Operations Coordinator

Novolabs; Canterbury; On-site; NZD 50,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

NovoLabs in Palmerston North is seeking an operations Coordinator to own ordering, stock, and freight from purchase order to shipment. You will ensure quality control records are complete and coordinate schedules for trade shows across NZ, Australia, Europe, and the United States with occasional travel.

You will report to the CEO and work with production, sales, R&D, and executives. This role demands several years in operations and a proactive, self-directed approach.

Qualifications

• Several years of operations experience.
• Experience managing purchasing, stock and freight.
• Ability to maintain records and ensure traceability.

Responsibilities

• Own ordering, stock and freight from PO to crate leaving the workshop.
• Close out quality control files on each build and shipment.
• Coordinate trade shows across NZ, Australia, Europe and the US and travel with the team.

Skills

Operations management

Stock control

Vendor coordination

Purchase orders

Tools

Xero

Job description

Jora New Zealand will close on 9th September 2026. Thank you for being with us, we are cheering you on as you continue your career journey.

Own the ordering, stock and freight behind our rapidly expanding deep tech startup, from purchase order to the crate leaving the workshop

Close out the quality control file on every build and shipment, so nobody's commissioning date slips because a record is missing

Run our trade shows across New Zealand, Australia, Europe and the United States, with the chance to travel and work the stand alongside the team

About the title. You will own this work, not assist someone else with it. Coordinator is the level we are hiring at, not the ceiling. Come with several years of operations behind you and we will set the title to match what you actually run.

Overview

• Own the ordering, stock and freight behind our rapidly expanding deep tech startup, from purchase order to the crate leaving the workshop

• Close out the quality control file on every build and shipment, so nobody's commissioning date slips because a record is missing

• Run our trade shows across New Zealand, Australia, Europe and the United States, with the chance to travel and work the stand alongside the team

About the title. You will own this work, not assist someone else with it. Coordinator is the level we are hiring at, not the ceiling. Come with several years of operations behind you and we will set the title to match what you actually run.

Is this the right role for you?

Before reading any further, this is not a business as usual role. NovoLabs is one of the most highly awarded tech startups in New Zealand. If you want to be part of New Zealand's next international success story this is one of the few openly advertised roles we have listed. If you are up for a challenge we want to hear from you.

What we make

Ultraviolet light kills pathogens in liquid, but only where the light reaches, so cloudy or coloured liquid has always been treated with costly alternatives or not treated at all. Our patented Supercritical UV disinfection system reaches it. That is a niche the multi-billion dollar incumbents have not cracked, and one we intend to own globally.

Our systems run at municipal, industrial, food and agri-processing sites in New Zealand and overseas. The operational work across the company has outgrown the people currently absorbing it around their other duties. That is why this role exists. Your job is to keep that machinery moving: equipment gets built, documented, shipped, installed and supported, and nothing falls through the cracks between those steps.

What a normal week looks like

You raise purchase orders and chase the suppliers who have gone quiet. A crate of components lands, so you check it against the packing list and update the stock counts. A datasheet arrives for a part you have never heard of. You are not designing it and you do not need to know what it does, but you do need to work out whether the part number on the quote is the one we asked for. A system is close to shipping, so you go through its quality control records and find the sheet nobody signed. You bring the project tracker back in line with what is actually happening, because three jobs have moved this week and nobody has said so.

An enquiry comes in from a plant manager who has found us online, so you get them the right information and draft a proposal off our template for our client team to finish. A customer needs a service visit, so you find a week that suits both them and whoever is travelling to site, and book the trip. Then you lock in the stand, freight and flights for the next trade show, along with the travel for whoever is out seeing customers.

Who you work with

You report to our CEO, Matthew Sells, but you work directly with every team here: production, sales and marketing, research and development, and the executive team. Outside the company you deal with suppliers, freight forwarders, insurers and event organisers.

How we work

We are small, so some of that week is not written down yet. That does not mean there is no system. Purchasing runs through Xero, quality records follow a set format, and the supplier and freight relationships are established. It means you will regularly hit something the procedure does not cover.

We need your judgement. Have a go first, read around it, form a view, then bring your thinking with the question. Come to us with the price, the comparisons worth looking at, and why this is the option we should take. Do that well and your potential for career progression is unlimited as we scale.

Nobody here arrived knowing this technology. We will show you the parts of it you need, and you will pick up plenty of it just by being around the builds.

Who does well here

You do not need a current operations title. What matters is how you handle something you have not seen before. If you have run a busy venue, a retail floor, a clinic, a workshop, a farm or a small business, you have already done versions of most of this. Ordering, stock, suppliers, records, deadlines, keeping track of who is doing what, and sorting things out when they go wrong.

People progress rapidly here when they:

• Keep multiple open threads moving and know which one needs attention before it slips

• Keep records other people can trust without checking them, and hit a date set by someone outside the company

• Write clear emails that a supplier, a technician and a conference organiser all understand first time

• Treat commercial and customer information as confidential without being told to

If you want a defined lane and a checklist, this is not that job. The same is true if unfamiliar technical material makes you want to forward it to someone else.

What you get out of it

If you want to progress your career rapidly, this is the company for it. You have to be up for the ride, and if you are, we are one of the few businesses where you can change the entire trajectory of your professional future.

We can back that up. The Prime Minister visited our facility this year, and we have had over a dozen ambassadors come to learn what we can do that no-one else can. NovoLabs is going global, and when a company grows fast, the people in it get pulled up with it. There is an exciting journey ahead for the right candidate.

Practical details

• Pay: Set by what you bring, not by how closely your last job title matched this one.

• Travel: In a typical year we do two shows in New Zealand, five in Australia, one in Europe and one in the United States. There is real scope to join the team at these events if desired once you are settled in.

• Location: NovoLabs HQ, 7/9 Noel Rodgers Place, Palmerston North

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