About Us
We are a growing UK-based professional services businesses providing managed IT, cyber security, governance, regulatory compliance and outsourced Data Protection Officer services.
Our clients range from growing UK businesses to larger international organisations. As both businesses continue to scale, we are strengthening our management structure and are seeking an experienced Operations Manager to take ownership of service delivery, capacity, workflow, people management and operational performance across the organisation.
This is an important management position with responsibility for ensuring that work sold to clients is properly planned, resourced, scheduled, delivered and measured.
The role does not require you to be the most technically experienced IT engineer or data protection specialist. Your responsibility is to make sure the right people are working on the right things, priorities are clear, workloads are controlled, problems are escalated early and teams consistently deliver what has been promised.
You will become a key member of the management team and work closely with the CEO, Commercial Manager, service leads, finance, governance and our business systems function.
The Role
The Operations Manager will run the operating engine across the group of companies.
You will take ownership of the systems, routines and management disciplines that turn commercial commitments into predictable service delivery.
This includes:
- Service delivery performance
- Capacity and resource planning
- Workload balancing
- Operational people management
- PSA and workflow governance
- Onboarding and offboarding
- Operational KPIs
- SLA and service performance
- Queue and backlog health
- Process adherence
- Continuous improvement
- Operational cost and efficiency
You will establish clear operational cadence across the businesses, ensuring managers and team members understand priorities, responsibilities, deadlines and performance expectations.
You will also act as an escalation point when capacity, client delivery, people or process issues begin to threaten service quality or profitability.
This role would suit an experienced Operations Manager, Service Delivery Manager or Head of Operations who has worked within a multi-client B2B service environment and understands how to create structure, accountability and consistency within growing organisations.
Key Responsibilities
Service Delivery Management
- Take overall operational responsibility for service delivery performance across the business units
- Ensure client commitments are converted into clear delivery plans, ownership, deadlines and resourcing
- Monitor ongoing service performance across both businesses
- Identify delivery risks, delays, blocked work and service issues before they become significant problems
- Ensure agreed service standards, SLAs and internal delivery targets are consistently monitored
- Maintain visibility over client onboarding, projects, recurring work and service queues
- Ensure work is appropriately prioritised according to client commitments, urgency, risk and available capacity
- Coordinate delivery across the two business units while maintaining clear specialist accountability
- Ensure operational problems are resolved or escalated quickly and appropriately
Capacity, Resource Planning and Workload Management
- Maintain an accurate understanding of available capacity across operational teams
- Monitor workload, utilisation, backlog and future resource requirements
- Balance workloads between individuals and teams where appropriate
- Identify over-capacity and under-capacity risks
- Ensure new client commitments are considered against available delivery capacity
- Work with the Commercial Manager to provide capacity feedback during the sales process where necessary
- Identify where additional recruitment, outsourcing, process improvement or automation may be required
- Allocate and reprioritise operational resources within agreed service commitments
- Improve forecasting of future operational demand
The successful candidate will be expected to develop systems that allow teams to operate predictably rather than personally becoming the permanent dispatcher of individual tickets or tasks.
People Management
- Line-manage operational employees and relevant team managers
- Set clear objectives, responsibilities and performance expectations
- Run structured one-to-one meetings
- Support employee development and progression
- Monitor performance and provide appropriate coaching and support
- Manage absence, holidays and operational availability
- Address performance or behavioural issues appropriately and promptly
- Support recruitment and onboarding of operational team members
- Develop managers and team leads so that responsibility can be effectively delegated
- Promote accountability, ownership and constructive communication throughout the businesses
You should be comfortable managing people with different professional backgrounds, including technical specialists, consultants and compliance professionals.
Operational Meetings and Management Cadence
- Run structured weekly operations meetings
- Establish appropriate daily, weekly and monthly operational routines
- Maintain clear action tracking and ownership
- Ensure operational issues are followed through to completion
- Provide concise operational reporting to the CEO and management team
- Maintain visibility over emerging risks and unresolved escalations
- Ensure actions agreed during management meetings are implemented
- Create an environment where problems are raised early rather than allowed to drift
PSA, Workflow and Process Management
Both business units rely heavily on structured systems and workflows to manage client delivery.
The Operations Manager will:
- Own the operational requirements of the PSA and associated workflow systems
- Ensure work is correctly captured, assigned, prioritised and tracked
- Establish standards for ticket, task, project and workflow management
- Ensure teams consistently follow agreed processes
- Identify opportunities for workflow automation
- Define requirements for dashboards, reporting and operational controls
- Work closely with the Business Systems & Performance Lead to implement PSA improvements, automation and reporting
- Ensure systems support the operational process rather than dictate it
- Maintain reliable operational data for management decision-making
Experience with Autotask would be advantageous, although experience using another PSA, service-management or workflow platform is equally relevant.
Processes, SOPs and Continuous Improvement
- Own the operational Standard Operating Procedure framework
- Ensure important operational processes are documented
- Ensure procedures remain accurate and practical
- Monitor adherence to agreed processes
- Identify unnecessary complexity, duplication and operational friction
- Introduce measurable process improvements
- Conduct post-incident and post-project reviews where appropriate
- Identify root causes rather than repeatedly addressing symptoms
- Ensure improvement actions are documented, assigned and completed
- Encourage teams to identify opportunities for better ways of working
- Measure the impact of automation and operational improvement initiatives
We are looking for someone who does more than administer existing processes. You should be able to identify weaknesses and improve the way the organisation operates.
Client Onboarding and Offboarding
- Maintain clear and repeatable onboarding standards
- Ensure commercial handovers contain the information required for successful delivery
- Coordinate ownership and responsibilities during onboarding
- Monitor onboarding milestones and completion
- Maintain operational checklists and required documentation
- Ensure teams are ready to support new clients before services commence
- Maintain structured client offboarding processes
- Ensure responsibilities, documentation, systems access and handover requirements are completed correctly
- Identify recurring onboarding problems and implement improvements
Operational Performance and Reporting
You will be responsible for developing and maintaining clear operational reporting covering areas such as:
- SLA and service performance
- Backlog and queue health
- Workload
- Utilisation
- Capacity
- Onboarding progress
- Project delivery
- Blocked work
- Employee performance
- Client escalations
- Process adherence
- Operational cost
- Cost to serve
- Operational gross margin
- Service improvement actions
The purpose of operational reporting is not simply to produce statistics. You will be expected to use the information to identify risks, make decisions and improve performance.
Risk and Escalation
- Identify significant operational risks early
- Escalate material client, capacity, people, quality or profitability concerns
- Maintain clear ownership of unresolved operational issues
- Prevent important issues from becoming trapped between departments
- Coordinate corrective action when service delivery falls below expectations
- Work with governance and senior leadership where significant risk is identified
- Maintain visibility over the number, severity and age of unresolved escalations
Key Working Relationships
You will work closely with:
CEO
Providing operational performance reporting, escalating significant issues and discussing resource requirements, investment and strategic priorities.
Commercial Manager
Ensuring clean handover of new business, providing feedback on capacity and identifying operational considerations affecting new opportunities.
Privacy Practice Lead / Senior DPO
Coordinating workload and delivery while respecting specialist data protection and professional responsibilities.
Technical Lead / TAM
Coordinating technical resources, workload and service performance while allowing technical specialists to retain responsibility for technical judgement.
Business Systems & Performance Lead
Defining requirements for PSA workflows, dashboards, reporting, automation and process tooling.
Finance Controller / Finance Team
Monitoring cost, capacity, profitability, billing readiness and operational financial performance.
Head of Governance & Compliance
Supporting risk management, quality assurance, compliance matters and appropriate people escalations.
Required Experience
We are looking for someone with significant operational and people-management experience.
You should ideally have:
- At least three years' experience within operations, service delivery or a comparable management position
- Experience working within a multi-client B2B service environment
- Experience managing people and individual performance
- Experience managing managers or team leads would be advantageous
- Experience managing workload, resources and capacity
- Strong understanding of service delivery KPIs
- Experience managing operational processes and workflows
- Experience using PSA, CRM, service-management or workflow platforms
- Experience producing and using operational management information
- Evidence of having improved service delivery or operational performance
- Strong organisational and prioritisation skills
- Experience dealing with competing priorities and operational escalations
- Confidence challenging colleagues constructively when required
- Strong written and verbal communication
- Experience developing or improving documented processes and SOPs
Desirable Experience
Experience in one or more of the following would be particularly valuable:
- Managed IT services / MSP
- Professional services
- Consultancy
- Data protection or compliance services
- Cyber security
- Governance, risk and compliance
- Recurring-revenue businesses
- Service delivery management
- IT service management
- Autotask PSA
- CRM and workflow automation
- Project management
- Capacity planning
- Resource utilisation management
- Multi-business or multi-division operations
Direct IT, cyber security or data protection expertise is not essential.
You must, however, be comfortable managing teams containing specialists and understand the difference between managing operational delivery and overriding professional or technical judgement.
Qualifications and Professional Development
Formal qualifications are desirable but not essential.
Relevant qualifications could include:
- Business or management qualifications
- ITIL
- PRINCE2
- Agile
- Lean
- Six Sigma
- Project-management qualifications
- Service-management qualifications
- Formal people-management training
Relevant practical experience and evidence of successfully improving operational performance will be considered more important than qualifications alone.
Success Measures
Success in the role will be measured through areas including:
- SLA and service performance
- Backlog and queue health
- On-time client onboarding
- On-time project and service delivery
- Capacity forecasting accuracy
- Resource utilisation
- Workload balance
- Client satisfaction
- Operational causes of client churn
- Employee performance
- Employee engagement
- Absence management
- Process adherence
- Reduction in operational bottlenecks
- Benefits achieved through automation
- Cost-to-serve improvement
- Operational gross margin
- Number and age of unresolved escalations
- Quality and timeliness of management reporting
What We Offer
- A key management role across two growing businesses
- Direct access to the CEO and senior leadership team
- Genuine responsibility for operational performance
- The opportunity to shape how two businesses operate as they continue to scale
- A varied environment spanning IT, cyber security, compliance and data protection
- The opportunity to improve systems, processes and management structures rather than simply inherit them
- Support from experienced technical, compliance, commercial and governance specialists
- A professional and collaborative working environment
- Company pension
- Bonus
- Long-term progression as the businesses continue to grow
The Person
We are looking for someone who brings operational grip.
You should be comfortable walking into a busy environment, understanding what is happening, identifying where delivery is at risk and putting appropriate structure around it.
You will need to be organised without being bureaucratic and commercially aware without losing sight of service quality.
You should be capable of challenging people constructively, making priorities clear and ensuring agreed actions actually happen.
You will also need to be calm under pressure. Problems will arise involving clients, people, workload and competing priorities, and you should be capable of assessing them objectively, deciding what needs to happen and escalating appropriately.
You should naturally think in terms of:
Who owns this?
When will it be completed?
Do we have the capacity?
What is blocking it?
What is the risk?
What does the data tell us?
Why has this happened?
How do we prevent it happening again?
Above all, we are looking for someone who takes ownership and follows things through.
How To Apply
Please apply via Indeed with your CV and a short note outlining:
- Your experience managing operations or service delivery
- The size and type of teams you have previously managed
- Your experience managing workload, capacity and resources
- Examples of service or operational improvements you have introduced
- Your experience using PSA, CRM, service-management or workflow platforms
- Any experience you have within IT, professional services, compliance or another multi-client service environment
- Your availability and salary expectations
We are looking for someone capable of bringing structure, accountability and operational leadership to two growing businesses while helping us build a scalable operating model for the next stage of our development.
Benefits
Work Location
Hereford HR4 9AR.
Pay: £36,500.00-£48,000.00 per year
Benefits:
Work Location: In person
