About this role
Are you an experienced veterinary professional who loves making a busy clinic run well? Are you the person who can look at a complicated day of surgeries, staffing, patients, and unexpected challenges and figure out how to make it all work? If so, we'd love to meet you.
Valley Humane Society is looking for an experienced Surgery Center Manager to lead the day-to-day operations of our Phil Scholz Veterinary Surgery Center in Pleasanton, California.
This is a hands-on leadership position for someone who understands veterinary medicine but also loves managing people, improving systems, solving problems, and creating efficient workflows. You'll manage our Surgery Center veterinarians and veterinary support team, oversee daily surgical scheduling and patient flow, coordinate complex cases, manage inventory and supplies, and help shape the future of our growing veterinary programs.
We receive cases that require medical records, diagnostics, veterinary review, communication, triage, and coordination before they can ever reach the surgical schedule. We're looking for someone who can not only manage those cases, but look at the entire process and ask: How can we make this work better?
You'll identify bottlenecks, improve how information moves through the team, establish clear processes and handoffs, and help ensure cases move efficiently from initial request through review and ultimately to scheduling.
You'll be an active, visible leader who moves between managing operations and supporting the team on the Surgery Center floor. You'll need to be comfortable adjusting the day's schedule, solving problems as they arise, helping the team prioritize, and keeping patients moving safely and efficiently through the Surgery Center.
Our Surgery Center veterinarians report directly to this position, with a dotted-line relationship to Valley Humane Society's Veterinary Medical Director. The Medical Director oversees medical standards, protocols, quality of care, and clinical guidance, while the Surgery Center Manager leads the people and operations that make excellent veterinary care possible.
Some of the responsibilities you'll own:
• Manage daily surgical scheduling and patient flow.
• Lead and supervise Surgery Center veterinarians and veterinary support staff.
• Oversee and improve case review, triage, information processing, and scheduling workflows.
• Coordinate complex cases and ensure the right information gets to the right people at the right time.
• Identify operational bottlenecks and implement practical solutions.
• Manage staff scheduling, coaching, performance, and team communication.
• Maintain inventory and oversee ordering of medical and surgical supplies.
• Support efficient use of veterinarian, staff, facility, and equipment capacity.
• Maintain strong relationships with shelter and rescue partners, clients, and community organizations.
• Work with the President/CEO and Veterinary Medical Director on future services, staffing, capacity, and growth of the Surgery Center.
What we're looking for:
We're looking for someone with significant veterinary experience who understands how a surgical practice operates and has demonstrated success leading people.
The ideal candidate has 3-5 years of experience in a veterinary hospital, spay/neuter clinic, shelter veterinary program, or similar environment and at least 5 years of supervisory or team leadership experience. RVT, veterinary assistant, or substantial veterinary clinical experience is strongly preferred.
Most importantly, we're looking for a leader who sees a problem and wants to solve it. You should be comfortable managing competing priorities, improving processes, holding people accountable, working collaboratively with veterinarians, and moving between strategic thinking and the realities of a busy surgery floor.
About Valley Humane Society
Valley Humane Society is a private, nonprofit animal welfare organization incorporated in 1987 with an excellent reputation for quality care and community support. Envisioning a world in which every animal is loved and every person knows the love of an animal, we create a brighter future for cats and dogs by encouraging and strengthening the bond between people and pets.
Our team is guided by the values of Compassion, Companionship, Optimism, Gratitude, Collaboration, and Integrity.
Working at the Phil Scholz Veterinary Surgery Center is about more than surgery. It's about increasing access to veterinary care, supporting animal shelters and rescue organizations, helping families care for their pets, and improving outcomes for animals throughout our community. $90,000 to $105,000 a year