We are seeking an Operations Director - Chennai to ensure our newly created office in Chennai (approx. 120 colleagues by September 2025, with further growth plans) aligns with company’s vision, values and strategic objectives, and builds an employee experience and proposition that shines above our competitors. We have an ambitious product roadmap over the next 3 years and the Chennai centre will be critical in ensuring on-time roadmap delivery, to the highest commercial standards.
The position is one of high visibility and high impact and will report to the COO.
This role is likely to require full time working in the office, with a potential move to hybrid as a normal pattern of work settles.
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Key Responsibilities
- A Senior Leader: Presenting the face of the Chennai office and liaising with the UK and SG management teams to ensure high performance and alignment
- Strategic Planning and Execution: Developing and implementing operational policies and procedures to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.
- Vendor and Stakeholder Management: Managing relationships with service providers and internal stakeholders to ensure service delivery aligns with contractual commitments and organizational goals.
- Compliance and Risk Management: Ensuring adherence to relevant regulations, safety standards, and company policies, while mitigating strategic, regulatory, operational, contractual, and reputational risks.
- Financial Oversight: Managing budgets, forecasts, and financial resources to ensure cost-effectiveness and financial performance.
- Team Leadership: Leading and developing a diverse team, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and high performance. Expectation of being able to manage the complexities of matrix teams and agile product delivery.
- The Operations Director will have dotted line management for each of the key leads onsite - Tech, Data, Finance, HR, IT, etc.
- At various times through set-up and scale-up some of these lines may become direct line management (to expedite certain phases of growth) for a period.
- The Operations Director will be the Country Director (for India registration purposes) and will be the site lead responsible for the building, facilities, infrastructure and all the people onsite.
What we are looking for:
Essential
- At least 7 years’ experience in operational or general management within a B2B business (SAAS preferred).
- The Operations Director must have the ability to build a strong and cohesive local leadership team in a global company, especially with middle-management layers that have a dotted line into that leader, and other direct lines globally (successful matrix management experience).
- The background of the Operations Director should include having worked in a tech company or related data/IT environment given the software, data and IT nature of the business, but they will need to be a people-person.
- Proven experience of having driven set-up or rapid growth of a tech operation, who will understand scaling/start-up challenges, and preferably set up of a function with at least 50 colleagues
- The Operations Director will work very closely with the HR manager from day one (as a team) to drive, embed and champion vision, values and behaviours, and ways of working
- The various tech/data and support function leads will all have other direct line management links to global leaders, however the Operations Director will have responsibility for performance management, mentoring, career progression, etc., in Chennai.
- Experience of working for an international company
- Financial acumen and experience of managing budgets
Desirable
- Maritime Industry experience
- Previous experience working in a PE-backed business