Head of Hardware Strategy & Operations

Want to deliver tech with purpose, with people who care?

Join us in our mission to create solutions that help keep children safe online.

Who we are?

Headquartered in Perth, Australia, Qoria is an ASX listed global leader in child digital safety technology and services. We are a purpose driven business, operating under the ‘Linewize’ brand in North America and Asia Pacific, under the ‘Smoothwall’ brand in the UK, and under the ‘Qoria’ brand in EMEA. Our solutions are utilized by schools, school districts and their parental communities to protect children from seeing harmful content online, to identify children at risk based on their digital behaviors and to ensure teachers maintain focus and safe learning in the digital classroom. 27k schools and 6 million parents depend on our solutions to keep 22 million children safe in 180 countries around the world.

What’s the opportunity?

The Head of Hardware Strategy & Operations is a key leader responsible for defining and executing the strategic direction of our hardware supply chain and product operations. This role requires a leader who can shape and influence cross-functional initiatives, drive continuous improvement, and ensure our hardware meets the highest standards of quality and performance.

Residing within our P&E product organisation, the ideal candidate will work with external suppliers and internal colleagues across product, engineering, finance, sales, deployment, customer success and support to ensure that a quality hardware product is built, delivered and operated for our customers.

Here’s how you’ll do it:

Strategic Ownership

• Help define, develop and execute a strategic roadmap for hardware operations covering not only the choice and supply of hardware, but also driving the operating models that our teams use to ensure we deliver cost-effective, performant solutions to customers.

• Develop and maintain strategic reporting and OKRs for hardware, providing insights to executive leadership and making data-driven recommendations for improvement.

Internal Stakeholder Management

• Act as a senior leader in the product organisation, influencing cross-functional stakeholders in product, engineering, finance, sales, deployment, customer success and support to align on your strategy, adapt it continually based on their needs & feedback, and ensure their understanding and compliance with ways of working.

Change Management

• Drive initiatives to implement and improve standards & processes, communicate and ensure these are understood by stakeholders, and ensure their compliance with these standards & processes.

• Collaborate with finance and sales teams to develop and refine pricing and packaging strategies, ensuring alignment with market trends and customer needs.

Supplier Management

• Build and maintain strong relationships with hardware manufacturers and integrators.

• In conjunction with finance colleagues negotiate contracts, terms and pricing.

• Evaluate new and existing suppliers based on ability to execute, quality, reliability and lead times.

• Enhance strategic partnerships with our hardware suppliers and streamline supply chain operations to ensure optimal product availability and cost-efficiency.

Forecasting & Inventory Management

• Establish a robust forecasting process in collaboration with stakeholders using data to enhance accuracy and eliminate overspend and undersupply.

• Ensure inventory and/or on-demand supply ability is sufficient to meet customer needs.

• Collaborate with the finance team to align ordering strategy with company goals.

Bill of Materials Management

• Own and control detailed BOMs for hardware products, and ensure accurate record keeping of which BOMs are in use by each customer.

• Work with engineering teams to validate and update BOMs as they need to evolve.

• Monitor supplier cost of BOMs and work with finance and sales colleagues to ensure that these costs are in line with required margins from HaaS.

Performance Testing & Quality Assurance

• Manage the evaluation of new and changing models to ensure that they meet required objectives – including the testing of performance, compatibility and real-world environments.

• Spearhead the evaluation and integration of new hardware models and evolving technologies to consistently elevate performance, compatibility, and real-world functionality.

• Own the internal certification and approval process for all hardware models and their specifications.

• Act as an escalation point for the support and deployment team for issues relating to hardware specification and platform.

Operational Efficiency

• Drive a culture of continuous improvement, seeking opportunities to reduce cost, complexity and lead times.

• Collaborate with support colleagues to understand and minimise RMAs, and with deployment colleagues to optimise the installation and upgrade processes for hardware.

What you’ll bring:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computing, Engineering, Business, related fields or relevant experience.

• 5+ years in product management, hardware operations, hardware support or deployment.

• Hands-on experience managing server and networking hardware, ideally in a data centre environment.

• Experience with enterprise networking equipment – including routing, switching, load balancing, firewall and filtering in 10 Gbps+ environments.

• Ideally experience working in the education sector and understanding of different education customer types across UK and US.

• Excellent analytic and data management skills.

• Demonstrated ability to lead strategic initiatives and drive change, ideally in hardware operations.

What you’ll have:

• Proven ability to lead change, influence stakeholders at all levels, and align cross-functional teams.

• Have a deep understanding of off-the-shelf and bespoke server-grade hardware.

• Be knowledgeable and passionate about computer hardware, staying up to date with the latest innovations and technologies.

• Be process oriented and able to break down problems and drive large complex programs.

• Possess leadership and influencing skills.

• Be adaptable and thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.

• Demonstrate excellent stakeholder management skills.

• Have a high emotional intelligence to work cross-functionally with leaders.

Why choose Smoothwall by Qoria:

In this role, you can expect:

• Employee Share Scheme.

• Tech Allowance.

• Learning Allowance.

• …. and much more.

More importantly, you’ll:

• Deliver tech with purpose…

Your work truly matters. Your skills, knowledge and ideas will all help children stay safe online. It feels good to do good.

• With people who care…

Our people are amazing! They’re also amazingly supportive. We all take ownership of our work, end to end. And at the same time, we really care about growing and winning together.

• Through work that you love…

You’ll get to work on technology and challenges for a global customer base. You’ll be exposed to modern technologies and processes, in a fast-paced and supportive learning environment.

• And a career that you own…

This role offers so many opportunities to expand your skills and grow your career. Step up and take ownership to make things happen, & you’ll carve out an incredible career.

Sound like you? We’d love to hear from you.

Please submit your application if you would like to be considered for this opportunity.

At this stage we are only accepting applications from those with full working rights and living in the UK.

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