reporting and analytics on deal performance, including pricing, discounting, approval patterns, and deal structures, surfacing insights that inform commercial strategy and GTM decision-making. - Maintain alignment between deal structure, booking policy, and sales compensation, ensuring commercial structures support accurate crediting and commissions outcomes. - Oversee day-to-day deal desk operations, including pre-close deal review, managing deal desk capacity, and maintaining a clear audit process for approvals and commercial exceptions. The ideal candidate brings: - Deep experience in Deal Desk or Deal Operations, with a track record of structuring complex SaaS deals supporting enterprise sales teams across global markets (e.g., North America, Europe, and APAC), typically in high-growth SaaS environments (6+ years). - Strong commercial judgment, with experience structuring complex enterprise deals and navigating pricing strategy, discounting frameworks, and approval processes, including deals in the six- to seven-figure range. - Experience designing and scaling deal desk operations and commercial governance, including order form, quote structure, pricing guardrails, approval policies, and contract workflows. - Ownership of the systems behind deal execution, including CRM, CPQ, and CLM platforms, with experience building deal desk systems and workflows from the ground up or leading major system and process transformations. - Experience leveraging automation and emerging technologies such as AI to improve operational workflows, deal analysis, contract processes, or commercial approvals, with examples of how these tools have been applied in practice. - A highly analytical approach to deal data and commercial insights, including pricing performance, discounting patterns, approval metrics, and deal structure trends. - Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, with the ability to partner effectively across Sales, Finance, Legal, Product, and RevOps. Must be willing to work from an office 4 days per week (except for remote roles) Watershed has hub offices in San Francisco, New York, London, and Mexico City and satellite offices in Denver, Sydney, Paris, and Berlin. Where we have offices, employees are expected to be in office for 4 days per week. Certain jobs are open to being remote and will be specifically noted on the jobs page and in the job description if so. What’s the interview process like? It starts the same for every candidate: getting to know the team members through 1 to 2 conversations about Watershed, your experience, and your interests. Next steps can vary by role, but usual next steps are a skill or experience interview (e.g. a coding interview for an engineer, a portfolio review for a designer, deeper experience call for other roles) which leads to a virtual or in person interview panel. We prioritize transparency and lack of surprise throughout the process. What if I need accommodations for my interview? At Watershed, we are dedicated to ensuring an inclusive recruitment process. We provide reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities, long-term conditions, mental health needs, religious observances, neurodivergence, or pregnancy-related support requirements. If you need assistance during your process, please contact your recruiter.