Visitor Experience & Operations Manager

Position Summary:

The AKC Museum of the Dog seeks a thoughtful, highly organized Visitor Experience & Operations Manager to lead the daily visitor experience and keep the Museum’s public spaces and essential operations running smoothly. The Manager supervises the Visitor Experience team, maintains strong front-of-house standards, coordinates facilities needs and service providers, and helps solve the practical issues that arise in an active, dog-friendly museum.

This is a visible, hands-on leadership role with a regular weekend schedule. The Manager will balance warmth and responsiveness to visitors with sound operational judgment, clear procedures, attentive staff supervision, and careful stewardship of Museum resources. The ideal candidate is calm under pressure, enjoys coaching others, and takes pride in the details that make a visit feel effortless.

Primary Job Duties:

- Lead and support the Visitor Experience team, including supervision, coaching, scheduling, onboarding, training, performance support, and staff development.

- Ensure a welcoming, knowledgeable, and accessible visitor experience, maintaining consistent standards for admissions, gallery engagement, visitor questions, accessibility, and dog-related practices.

- Oversee daily front-of-house operations, including opening and closing procedures, staffing coverage, public-space readiness, checklists, and shift transitions.

- Manage visitor-facing systems and services, troubleshooting admissions and operational issues and coordinating timely solutions with internal teams and vendors.

- Support Museum programs, events, and group visits, partnering across Education, Membership, Retail, Events, and other departments to ensure smooth operations and transitions.

- Respond to visitor, staff, safety, security, and accessibility concerns, documenting incidents and escalating sensitive or urgent matters appropriately.

- Coordinate facilities, maintenance, cleaning, repairs, supplies, and vendors, tracking work orders, service schedules, contracts, invoices, and follow-up.

- Partner with Collections & Exhibitions on facility needs, ensuring maintenance, installations, events, and space changes do not compromise galleries, objects, environmental conditions, or security.

- Maintain operational documentation and reporting, including procedures, training materials, logs, vendor information, supplies, attendance, visitor feedback, and recurring operational issues.

- Drive continuous operational improvement, identifying inefficiencies and implementing practical changes that improve reliability, communication, visitor experience, and cost effectiveness while supporting the Museum’s mission.

Required Skills, Specialized Knowledge and Competency Requirements:

• Experience supervising staff in a museum, cultural institution, hospitality, visitor services, retail, nonprofit, or similarly public-facing setting.
• Demonstrated ability to coach a team, build schedules, set clear expectations, and maintain high standards of service.
• Strong customer service instincts, sound judgment, and confidence resolving issues with professionalism and care.
• Excellent organizational skills, attention to detail, and ability to balance immediate needs with ongoing projects.
• Experience coordinating facility's needs, vendors, service providers, or operational logistics.
• Comfort using admissions, scheduling, point-of-sale, or related operational systems and learning new tools.
• Ability to communicate clearly and work effectively with colleagues, visitors, building staff, and vendors.
• Interest in dogs, art, museums, and welcoming a broad public to the Museum is strongly preferred.

The salary range in New York City for this position is $73,000 - $79,000/year; however, salary offered may vary depending on skill, experience, job-related knowledge and location.

Saturday and Sunday are required; some weekend travel may be required.