Director of Operations

GARY CHAPLIN LTD; Manchester; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Gary Chaplin Ltd., a rapidly growing, technology-enabled property business in the UK, seeks an Operations Director to lead cross-functional transformation across Operations, Technology, Product, Commercial and Customer. The role requires hands-on leadership, deep process expertise and a drive to implement scalable systems that support rapid growth.

The successful candidate will build an operating model, champion automation and AI adoption, and partner with senior leadership to deliver measurable

Qualifications

• Significant senior operational leadership within a fast-growth SME or scale-up.
• Strong capability in building scalable operating models and evidence-based improvement.
• Commercial and analytical strength with data-driven decision making.
• Experience leading cross-functional transformation across Operations, Technology, Product and Customer.

Responsibilities

• Build the scalable operating model to support rapid growth with efficiency.
• Own process excellence, change and automation initiatives across the business.
• Lead data visibility via KPIs and MI to link performance to revenue and value.
• Develop managers and create governance to sustain growth without excessive headcount.

Skills

Senior leadership

Operational leadership

Process improvement

Data analysis

Automation & AI

Job description

This is an outstanding opportunity to join one of the UK’s fastest-growing technology-enabled property businesses at an important stage in its evolution.

The business has developed a market-leading proprietary platform which removes significant administrative complexity within the property sector, integrating with third-party systems and external service providers to automate processes that have historically been fragmented, time-consuming and highly manual. The proposition reduces administration, improves accuracy and transparency and creates commercial value from processes that would otherwise represent cost.

The model has delivered considerable growth. Today, the business employs over 50 people, has several thousand customers and is growing at approximately 50% year-on-year from an already eight-figure turnover base. Already established in its core market, it is now broadening into adjacent sectors, new consumer propositions and additional routes to market, many leveraging the same underlying operational platform.

The opportunity is therefore not simply to grow. It is to scale intelligently.

A critical element of this next phase is the recruitment of an Operations Director: an experienced, commercially-minded operational leader who can build the infrastructure, discipline and scalability required to ensure rapid growth converts into an increasingly efficient and valuable business.

This is considerably more than managing an Operations department. Sitting across Operations, Technology, Product, Commercial, Customer and Data, the successful appointee will become a senior voice within the leadership structure whilst remaining genuinely hands‑on, getting underneath the detail, challenging assumptions and turning better ideas into delivered outcomes.

They will combine strategic operating‑model thinking with a genuine “get stuck in” mentality.

Core Objectives

To build the scalable operational engine that enables continued rapid growth without corresponding increases in complexity, inefficiency or unnecessary headcount. A fundamental question will underpin the role: “Can we do this better, and could we scale it significantly tomorrow if we needed to?”

Where the answer is no, this person will understand why, quantify the opportunity, design a better approach and lead its implementation.

Key Responsibilities

Build the Scalable Operating Model

• Take a business‑wide view of the operating model, identifying where growth has historically been accommodated through additional resource rather than process redesign.
• Create repeatable, resilient ways of working capable of supporting rapid increases in customers, transactions and products without proportionate increases in headcount or cost, balancing appropriate structure with the entrepreneurial pace central to the company's success.
• Working with senior leadership, they will use operational KPIs and forecast demand to inform resource planning, balancing genuine recruitment requirements against opportunities created by process improvement, automation and AI.

Process Excellence & Change

• Create a culture where processes are continually questioned rather than simply repeated. Identify friction, duplication, bottlenecks and unnecessary manual intervention, establishing clear ownership and accountability and evidence‑led business cases for improvement.
• The constant questions will be: Why are we doing this? Is there a better way? If it still needs doing, what is the most efficient way?
• Most importantly, they will not simply identify opportunities. They will own the change and deliver the result.
• Work closely with Technology and Product to identify where automation can remove repetitive effort, improve quality, increase capacity and enhance customer or supplier outcomes. Champion the practical adoption of AI as an operational enabler rather than an end in itself.
• Deep technical capability is not required, but the successful candidate must be digitally progressive, naturally curious and enthusiastic about what emerging technology can do.

Data, Insight & Commercial Performance

• Create clear visibility over operational performance through meaningful KPIs and management information, using data to understand not simply whatis happening, but why, and connecting operational performance to revenue, margin, customer outcomes and enterprise value. The Operations Director must have the analytical and commercial confidence to operate as a genuine peer within a highly capable, data‑driven leadership team, bringing evidence‑based challenge and being comfortable both challenging and being challenged.

Operational Leadership

• The role will assume senior leadership responsibility for established Technical Operations and Customer Service functions, each with existing management capability. This is not a turnaround; it is about providing the experience, direction and challenge to take functioning teams and the wider operating model to the next level.
• The Director will develop existing managers, improve accountability and service quality and build the structure required for future growth. The objective is not to build an Operations empire, but the most effective and scalable operation possible. They will also help develop more structured approaches to operational learning and knowledge transfer, reducing dependency on senior or specialist resource and ensuring capability keeps pace with technological and process change.

Partners, New Products & Growth

• The business operates through a complex network of external commercial and service relationships and has significant plans for new products, adjacent markets and routes to market.
• The Operations Director will ensure external relationships and processes remain efficient and scalable, while working across Product, Technology and Commercial teams to ensure new propositions are designed for scale from the outset. They will act as an integrator across the wider business, bringing clarity to priorities, ownership and delivery without unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Successful innovation must convert into commercially scalable delivery, rather than increased operational complexity.

What Success Looks Like

• During the first 12–18 months the Operations Director should have established a clear, evidence‑led understanding of the end‑to‑end operating model and a prioritised improvement roadmap, delivering measurable early wins, clearer ownership and accountability, improved performance visibility and reduced unnecessary manual processing.
• Most importantly, automation, technology and better operating discipline should be increasing capacity without equivalent headcount growth, leaving the business materially better equipped to absorb continued rapid growth and new product launches through better process and technology rather than simply more people.

Candidate Profile

The strongest candidates will already have been through the journey this business is now undertaking: operating within a fast‑growth technology‑enabled organisation at a similar scale and helping take it materially further. They will understand what begins to strain as an already high‑growth, 50‑person entrepreneurial organisation becomes substantially larger, and know how to put the right structures in place before those problems arrive.

Suitable backgrounds could include SaaS, PropTech, FinTech, EnergyTech, payments, utilities, marketplaces or other high‑volume technology‑enabled service businesses. Operating complexity and demonstrable experience of scaling are considerably more important than sector labels.

Candidates should demonstrate:

• Significant senior operational leadership within a fast‑growth SME or scale‑up, with evidence of scaling an organisation through rapid growth;
• Strong process improvement, change‑management and operational transformation capability;
• Commercial and analytical strength, using data to support decisions and connect operational improvement to business performance;
• Experience using automation and technology to improve productivity and scalability;
• Ability to work effectively across Operations, Technology, Product, Commercial and Customer functions; and
• Confidence operating within a senior leadership team, personally owning change from identification through to measurable delivery.

Experience of AI‑enabled operational improvement would be attractive, but is not essential. Far more important is curiosity, willingness to experiment and a belief that AI and emerging technology represent an opportunity to create better businesses.

Personal Attributes

The person and chemistry fit are critical. This is an entrepreneurial, ambitious, fast‑moving and commercially‑driven culture where people make decisions, take responsibility and get things done.

The successful individual will therefore be naturally curious, highly accountable, hands‑on, commercially minded, data‑confident and assertive without ego. They will be comfortable with ambiguity, excited by technology, pragmatic rather than theoretical and capable of moving at pace without sacrificing thought or discipline. They will bring opinions rather than simply agreement and be comfortable challenging senior colleagues where appropriate, while being equally comfortable having their own thinking challenged.

Low ego. High accountability. High impact.

Why This Role?

This is the opportunity to join an established, successful technology business rather than an unproven start‑up; enter during a period of exceptional growth; work directly with a highly entrepreneurial senior leadership team; help shape the deployment of automation and AI; support expansion into new markets and products; and build the operational platform required for the next phase of growth.

This business is not recruiting somebody simply to manage today’s operation. It is recruiting somebody capable of helping design tomorrow’s business.