Head of Operations

Pathfinders Consulting Pty Ltd; Cape Town; Hybrid; ZAR 1,200,000 - 2,100,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model (Cape Town)

Leadership table opportunity

Job summary

Pathfinders Consulting Pty Ltd, a boutique energy economics consultancy in South Africa, is seeking a Head of Operations in Cape Town. You will shape the firm’s operational engine, lead talent systems, and drive a high-performance delivery culture in a rapidly growing environment.

You will report to the Managing Director and progressively take day-to-day people management, coordination and problem solving, while guiding the transition to an AI-enabled operating model.

Qualifications

• Extensive leadership experience in boutique strategy/energy advisory.
• Strong ability to align people, process and performance.
• Proven track record of growing and shaping professional services teams.
• Experience implementing PMO and delivery discipline in a services firm.

Responsibilities

• Own the organisational conditions enabling high-quality work.
• Lead people management, coordination and operational problem-solving.
• Define and drive the talent system from planning to succession.
• Establish portfolio visibility, resource planning and delivery metrics.
• Oversee CRM, proposals, pricing and client commitments.

Skills

Leadership

Strategic thinking

People management

Change management

Commercial judgement

Communication

Education

MBA or equivalent

Bachelor's degree

Job description

Exceptional expert work needs an exceptional organisation behind it. This role builds that organisation.

Our Client, a respected boutique energy economics consultancy and think tank at the centre of South Africa's power sector transition, is looking for a Head of Operations to build its organisational engine. The firm publishes a subscription market intelligence product built on its own proprietary modelling suite, advises investors, developers, banks and large energy users, and produces independent research that shapes national energy policy. Demand is consistently strong and the team is growing significantly. This role is central to the next chapter: leading the shift from a founder-coordinated team to a managed firm that delivers exceptional work reliably at scale, as the Managing Director's organisational counterpart.

Who you are

An experienced operational leader who combines highly structured thinking with high relational intelligence. You will have a minimum of 10 years' experience in boutique strategy or economic consulting, management consulting, professional services, development or climate and energy advisory, or a policy or research organisation, in a role such as Senior Manager, Engagement Manager, Practice Manager, Chief of Staff, Portfolio or Programme Director, Head of Consulting Operations, or COO of a small professional services firm.

The Role

The technical leads own the intellectual quality of the firm's work. This role owns the organisational conditions that allow that work to happen: the people system, the delivery discipline, the commercial machinery and the firm's operating rhythm, so that scarce expert time goes to judgement, not coordination. Reporting to and working alongside the Managing Director, you will progressively take day-to-day people management, coordination and operational problem-solving off the MD's desk, and turn strategic choices into an operating organisation. As the firm becomes AI-native, the Head of AI and Technology will architect what is possible, and you will own how the organisation gets there: the change management process, end to end.

People, talent and organisation: architect the talent system across the full cycle, from workforce planning and recruitment through performance, development and succession, including direct line management of the analyst pool and building management capability across the firm.

Delivery and portfolio: establish the project management office discipline of a high-end professional firm, including portfolio visibility, resource planning, milestones and risks, and the ability to answer at any moment what has been committed to, who is doing it, where capacity is tight and what new work can responsibly be taken on.

Commercial operations: orchestrate the pipeline, CRM, proposal, pricing and follow-through disciplines that convert strong demand into sound commitments, while senior leaders continue to originate and close relationships.

Firm operations and systems: direct the firm's operating rhythm, processes, systems and management reporting, the connective tissue of a well-run firm.

The AI transition: own the change management process of the firm's evolution into a hybrid human and AI organisation, co-designing the transition with the technology lead and technical heads, then sequencing and pacing it, redesigning workflows and roles, building capability, driving adoption and protecting delivery while the firm changes.

Requirements

• An exceptional organiser and systems thinker: you see dependencies, bottlenecks and future consequences, and you allocate ownership.
• A warm but firm people leader: you genuinely enjoy growing capable people, and expertly hold both developmental and difficult conversations.
• A strong integrator with commercial judgement: you naturally connect people, projects, pipeline, capacity and money, and understand a firm that is both mission-driven and commercially successful.
• A leader of change: you have successfully taken an organisation and its people through real change in how it works, including new systems and new ways of working.
• Calm, decisive and comfortable with ambiguity: you build structure where little exists, know what to elevate and what to simply sort out, and do not transmit anxiety when many things are urgent at once.
• A credible communicator: polished enough for funders, clients and senior stakeholders, yet highly relational.
• Low ego, high authority: you are comfortable leading bright, independent experts without needing to be the smartest technical person in the room.
• You need not be an energy economist, but you will be intellectually strong enough to understand the work, ask sharp questions and rapidly grasp how the firm creates value.

Benefits

• Our Client offers a seat at the leadership table of a high-calibre firm doing consequential work in South Africa's energy transition, and the mandate to rebuild its organisational engine. This is an opportunity to shape how a modern, AI-native professional firm is run, to work with some of the sharpest minds in the sector, and to see your decisions matter on a national scale.
• The position is based in Cape Town with hybrid flexibility.