Gamer’s Choice is a team of passionate gamers, creators, and innovators based in Queens, New York. What began as a small local shop has grown into one of the leading destinations for Trading Card Game players and collectors around the world. We’re driven by a shared love for gaming and community, offering both an engaging online experience and a vibrant in-store atmosphere. Our mission is to be the ultimate home for fans to connect, compete, and celebrate the games they love. While Yu-Gi-Oh! has always been our foundation, we’re expanding into exciting new titles like Pokémon, One Piece, Riftbound, and Disney Lorcana. Our Long Island City store serves as the heart of our community, hosting tournaments, events, and gatherings that bring players together both in person and online.

Location: Long Island City, Queens

Work Environment: Full-Time On-site (High-Presence Required)

Schedule: 6 Days Per Week, Potential for Long Days

Reports to: CEO

Base Salary: $150,000 - $225,000

This role is compensated with a fixed base salary. Compensation within the band is determined by demonstrated experience, scope of responsibility, and ability to operate with full ownership in a high-intensity environment. Candidates at the top of the band are expected to operate with minimal oversight and immediately stabilize inventory accuracy and fulfillment performance. Performance bonus eligibility may be evaluated after six months in the role, based on demonstrated performance and business needs. Equity is not a part of our current compensation structure.

Role Overview

The Director of Operations owns business performance across Retail, Live Streaming, and cross-functional execution, with direct accountability for revenue, margin, customer experience, and operational discipline. This is an execution-first role with full ownership of outcomes and decision-making authority across retail and live operations. When systems break, margins slip, inventory drifts, or teams lose alignment, this role owns the fix and acts decisively within its scope without waiting for approval.

Time and intensity expectations

This is a high-presence, high-intensity role. The Director of Operations is expected to work six days per week and long days as required, especially during peak volume, launches, and operational transitions. This pace is required at the current stage of the company. If you are optimizing for predictable hours or strict boundaries over business outcomes, this role will not be sustainable.

Who is this role for

The Director of Operations is a builder and operator at heart.

• You have taken messy, fast-growing businesses with unclear ownership and incomplete systems and turned them into disciplined, scalable operations.
• You are comfortable owning outcomes before structure exists.
• You solve problems instead of escalating them.
• You understand that speed without standards creates chaos, and standards without speed kill growth.

What you will actually do

• You will work directly with leadership to identify what is truly limiting operational performance and fix it.
• You will enter imperfect situations with a clear hypothesis, test it in real time on the floor, and implement changes immediately.
• You will turn what works into repeatable systems only after execution proves the solution.
• Problems are not escalated upward in this role. They are solved at the source.

Core focus areas and responsibilities

Retail Operations

• Own retail performance end-to-end, including execution, inventory integrity, margin discipline, and profitability.
• Full ownership of retail P&L performance.
• Establish and enforce retail best practices across stores.
• Oversee buylist operations, pricing discipline, and inventory management.
• Track and improve gross margin by category.
• Drive revenue growth through pricing, promotions, and customer programs.
• Improve customer retention and repeat purchase behavior.

Live Stream Operations

• Own live stream operational performance, profitability, and scalability.
• Establish and enforce stream best practices for pace, pricing, and show structure.
• Track and improve revenue, margin, and efficiency per stream.
• Ensure streams scale without sacrificing customer trust or margin.
• Partner on performance incentive structures for stream teams.
• Align stream behavior with revenue, margin, and customer satisfaction goals.
• Maintain clear operational guardrails around pricing and cost.

Cross-functional execution

• Own operational alignment across Warehouse, Marketing, and HR.
• Resolve cross-functional conflicts, set priorities, and make tradeoffs when teams are misaligned.
• Establish operating rhythms, review cadences, and clear ownership across teams.
• Reduce friction, escalations, and execution breakdowns between departments.

Within the first 90 days, the Director of Operations is expected to:

• Establish clear visibility into retail and live P&L performance
• Identify and begin correcting the largest sources of margin leakage and execution breakdowns
• Create alignment across Retail, Live, Warehouse, Marketing, and HR on priorities and ownership
• Reduce operational escalations and CEO involvement in day-to-day execution

 How you will be measured

• Revenue and contribution margin improve quarter over quarter across retail and live channels.
• Retail and stream P&Ls are clearly understood, tracked, and actively managed.
•  Inventory accuracy is controlled and reliable.
• Customer retention and satisfaction improve across channels.
• Teams operate with clarity, urgency, and accountability.
• CEO involvement in operational issues materially decreases within 90-120 days.

Why this role may not be a fit

This role is not a fit if you require:

• Order and cleanliness before scale and speed.
• Time to ramp before being accountable.
• Clearly defined lanes instead of end-to-end ownership.
• Finished systems instead of live problem-solving.
• Predictable hours over business outcomes.
• Escalation paths instead of personal responsibility.

Why this role matters (expand)

• This role directly determines whether the company can scale profitably.
• You will operate inside a business in a hyper-growth phase, where weak systems fail quickly, and strong ones compound fast.
• You will work with operators who care about outcomes, move quickly, and hold high standards while building the operational foundation for the next stage of growth.
• This role will help scale the business through its next major growth phase, with increasing revenue, complexity, and operational stakes.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in operations leadership, with experience owning multi-team performance
• Proven people leader managing large, multi-team operations (20+ employees, preferably 40+).
• Strong operational ownership across execution-heavy environments (retail, ecommerce operations, fulfillment, high-volume sales floor, or live commerce)
• Demonstrated ability to manage P&L and hit profit + performance targets
• Strong process orientation: SOP creation, KPI tracking, and continuous improvement
• Strong execution management and operational discipline
• High ownership mentality, gets things done without needing heavy structure
• Excellent communication and leadership presence across the frontline and manager levels
• Ability to thrive in fast-paced environments with demand spikes (live shows, releases, peak season)

Final note

We set these expectations clearly because this role is intense by design. In return, you will work alongside operators who care deeply about outcomes, move fast, and hold high standards, within a company in a period of rapid growth and operational scale.

Benefits:

• Health Insurance
• Dental & Vision Coverage
• Paid time off
• 401k
• Employee Discounts
• Gym Membership Reimbursements

EEO/AAP Statement: Gamer’s Choice is an equal opportunity employer. We acknowledge and honor the fundamental value and dignity of all individuals. We pledge ourselves to crafting and maintaining an environment that respects diverse traditions, heritages, and experiences. Gamer’s Choice is an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

If you require an accommodation to participate in the application process, contact us at hr@gamerschoice.com 

The above-noted job description is not intended to describe, in detail, the multitude of tasks that may be assigned, but rather to give the applicant a general sense of the responsibilities and expectations of this position. As the nature of business demands change, so, too, may the essential functions of the position.