Operations Captain, Humane Law Enforcement
San Diego Humane Society
Job Description
San Diego Humane Society is hiring a Full-Time Operations Captain for our Humane Law Enforcement team!
How you’ll impact our mission:
At San Diego Humane Society, we’re united by our mission to Inspire Compassion, providing hope and advancing the welfare of animals and people. In this role, you’ll be support our mission by working as a strategic partner to the Chief and to the Administrative Captain to lead the San Diego Humane Society’s Humane Law Enforcement (HLE) Department. The Operations Captain serves as the department’s field operations and performance leader, ensuring operational excellence through comprehensive oversight of field response, deployment/scheduling, daily team cohesion, field training execution, and operational performance reporting.
What you’ll do:
• Partner with the Chief and Administrative Captain to provide unified leadership and strategic direction for the HLE Department across all campuses.
• Serve as the department’s primary operational leader, with accountability for day-to-day field response oversight, deployment and scheduling, call/queue management and operational prioritization, operational efficiency and response time performance, and field team readiness, cohesion, and accountability.
• May serve as Acting Chief when required, or as Incident Commander/command staff as designated for SDHS participation in emergency situations/disasters.
• Provide overnight on-call duty coverage with other campus personnel as assigned on an as needed basis to support with emergent needs such as staffing or emergencies. On-call coverage will assist public safety agencies or others in responding to Priority One calls.
• Direct and oversee daily field operations across campuses/jurisdictions, ensuring consistent service delivery and alignment with contractual obligations and SDHS standards.
• Own field staffing plans and scheduling practices (shift coverage, workload balancing, resource deployment), in coordination with Lieutenants and /Sergeants.
• Monitor call demand and operational constraints; adjust deployment tactics and priorities to meet response expectations and animal welfare outcomes.
• Serve as the primary owner of operational performance management, including the identification and resolution of barriers to efficiency.
• Hold primary responsibility for daily/weekly/monthly operational reporting, including response times, call volume and call types, workload distribution and staffing impacts, productivity and service-level performance indicators, and field training progression metrics (in coordination with training owners).
• See additional job duties on our official Job Post.
What we’re looking for:
• Bachelor’s degree in Administration of Justice, Animal Science, Public Administration, Human Resources, or related field with at least seven (7) years of full-time progressively responsible related experience in law enforcement, investigations, or animal control organizations, including at least three (3) years supervisory experience; or an equivalent combination of education and experience required.
• Demonstrated strength in operational leadership, scheduling/deployment management, performance analytics, performance management and continuous improvement. Excellent organizational, problem-solving, interpersonal, conflict resolution, and verbal/written communication skills; strong report writing skills with ability to synthesize and translate information for diverse audiences.
Location & Hours: Based at our San Diego Campus. This position works 40 hours per week. Must be able to work weekends/evenings as required and during disasters may involve overnight work.
Pay: Starting range is between $92,429 – $120,158 per year.
This is a full time job
Contact Information
Job Contact Details
Closing Date: Sunday, July 26, 2026
Posting Date:
Closing Date:
