Director of Reverse Logistics & Returns

Location:Houston, TX

Work Type: Full-time

Compensation:$150,000 annually

Company Profile

Metropolitan Warehouse & Delivery Corp. provides furniture-focused warehousing, transportation, final-miledelivery, and white-glove logistics solutions nationwide. We are expanding our reverse logistics capabilitiesto improve customer outcomes, recover product value, and create new revenue opportunities.

Position Overview

We are seeking an experienced, entrepreneurial leader to build, develop, and directly manage MetropolitanWarehouse & Delivery's national reverse logistics organization.This role owns the strategy, financial
performance, team structure, hiring, training, and day-to-day execution of returns, refurbishment, liquidation,and recovery programs across the network. The Director will lead site-level returns teams and labor,establish operating standards and accountability, and serve as the business owner for requirements, testing,deployment, and adoption of the new Returns Management System (RMS). The ideal candidate combineshands-on furniture operations leadership with the ability to build a profitable, scalable service offering.

Key Responsibilities:

- Build and execute the enterprise reverse logistics strategy, business case, organizational structure,staffing plan, operating budget, governance, and network rollout roadmap.
- Build standardized programs for furniture returns, inspection, grading, repair, refurbishment, re-boxing,resale, liquidation, recycling, and disposal.
- Design regional processing and disposition strategies that minimize freight and handling costs andmaximize product recovery.
- Establish liquidation, secondary-market, refurbishing, recycling, and disposal partners; negotiateperformance and commercial arrangements.
- Define RMS end-to-end business requirements for authorizations, receipt, condition assessment,disposition, repair, inventory status, recovery value, billing, and reporting.
- Lead process mapping, functional validation, user acceptance testing (UAT), training, changemanagement, and business sign-off for RMS deployment.
- Partner with IT on integrations with WMS, customer systems, transportation, finance, and BI reporting.
- Partner with Sales and Finance to create service packages, rate structures, proposals, customer-specific programs, and profitability models.
- Directly lead returns operations and teams across participating facilities, including hiring, training,scheduling, labor productivity, performance management, quality, safety, and daily execution;coordinate with site warehouse leadership on shared resources and capacity.
- Recruit, coach, and develop site supervisors, associates, and future program leaders; establish clearreporting lines, escalation paths, performance expectations, and consistent SOPs across the network.
- Own labor planning, staffing models, operating costs, service levels, and site-level performance reviewsfor all managed reverse logistics programs.
- Travel: Up to 30%

Performance Measures:

- Return-to-disposition cycle time, staffing effectiveness, and labor productivity

- Program revenue, contribution margin, operating budget, labor cost, and cost per return

- Re-stockability, refurbishment success, and product recovery rates

- Liquidation recovery value, sell-through, and disposal diversion

- Inventory accuracy, customer satisfaction, RMS milestones, and adoption

Required Qualifications:

- 7+ years of progressive reverse logistics, returns, furniture operations, or related supply chainexperience.
- Direct experience with furniture, home furnishings, or bulky goods is required.
- Proven experience launching or scaling returns and recovery programs, including refurbishment andliquidation.
- Knowledge of furniture damage assessment, inspection, repair, re-boxing, and disposition economics.
- Demonstrated people leadership, including hiring, building and managing operational teams, workforceplanning, and multi-site performance accountability.
- Strong financial, commercial, project management, and cross-functional leadership skills.
- Bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline or equivalent experience; ability to travel as needed.

Preferred Qualifications:

- Furniture retail, manufacturing, e-commerce, 3PL, or white-glove delivery experience.

- Experience in e-commerce, open-box resale, outlet, or secondary-market programs.

- Multi-site rollout, system UAT, process improvement, and vendor partnership experience.

- First 90 days: assess current operations and economics; define the organization, staffingmodel, and leadership structure; establish strategy, baseline KPIs, RMS requirements, andpilot roadmap.

- First 6 months: recruit and develop the core team; assume direct operational accountability forprioritized returns sites; launch standardized processes and initial recovery partnerships; advance RMSdeployment and commercial offerings.

- First 12 months: lead a scalable, accountable national returns team; expand RMS-enabled programsacross the network and demonstrate measurable revenue, recovery, service, and labor productivitygains.

- First 12 months: scale RMS-enabled network programs and demonstrate measurable revenue,recovery, and productivity gains.

We need a leader who is a hands-on, people-focused builder who has led furniture returns operations, can hire anddevelop strong teams, and understands the complexity of bulky furniture recovery. Thisleader can translate strategy into daily execution while growing reverse logistics into aprofitable business.A hands-on builder who understands the unique complexity of bulky furniture returns and can turn reverselogistics from a cost center into a scalable, profitable service offering.

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