Director of Operations in Exeter

We’re building something big here at Embrace, powered by Pivotal, client operations that scale effortlessly, experiences that customers genuinely value, and a business that sets a new standard for what brilliant looks like in financial services. You will shape, deliver and grow the next chapter. You’re just as comfortable rolling up your sleeves and operating without a huge team, because your energy makes people want to follow you anyway. You get things done, you inspire clarity, and when something’s messy, you quietly turn it into something that works.

Maybe you’ve built processes from scratch, scaled service teams, transformed customer journeys, or simply spotted the gaps nobody else noticed and fixed them without being asked. You have single-handedly led the recruitment of advisors and created new onboarding experiences for advisors. Maybe you’ve held the big titles—but you’re still hungry to build something meaningful rather than maintain something average.

You see the operational friction, the customer pain points, the regulatory nuances and you instinctively know how to use Microsoft Power Platform to automate and performance visualisation to measure and improve. You are an operations leader who embeds an AI agent as part of every team.

We’re not big on committees, backlogs or endless sign-offs. We obsess about the experience of our clients, efficiency, accountability and doing the right thing, especially when it’s hard.

We don’t care what your last job title was. We care that you bring real operational experience, razor-sharp judgement, curiosity to learn new AI tools yourself and a bit of fire in your belly to use your skills for something good.

What you bring:

• Hands-on experience in leading financial services operations: mortgages, protection, wealth or any similarly regulated environment.
• The ability to lead teams without needing a big hierarchy.
• A track record of tech enabled operational efficiency using RPA, Microsoft Power Platform and AI agents.
• Demonstrates openness and a positive attitude to change and embraces new processes, tech, and ways of working when appropriate.
• A builder’s mindset: curious, pragmatic, decisive and unafraid to get hands-on.
• A love of clarity, turning complex services into a visualised step-by-step process and clear measures to make services continuously better.
• Hunger to create something meaningful, not just manage what already exists.
• Works well under pressure at a pace, has the ability to problem solve and remains focused during times of challenge and ambiguity.
• Collegiate Team Player: Thrives in collaborative environments, adds value to team dynamics, and consistently provides positive help and support to teamwork and aids team culture.

You’ll join a team chasing something bigger than “good enough.” You’ll have the freedom to design the future, the trust to deliver it, and the space to make a real difference to advisers, clients and colleagues across the UK. If you want to build excellence, make operations sing, and use your experience for something that matters in an agentic AI world, we’d love to get to know you.