Chief Operating Officer

Miramar Global Executive Search; Reading; On-site; GBP 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Miramar Global Executive Search seeks a Group Chief Operating Officer for a PE-backed international group in high-performance engineering and manufacturing. The role oversees manufacturing, site operations, supply chain, quality, safety and planning across UK, Europe, US and Asia.

We seek a decisive operator with multi-site leadership, strong lean/TPS practice and a track record of delivering margin, throughput, and delivery improvements while integrating a diverse group of specialist businesses.

Qualifications

• Extensive executive manufacturing and operational leadership experience.
• Multi-site, multi-country leadership across dispersed plants.
• Deep knowledge of lean manufacturing and Toyota Production System.

Responsibilities

• Own manufacturing and site operations, supply chain and planning across international sites.
• Establish and embed an operating model that scales across the group.
• Drive throughput, on-time delivery, and cost efficiency while improving quality.
• Consolidate procurement, rationalise suppliers and optimise make-versus-buy decisions.
• Lead significant organisational change with a practical, results-driven approach.

Skills

Executive leadership

Multi-site operations

Lean manufacturing

Supply chain management

Procurement

Change management

Budgeting / P&L

Aerospace/defence quality

Private-equity experience

Job description

Berkshire, UK preferred | Significant international travel | PE-Backed

We are seeking an exceptional, hands-on Group Chief Operating Officer to join a private equity-backed international group specialising in high-performance engineering, advanced manufacturing and integrated propulsion technologies.

The group brings together several specialist engineering and manufacturing businesses operating across the UK, continental Europe, the US and Asia. It designs, engineers and manufactures highly sophisticated systems and components for demanding applications across sectors including high-performance automotive and motorsport, aerospace, defence, marine, commercial vehicle and specialist industrial markets.

This is a newly shaped executive role with a clear mandate: build a predictable, disciplined and high-performing industrial operation across the group.

The opportunity

Reporting to the Group CEO, the COO will take functional ownership of manufacturing and site operations, supply chain and procurement, quality and accreditation, health and safety, and central planning across the group's international operations.

The immediate priority will be the group's largest and most operationally complex UK manufacturing business. From there, the successful candidate will establish and embed an operating model that can be applied across the wider industrial network.

We are seeking a true operator who is will be highly present in the manufacturing sites, remain close to the detail and be accountable for delivery.

Key priorities will include:

• Establishing rigorous planning and sales & operations execution across the group, creating a production plan that factories can reliably deliver.
• Restoring and sustaining strong on-time delivery and accelerating conversion of the existing order book.
• Driving manufacturing performance through measures including throughput, takt time, right-first-time performance, delivery performance, utilisation, OEE and operational efficiency.
• Bringing operations, procurement, supply chain and planning together as one integrated operating system.
• Building a coordinated group procurement strategy, consolidating suppliers and spend and improving make-versus-buy decisions.
• Reducing scrap, rework and the cost of poor quality while embedding practical continuous improvement.
• Optimising capacity and manufacturing capability across the international site network.
• Establishing consistent operational standards while respecting and harnessing the deep technical expertise already within the businesses.
• Creating the forward industrial plan for capacity, footprint, automation and capital investment.

The person

We are looking for a proven senior manufacturing leader with substantial experience in complex, high-mix, low-volume industrial environments.

You are likely to have built your operational foundations in a highly disciplined manufacturing organisation - potentially automotive, powertrain, precision engineering, rotating machinery or an adjacent sector - and subsequently demonstrated that you can apply those disciplines in a smaller, more complex environment where systems and processes need to be built rather than simply inherited.

You will bring:

• Significant executive-level manufacturing and operational leadership experience, including complex component manufacture and assembly.
• Proven multi-site and multi-country leadership experience, with the ability to run geographically dispersed plants as one industrial system.
• Deep practical understanding of lean manufacturing and Toyota Production System principles.
• A track record of improving planning, throughput, quality, delivery and operational efficiency in demanding manufacturing environments.
• Evidence of personally leading delivery or operational recovery – not simply sponsoring transformation programmes.
• Strong procurement and supply-chain experience, including supplier consolidation, make-versus-buy decisions and measurable cost improvement.
• Experience of leading significant organisational and operational change within established teams, including the confidence to challenge ingrained ways of working.
• Strong financial and commercial judgement, with an ability to connect operational decisions to margin, working capital and cash.
• Ideally, experience of aerospace and defence quality and export-control environments.
• Private-equity experience, or clear evidence of thriving within a similarly fast-paced, highly accountable and performance-oriented ownership environment.

Leadership style

We are looking for a decisive, resilient and highly practical operator who is prepared to make difficult operational calls and hold teams accountable for execution.

At the same time, this person must be low-ego and collaborative. The COO will operate as part of an executive collective, working closely with the Group CEO, business leaders and wider executive team. They must be comfortable challenging constructively and making their position clear, while supporting agreed group strategy rather than pursuing an independent agenda.

This role will particularly suit someone who gets their energy from making factories work better: spending time with teams, understanding constraints, solving problems, establishing operating discipline and seeing the resulting improvement in delivery, quality, productivity and margin.

Location and travel

Frequent on-site presence is fundamental to the role. The successful candidate should expect to spend substantial time at the principal UK manufacturing operation, alongside regular travel to other group sites in the UK and internationally.

This is not a predominantly remote executive position.

The proposition

This is an opportunity to play a defining role in the next stage of a technically sophisticated international industrial group: bringing together successful specialist businesses into an increasingly integrated, predictable and scalable operating platform.

The remuneration structure reflects the private-equity environment, combining a competitive executive salary and performance-related bonus with a significant opportunity for long-term wealth creation through value participation. Candidates should therefore be motivated by building value and sharing in the longer-term outcome rather than maximising guaranteed short-term compensation or executive benefits.