Senior Director - Operations & Strategic Execution

Fitch Solutions is currently seeking a Senior Director – Operations & Strategic Execution based out of our London office. Fitch Solutions is a leading provider of insights, data and analytics. It informs investment strategies, strengthens risk management capabilities and helps identify strategic opportunities. Its analysts, lawyers, journalists and economists offer in-depth views on credit markets/risk and individual credits, ESG, developed and emerging markets, and industry sectors. Fitch Solutions is part of Fitch Group, a global leader in financial information services with operations in over 30 countries.

This role is the senior right hand to the Head of BMI: a single owner who can run the execution machine, size the resources behind it, sharpen the decisions feeding into it, and act as a trusted proxy across the leadership team. It combines four disciplines that are usually fragmented — program management, resource and capacity planning, chief-of-staff coordination, and decision analytics — into one high-leverage seat.

Success means the Head of BMI spends less time chasing status and arithmetic, and more time on the decisions only they can make.

• Own the tracker. Run the strategic execution plan end to end — status discipline, dependencies, milestones, and owner accountability across all pillar buckets.
• Drive cadence. Prepare and run the standing forums (weekly 1:1, monthly/quarterly PMO review, Group updates, operating committee) with content, not summaries.
• Surface risk early. Flag stalled, slipping, or duplicated workstreams before they become escalations; maintain staleness and at-risk views by owner and pillar.
• Close the loop. Convert decisions into tracked actions with owners and dates, and chase them to completion.
• Size the work. Translate strategic commitments into the headcount, skills, and budget required to deliver them — and flag where commitments outrun capacity.
• Model scenarios. Build and maintain capacity models across product lines and shared functions; test the resourcing implications of reprioritisation, hiring, and reorganisation.
• Map demand to supply. Reconcile the demand implied by the PMO against the supply in the headcount file; quantify gaps, concentration risk, and thin teams carrying heavy commitments.
• Inform investment. Provide the resourcing case behind backfills, new hires, vendor spend, and build-vs-buy decisions.
• Be the proxy. Represent the business in forums and working groups; carry context in both directions so nothing falls between seams.
• Prep and follow through. Own meeting prep, briefing packs, and follow-ups for the leadership cadence; arrive with the read, the risks, and the asks.
• Unblock. Identify and clear cross-functional blockers; broker decisions and align owners without escalating everything upward.
• Dig into the numbers. Pull, clean, and interrogate operational, headcount, cost-centre, and revenue-by-product-line data to answer the question actually being asked.
• Apply variance and trend analysis. Default to variance analysis and trend identification — not point-in-time snapshots — so decisions rest on direction and magnitude, not anecdote.
• Frame the decision. Build the options, trade-offs, and first-principles case behind operating and investment calls; make the recommendation, with the assumptions exposed.
• Translate up and down. Reframe the same analysis for a Group-CEO glance, a leadership-team working session, or an analyst-level deep dive.

The execution plan has clean, trusted status — the BMI business and the Head of Operations do not need to chase it; at-risk items are surfaced and resolved before they escape escalation. A live capacity model links strategic commitments to headcount and budget, and is the reference for resourcing decisions. Leadership forums run on tight, decision-ready material; follow-ups close on time. Recurring business questions are answered with rigorous, variance-aware analysis fast enough to shape decisions rather than rationalise them. The Head of BMI has measurably more time on high-judgement work because this role absorbs the coordination and analytical load.

You May be a Good Fit if:

• 8+ years in operations, strategy, consulting, PMO, chief-of-staff, or corporate finance roles, ideally within financial services, data/analytics, or professional services.
• Demonstrated ownership of complex, multi-workstream programs with senior stakeholders.
• Strong quantitative and modelling skills — fluent in Excel; comfortable building capacity, headcount, and financial models from messy source data.
• Familiarity with BI/analytics tooling is an advantage.
• Track record of capacity/resource planning or FP&A-style analysis tied to business decisions.
• Experience operating as a trusted proxy to a senior leader, with discretion on sensitive matters.
• Excellent written communication — able to produce executive-grade briefs, board-ready material, and crisp recommendations.

Why Choose Fitch:

• Hybrid Work Environment: 3 days a week in office required based on your line of business and location.
• A Culture of Learning & Mobility: Dedicated trainings, leadership development and mentorship programs designed to ensure that your time at Fitch will be a continuous learning opportunity.
• Investing in Your Future: Retirement planning and tuition reimbursement programs that empower you to achieve your short and long-term goals.
• Promoting Health & Wellbeing: Comprehensive healthcare offerings that enable physical, mental, financial, social, and occupational wellbeing.
• Supportive Parenting Policies: Family-friendly policies, including a generous global parental leave plan, designed to help you balance career and family life effectively.
• Inclusive Work Environment: A collaborative workplace where all voices are valued, with Employee Resource Groups that unite and empower our colleagues around the globe.
• Dedication to Giving Back: Paid volunteer days, matched funding for donations and ample opportunities to volunteer in your community.

At Fitch, AI is embedded in how we work every day—supporting smarter decision-making, streamlining workflows, and enabling new ways to create value for our business and clients. Intelligent solutions are increasingly part of our day-to-day operations, helping teams work more efficiently and think differently as we continue to evolve. We’re looking for colleagues who are comfortable operating in an AI-enabled environment—or who are curious, adaptable, and eager to build their AI literacy over time. We value professionals who embrace technology as part of continuous learning and who are committed to using it thoughtfully to enhance how work gets done.

Fitch is committed to providing global securities markets with objective, timely, independent and forward-looking credit opinions. To protect Fitch’s credibility and reputation, our employees must take every precaution to avoid conflicts of interest or any appearance of a conflict of interest. Should you be successful in the recruitment process at Fitch Ratings you will be asked to declare any securities holdings and other potential conflicts prior to commencing employment. If you, or your immediate family, have any holdings that may conflict with your work responsibilities, you may be asked to divest yourself of them before beginning work. Fitch is proud to be an Equal Opportunity and Aff'd Pilot' Employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, protected veteran status, and other statuses protected by law.