Area Operations Manager in City of Westminster

About the job

As an Area Operations Manager, you'll play a vital role in ensuring the smooth and efficient delivery of our daily train service. Working at the heart of our operations, you'll collaborate with Control and Performance Teams, Train Crew, Station Staff, Signallers, and other key stakeholders to deliver the daily plan.

What you'll be doing

• Visible and Proactive Leadership: Represent your region at key locations, providing clear direction and ensuring all stakeholders understand their operational responsibilities.
• Performance Management: Monitor service groups under your remit, identify emerging issues, and implement proactive plans to protect and enhance train service delivery.
• Collaborative Operations: Work closely with Control, Fleet, Stations, and Network Rail to deliver the best possible real-time performance.
• On-the-Day Coordination: Act as a key liaison between Controllers, Station Teams, Crew Managers, and Signallers to manage service changes and maintain operational flow.
• Disruption Management: Support service recovery during disruption, following agreed contingency plans and working with Swindon Control to resolve local stock and crew challenges.

About you

You’ll need to be:

• Proven experience in railway operations, service delivery, or a similar real-time, high-pressure environment.
• Strong leadership and decision‑making skills, with the ability to influence and coordinate across multiple teams.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, with the confidence to represent your region at key operational locations.
• A proactive and solution‑focused mindset, with the ability to anticipate and manage disruption effectively.
• Good working knowledge of railway systems, including Control, Fleet, Stations, and Network Rail interfaces.
• Flexibility to work shifts and travel across the region as required.

As a minimum you'll need to have:

• A determination to put the customer first in decision making.
• A confident and decisive approach under pressure.
• A good knowledge of the GWR Fleet & Train Crew arrangements.
• An ability to collaborate cross‑functionally.
• A working knowledge of performance metrics.

The Reward

As well as a great team environment and comprehensive training, all GWR colleagues enjoy a range of benefits including defined benefit salary pension scheme, free rail travel across the GWR network for you and your family, company-sponsored health care plan, childcare vouchers and an employee assistance programme.

Working Pattern

This role involves working a rostered shift pattern that includes weekends, night shifts and Bank Holiday coverage.

Additional information

The role will be predominantly based at London Paddington, with the occasional requirement to attend other agreed locations.

For further information, please get in touch with Alison Hanscomb

alison.hanscomb@gwr.com

We all belong at GWR

We all belong at GWR.This is our vision for providing an inclusive environment for all our colleagues, ensuring all candidates have an equal opportunity to access meaningful employment.

We value our differences such as age, gender, LGBTQIA+, ethnicity, religion, and disability. We maintain a zero tolerance towards any form of prejudice towards our colleagues, customers, and future talent.

We celebrate and encourage diversity of thought, progressive ways of working and seeing all our colleagues grow and thrive.

We review all roles and job descriptions to ensure they are accessible and, where possible, we support and provide flexible working options; we recommend that you refer to each vacancy description for further details.

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