Senior Operations Manager
On-siteLondon, England, United Kingdom
Job Summary
Lead day-to-day delivery across several concurrent engagements, ensuring each is resourced, on time, on budget, and to standard. Turn client requirements into clear delivery plans with named owners, milestones, and deliverables, while allocating specialist staff across competing priorities. Track progress and budgets, spotting risks early to resolve them, and develop governance processes that keep delivery consistent and efficient. Act as the senior point of contact for clients on status and issue resolution, run quality assurance, and capture lessons learned for future work. Line manage and develop the Operations team, coaching junior staff and working with the People team on recruitment and succession planning. Provide reliable forecasting and costing input to Commercial and Finance, support bids with delivery planning and pricing data, and coordinate suppliers and office logistics. Report to senior leadership on delivery, utilisation, and project status. This role requires UK Security Check clearance and involves occasional travel and exposure to sensitive operational content.
Required Qualifications
- Significant experience managing operations, project or programme delivery in intelligence, security, defence, risk, consulting or comparable professional services
- A track record of running multiple concurrent projects with responsibility for delivery, budgets, timelines and resourcing
- Strong planning, organisation and problem-solving, with sound decisions made under pressure and in ambiguity
- Commercial awareness, including project finances, forecasting and resource utilisation
- Proven people management, including performance management and developing teams
- Strong written and verbal communication, able to brief senior stakeholders and engage confidently with clients
- High discretion and sound judgement with sensitive information, and a solid grasp of operational risk, security and confidentiality
- Eligibility for UK Security Check (SC) clearance
- Right to work in the UK
- Five years' continuous UK residency
Desired Qualifications
- Experience designing and improving operational processes and governance
- Comfortable with project management and reporting tools
- Background in government, defence, military, law enforcement or the intelligence community
- Familiarity with intelligence production, investigations, due diligence or OSINT methods
- Experience supporting operations in challenging, austere or high-risk environments
- Familiarity with UAS (uncrewed aircraft systems) operations
- Familiarity with protective security operations
- Experience supporting business development and competitive bids
- A recognised project or programme qualification (PRINCE2, APM, Agile or equivalent)
- A second language
- Comfortable working in an environment with occasional exposure to extremist material and graphic or distressing online content
- Ability to manage occasional domestic and international travel, sometimes at short notice
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