Chief of Staff | Strategic Projects

The Opportunity

Orama is an Executive Search and advisory firm operating across the UK and US. We also act as a VC, investing in our customer base (and more broadly) via Orama Ventures. Tech has changed hugely in the last few years, and so have we. We are in the midst of a significant transformation. Our COO joined 15 months ago to drive wide-scale change across systems, workflows, positioning, and team development. There is no shortage of ideas or direction. What’s needed now is someone to make it all land — on time, in full, with nothing lost in transit. This role is fundamentally about programme ownership. You will take the COO's priorities and build the scaffolding around them: clear plans, named owners, tracked milestones, and a relentless focus on follow-through. You’ll operate across the ~40-person delivery org, keeping concurrent initiatives moving and surfacing problems before they become crises. If you’re someone who gets genuine satisfaction from seeing complex, multi-threaded work come together cleanly — and who wants to do that at the centre of a business actively reshaping itself — this is a rare opportunity.

What You’ll Actually Do

• Own programme and project delivery
• Build and maintain a clear view of all active COO-led initiatives — scope, owners, timelines, and status
• Translate strategic priorities into structured project plans with unambiguous accountability
• Run the rhythm of delivery: weekly check-ins, progress reviews, blockers resolved before they escalate
• Own the 'last mile' — the execution detail that separates a good idea from a real outcome
• Maintain programme documentation that is genuinely useful, not just comprehensive

Manage stakeholders and keep the organisation aligned

• Coordinate across teams and geographies to ensure workstreams stay connected and dependencies are managed
• Prepare crisp briefings, status updates, and decision documents for the COO and senior leadership
• Represent the COO in meetings, own follow-up actions, and ensure commitments are tracked and closed
• Build trusted working relationships with leaders across both UK and US operations

Improve how we run things

• Identify where processes, handoffs, or workflows are creating friction and drive practical improvements
• Support the design and rollout of new systems and operating models as the business evolves
• Help build the operating cadence — meeting structures, reporting rhythms, governance — that keeps a growing firm coordinated

Act as a thinking partner to the COO

• Be a sounding board for ideas in progress — ask the right questions, pressure-test assumptions, flag what’s missing
• Synthesise information from across the business to give the COO a sharper view of what’s happening on the ground
• Help prepare for key decisions by ensuring the right information is in the room at the right time

Who We’re Looking For

You probably have a few years’ experience — enough to have run complex programmes under pressure, not so much that you’re set in your ways. Your background might be in consulting, a PMO function, professional services operations, or a high-growth startup where you had to build delivery rigour from scratch. What matters more than sector is how you execute. You are:

• Structured without being rigid — you build plans that people actually use and update them when reality changes
• A natural closer — you chase, you follow up, you do not let things drift
• Comfortable with ambiguity — you can work from a half-formed brief and create clarity from it
• A clear communicator — status updates, risk flags, and decision documents that are actually readable
• Commercially aware — you understand what matters to a professional services business and why
• Discreet — you will operate in sensitive territory and you know what that requires

Formal project management qualifications are neither required nor disqualifying. Demonstrable delivery track record is.

Why This Role

• You will own real, visible programmes — not coordination tasks on someone else’s project
• You will work directly with a COO driving meaningful change across a business, with access and context most operators at this level don’t get
• The business is at an inflection point — what gets delivered in the next 18 months will define its next chapter
• You will be exposed to the full complexity of running a cross-Atlantic professional services firm
• For the right person, there is a credible path to broader operational leadership as the business grows

Practicalities

• Location: London
• Travel: some travel between UK and US should be expected
• Reports to: COO
• Salary: competitive, commensurate with experience