Director of Operations Shared Services

Key Responsibilities

• Establish and lead a centralised operational services function that supports COO teams across multiple functions, delivering scalable, efficient, and high-impact solutions.
• Define and implement the global vs local service delivery strategy, ensuring the right balance to drive consistency, agility, and operational excellence.
• Own the channel/ contact strategy and operational business architecture, leveraging technology and tooling to optimise operational delivery and enhance customer outcomes.
• Lead the development of capability and knowledge across the COO, through a centralised training and competency framework, best practice sharing, and a robust knowledge management strategy.
• Drive strategic demand forecasting, capacity planning, and resource allocation, ensuring alignment with financial budget controls and long-term business goals.
• Direct the Acceptance into Service process for new products and propositions, ensuring operational readiness, sustainability, and seamless delivery.
• Develop and govern COO-wide performance metrics and MI, defining and measuring what ‘good’ looks like to enable insight-driven decision making.
• Centralise the COO Change Framework and strategy execution, driving a culture of continuous improvement, structured change enablement, and cohesive delivery of strategic priorities.
• Champion engagement, recognition, and team development initiatives, while also coordinating business-wide and colleague communications to drive connection, alignment, and a shared sense of purpose.

Qualification & Requirements

Behaviours & Competencies:

• Leadership and Coaching
• Change Management
• Drive for Operational Excellence
• Strategic Thinking
• Relationship Building

Skills & Experience:

• Demonstrable experience of working within an in house retail operation (essential)
• Consultancy operational experience (desirable)
• Proven experience in leading and managing highly motivated successful teams, including shared service environments
• Process Excellence – understanding of operational processes and practices, including finance, technology, risk management and procurement.
• Strong communication, influencing and relationship management skills enabling effective interaction with key stakeholders
• Establish priorities and create schedules for key activities

Benefits

• 25 days holiday (plus take your public holiday allowance whenever works best for you)
• An extra day’s holiday for your birthday
• Annual leave is increased with length of service, and you can choose to buy or sell up to five extra days off
• 16 hours paid volunteering time a year
• Salary sacrifice, company enhanced pension scheme
• Life insurance at 4x your salary & group income protection
• Private Medical Insurance with VitalityHealth including mental health support and cancer care. Partner benefits include discounts with Waitrose, Mr&Mrs Smith and Peloton
• Generous family-friendly policies
• Incentives refer a friend scheme
• Perkbox membership giving access to retail discounts, a wellness platform for physical and mental health, and weekly free and boosted perks
• Access to initiatives like Cycle to Work, Salary Sacrificed Gym partnerships and Electric Vehicle (EV) leasing