Agent Operations Lead

About Mainstay

Mainstay is the leading market intelligence platform purpose built for buying, managing, and selling homes in the single family rental industry. As an AI native company, we turn complex data into clarity that helps the industry move forward with confidence. Founded within Opendoor, Mainstay launched as an independent company in 2024 and recently raised a Series A round led by Khosla Ventures.

Ready to shape the future of real estate with AI? Join Mainstay and help us redefine what’s possible in the single family rental space. If you thrive on solving complex problems and want to make a tangible impact in a fast-growing industry, we’d love to hear from you - apply now and let’s move the industry forward, together!

About The Role

We're hiring an Agent Operations Lead to own the operating results for some of the largest institutional owners of single family homes in the country. Each customer hands us a portfolio and a set of objectives, and no two are the same. One wants speed above everything. Another will wait three more weeks for the right number. A third mostly wants never to be surprised. You'll know each of their playbooks cold, and you'll make sure every home in their book is run that way.

You'll own each of your customers' books end to end: dispositions, and in some cases acquisitions, from the day a home lands with us to the day it closes. You co-own each customer relationship with a business relationship lead, who owns the commercial side: contracts, allocation, and expansion. You own the operating side as the day-to-day counterpart to the customer's directors and analysts. You run the cadence, bring the analysis, catch problems while they're still ours to fix, and tell them the truth when it isn't the answer they wanted. Inside Mainstay you're the one person who sees the whole portfolio, and you set priorities across the agents, pricing, field, and transaction coordination teams who work it.

You won't have direct reports or a listing book of your own. The agents writing deals report to their own manager. You own the outcome and get there through people who don't work for you. If influence without authority sounds like a consolation prize rather than the actual craft, this isn't your role.

You'll also help us grow. New customers, new markets, and new programs like REO are all on deck, and you'll help launch them and then run them once they're live.

This is a high-volume role at a fast-moving Series A startup. Tools change. Processes change. Customers change what they're asking for mid-quarter. If chaos energizes you and you find calm in the grind, you'll thrive here.

AI is very good at the parts of this job that used to eat the week: reconciling our system against a customer's, flagging the twelve homes that need attention today, and drafting the weekly update. It can't hold a director relationship, make the call on a deal that's coming apart, or deliver bad news well. We give our AOLs the best tools we can find, both off-the-shelf and proprietary, so they can spend their time on the part that can't be automated.

You'll report to the Manager, Brokerage Operations. This role is fully remote within the United States, with occasional travel to customers and launches.

Who You Are

This Role Is Built For Operators Who

• Know the institutional SFR world from the inside. You have 5+ years running single family rental portfolios or the relationships behind them, whether in disposition, acquisition, or asset management at an SFR operator, or managing accounts for large real estate customers. You know what a customer's director is measured on because you've sat in that seat or next to it.

• Get results through people who don't report to you. You've owned an outcome that depended entirely on other teams, and you know what to do when one of them isn't delivering.

• Own the day-to-day with the customer. You're their operating counterpart, not their order-taker, and you work in lockstep with the business relationship lead who owns the commercial side. You bring the analysis before they ask for it, push back when our recommendation is right, and own it when we got it wrong.

• Obsess over the details. One wrong price, a missed deadline, or an unvetted document erodes trust that took a year to build. Every customer has its own playbook, and you take pride in knowing all of them cold.

• Find the problem before anyone tells you. You open a dashboard, find the five things that are wrong, and act on them without asking someone to build you a report.

• Find calm in chaos, and adopt and champion change. Tooling and process evolve regularly at a Series A startup. You navigate ambiguity without losing your cool or your output, and you're the first to test a new tool or workflow rather than the last.

• Have built your workflow with AI, not just used it. You've built the dashboards, custom GPTs or Claude Projects, or automations that run a real portfolio: exception reports, pipeline reconciliation, customer updates, escalation triage. You can point to what changed as a result, whether that's hours back, issues caught earlier, or fewer dropped balls, and you know when to turn AI off and pick up the phone. You'll be expected to walk us through specific examples.

• Show up when the book needs you. Most of the week runs on business hours. Escalations and deals that are coming apart don't, so some evenings and weekends come with the job.

Requirements

• 5+ years in real estate operations, portfolio or asset management, or account management for institutional or high-volume real estate customers. SFR experience strongly preferred.

• Demonstrated ownership of a portfolio outcome or the operating side of a customer relationship, including running the reporting cadence and leading the hard conversations

• Working knowledge of the full transaction lifecycle: pricing, listing, offers and negotiation, and contract to close. Acquisitions experience is a plus.

• Experience launching a new customer, market, or program, and getting it to steady state

• Real estate license preferred, not required

• Specific, demonstrable AI workflows: you've built your work around at least one general-purpose LLM (ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini) and used it on a real portfolio or pipeline, and you're ready to walk us through examples and the impact they had

• Judgment about when not to use AI, and the ability to check AI outputs for accuracy and Fair Housing compliance before they reach a customer or counterparty

• Comfort with data: spreadsheets, dashboards, and a CRM or transaction management system (Salesforce or similar), plus G-Suite, Slack, and MacOS, working across several systems at once. SQL or BI tool experience is a plus.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills. Much of this job is a clear, well-argued message to a customer's director or a cross-functional partner.

• Comfort working some evenings and weekends when the book requires it, and with occasional travel

Compensation

On-target earnings for this role are $120,000 to $140,000, made up of a base salary and a target bonus. The bonus is tied to how cleanly your book runs and to the business results you help drive.

Why Join Mainstay

• Shape the category. We're the leading market intelligence platform in single family rental, and you'll work directly with the largest players in the industry.

• Real ownership. You own the operating results for each customer's portfolio, with the authority to set priorities across the teams that work it.

• Build, not just run. New customers, new markets, and new programs are launching, and you'll help stand them up.

• A team and tools that back you. Deal-writing agents, plus dedicated pricing, field visit, and transaction coordination teams, and an AI-augmented stack that handles reconciliation, reporting, and back-of-house ops. That keeps you focused on what you do best: the customer, the judgment calls, and keeping the book moving.

• Bring your AI workflows. We're AI-native by design and built on top of Claude. Bring what you've built, and learn from a team shipping new workflows every week.

• Series A momentum. Backed by Khosla Ventures, founded inside Opendoor, growing fast.

Mainstay Built on Trust

At Mainstay, trust is at the core of everything we do. We build trust with everyone -- from candidates to employees to partners. We believe in fairness and openness throughout our hiring process, evaluating candidates based on qualifications without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, gender, marital status, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other protected status. Our privacy practices describe how we handle applicant information, you can find the policy details for California residents here.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, religious beliefs, or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you require assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please contact us at [email protected]