NFL Director of Football Operations Job Description

An NFL Director of Football Operations runs the administrative and logistical side of a club's football department. The job covers moving the team, its staff and its gear to the right place on time, managing the department's budget and vendors, and making sure roster paperwork meets league rules before each deadline. It sits between the general manager's office, the coaching staff and the support departments that keep a football building working.

Club biographies show how the title is used in practice. The Jacksonville Jaguars' director of football operations "oversees team logistics for away games, London," and has worked on the club's new football facility, the Miller Electric Center. In Washington, the Commanders' senior director of football operations directs team travel and the department budget and supports day-to-day logistics. One rung higher, the Tennessee Titans hired an executive vice president of football operations in 2026 who oversees football administration, strategy and analytics, football research, football information systems, video, equipment, team operations and security. Read together, those three bios show football operations titles covering anything from travel and facilities to a whole support division.

Travel is the most visible part of the work. A road game means a charter flight, hotel room blocks, buses, meeting rooms, meal times, equipment freight and an itinerary that coaches and players can follow without thinking about it. The director builds that plan for every away trip, sends advance staff to check hotels and stadium routes, and keeps a fallback ready when weather or a mechanical problem pushes a departure. Home weeks have their own rhythm: practice schedules, visitor credentials, facility bookings and coordination with stadium staff.

Roster administration is the other half. The league's football operations site states that the practice squad consists of 16 players as of 2026, with a 17th spot allowed when one of them is a member of the International Pathway Program. Every practice squad contract carries a standard elevation addendum, which lets a club move a player up to the active list for one week; he reverts to the practice squad on the first business day after the game. On game day, a club can dress 48 players if at least eight offensive linemen are active. Each of those moves creates a filing, a deadline and a salary entry, and the operations director keeps the club's records, the league's transaction system and the coaches' plans in agreement.

The rest of the week is coordination. The director publishes the building's schedule, negotiates travel and equipment contracts, supports the draft room and training camp, arranges arrival logistics for newly signed players, and keeps a running line to the league office on scheduling and procedural questions. The job is checklists, phone calls and contingency plans, done well enough that nobody on the field notices them.

No license or certification governs this job. Clubs hire on a record of doing the work: running travel, handling roster filings and keeping a department on schedule for an NFL team, a college program or the league office.

Education. As a rough guide, a bachelor's degree is the baseline, and business administration, sport management or finance are fitting majors. A graduate degree in business or law can help someone who wants to move toward contracts and the salary cap, though it does not replace years spent inside a football building.

How people get here. The path usually starts with internships and seasonal help. The Jaguars' director of football operations began as a training camp intern with the Atlanta Falcons, completed three internships there before a full-time hire, and spent eight seasons in Atlanta, the last as senior event marketing and travel advance coordinator. He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Florida. That record, from intern to travel advance work to a director's chair, is one example of the ladder: coordinator, then assistant director or manager, then director. As a rough guide, plan on several years at the coordinator and manager levels before a director title.

League service is another route in. The Titans' new football operations executive spent 21 years in the league office before joining a club, and the Jaguars' director has worked as an NFL Football Operations team liaison at Super Bowl 50, LVI and LVIII.

What the job asks for:

• Working command of roster mechanics: active and inactive lists, the practice squad, reserve lists, waivers and the league transaction calendar.
• Logistics skill across charter air, hotels, ground transport, passports and visas for overseas games, and equipment freight.
• Budgeting and vendor negotiation for a department with many cost centers, from travel to video to equipment.
• Software fluency with spreadsheets, scheduling and travel platforms, the league's transaction systems and, at some clubs, AI assistants.
• Composure on deadline days, discretion with medical and contract information, and patience with coaching staffs whose plans change by the hour.

Temperament. The job suits a planner who likes detail, writes things down, and would rather rehearse a contingency than improvise one. A director works several trips ahead of the calendar, and the good weeks are the ones in which nothing they planned becomes a story.

The number of these jobs is set by the league's structure: one football operations department per club, plus related roles at the league office. Because the club count does not change, a director vacancy opens when someone leaves or moves up. No federal series counts the title on its own. BLS counted 6,360 General and Operations Managers in the Spectator Sports industry in May 2025, a group that spans every kind of team and venue. For that occupation as a whole, O*NET projects growth of 5% to 6% from 2025 to 2035, which it rates faster than average, and about 285,000 openings a year on average across all industries.

The workload is where the change shows. The NFL's 2026 international slate set a record of nine games played across four continents, seven countries and eight stadiums, including the first regular-season games in Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro and Paris. For the clubs on those trips, that means overseas charters, passport checks for a full traveling party, time-zone plans for practice and sleep, and freight that has to clear customs before the equipment staff can unpack it.

The rulebook moved as well. At the Annual Meeting on March 31, 2026, clubs adopted a bylaw that lets the league office adjust the procedures, dates and deadlines for the final roster reduction to accommodate an international game in Week 1. They also made the Saturday and Sunday of Labor Day weekend business days, so clubs receive personnel notices on the first weekend after cuts, and approved a change that lets players on Reserve/Physically Unable to Perform begin a 21-day practice period after the club's second regular-season game. Each of those changes rewrites a date on the operations calendar and changes what the director has to file, and when.

Technology is reaching the same desk. When the NFL expanded its partnership with Microsoft in August 2025, the league said staff across its 32 clubs would soon be able to use AI agents for workstreams including player scouting and salary cap management. For an operations director, that puts a premium on checking machine-drafted work against the rulebook, because a missed filing is still the club's problem and not the software's.

Next steps from this job include senior director, vice president of football operations or football administration, and broader executive posts like the Titans' new executive vice president role. Clubs and the league do not publish pay for these titles, so candidates negotiate without a public benchmark. Experience across travel, roster administration and budgets is what lets a director make that move.

Dear Hiring Committee,

I am applying for the Director of Football Operations position with your club. For the past five seasons I have been assistant director of football operations for a team in another conference, where I plan road travel, run the department's vendor contracts and serve as the second set of eyes on every roster filing before it goes to the league office.

The part of the job I take most seriously is the road trip nobody remembers. I rebuilt our travel book so that each away game has one master itinerary that the charter carrier, hotel, bus company, equipment staff and coaches all read from, with a printed fallback for every leg. When a storm closed our departure airport last season, we moved the whole party to a second airport and still made the walkthrough on time, because the alternate plan had been written in July.

On the roster side, I keep a shared transaction calendar that pairs each league deadline with the person responsible for it and a backup. Before every practice squad elevation and reserve list move, the calendar prompts a two-person check of the paperwork against the rule text. I also trained two coordinators on the process so the system does not depend on any one of us.

I want to bring that same discipline to a club that values preparation. I am comfortable working directly with a head coach on schedules, with the general manager's office on roster timing, and with the business side on budget questions, and I know how to say no to a request politely when the calendar demands it.

I would welcome the chance to talk about your department and the season ahead.

Sincerely, Jordan Reyes