General Manager in Bristol

Location: United Kingdom — home-based, with regular travel to our branches in Northern Ireland and the South of England

Compensation: £130,000 to £150,000 base, depending on experience, plus Ownership Equity (Management Incentive Units – 100% performance-based)

Overview

Scientific Safety Alliance, or SSA, exists to Accelerate Science. Delightfully. We are building the leading integrated safety partner for scientific and healthcare organizations. We deliver mission-critical, recurring services — testing, inspection, certification, calibration, and maintenance of critical environments and equipment — to more than 15,000 customers, including Pfizer, Boston Scientific and Lilly.

What makes SSA special? SSA is growing at an exceptional rate and has been ranked among the top 500 fastest-growing private companies in America by Inc. 500. In a little over three years we have acquired 25 companies. Two of them are in the United Kingdom, two more are under letter of intent, and the UK is our next geography of expansion. Our people are highly motivated problem solvers who take pride in precision, responsiveness and integrity. We do more than maintain equipment; we help enable the discoveries that shape modern medicine and science.

The Opportunity: General Manager, UK & Ireland

We are looking for a hands-on, results-driven operator to lead our UK and Ireland businesses. This is not a corporate oversight role. You will take a small number of recently acquired companies — real businesses with real customers, built by their founders — and make each of them better. You will put proper measurement in place within the first 30 days of each acquisition, protect every customer relationship through the transition, improve each branch’s P&L on its own merits, and build a team capable of running each site independently.

You will also work closely with the founders who sold us their businesses, many of whom stay on through a transition period. Keeping their knowledge, their customer relationships and their people intact — while introducing the discipline that lets the business scale.

Your branches own their own P&L and their own local decisions. Your job is to set the standard, coach the people who deliver it, and be on site often enough to know whether it is real. You will report to SSA’s Co-founder and COO, and work closely with Sales, Finance, Corporate Development, Integration and Field Operations teams as we continue to expand across Ireland, the UK and Europe.

Expect to spend 50% or more of your time on the road at the outset, reducing to around 25% as integration settles.

How You Will Make an Impact

• Install KPIs Fast: Have safety, quality, on-time delivery, first-time-right, technician utilisation and lead time measured daily at every branch within 30 days of close, on common definitions across the region.
• Protect Every Customer: Keep 100% of customers through each transition.
• Own the P&L, Branch by Branch: Hold each business at or above its pre-acquisition margin, then improve it.
• Transition Former Owners Well: Partner with founders through their transition — capture what they know, keep their customer relationships whole, and earn the trust of the team they built.
• Upgrade the Team: Build a capable lead and a successor-ready deputy at every branch. Coach people to the standard, and act decisively when someone will not get there.
• Improve the Operation: Deliver documented process improvements at every branch, each with a before-and-after number. Eliminate waste through process improvement and standardisation.
• Be On Site: Visit every branch regularly. Walk the work, meet the technicians, and see the operation firsthand.
• Support Growth: Grow revenue from existing customers, and support Corporate Development on diligence and integration planning for new acquisitions across Ireland, the UK and Europe.
• Set the Standard: Bring the operating discipline, quality standards and continuous-improvement mindset that turn a group of acquired companies into one high-performing region.

What We’re Looking For

• 5–15 years leading people and managing operations — in manufacturing, field service, or a comparable technical service environment.
• Proven operational improvement, with the numbers to show it: KPIs moved, margins improved, or organic growth delivered.
• P&L ownership. Understanding of P&L management and a track record of P&L improvement.
• A track record of developing people: coaching employees within a high-performance organisation, and being willing to act when someone will not get there.
• Comfortable running small. You may come from a large organisation, but you must be someone who gets into the detail — builds the report, walks the schedule, sits with a technician.
• Willing and able to travel across the UK and Ireland as described, permanently.
• Strong leadership and communication skills — able to motivate teams and drive accountability.
• Process-oriented, data-driven, with a bias for action.

A Plus, But Not Required

• Experience running multiple sites at once.
• Lean practitioner background — Kaizen, DMAIC, 5S, Value Stream Mapping, Kanban.
• M&A experience: diligence, integration, or working alongside a deal team.
• Experience in life sciences, cleanroom, HVAC, calibration or technical field service.

Benefits

• Ownership equity — GBP 350,000 of equity at work, with 100% performance-based vesting over five years.
• Private medical insurance for you, your spouse and dependent children under 21.
• Life assurance.
• Pension — auto-enrolment (NEST).
• Statutory family leave — maternity, paternity, shared parental and parental bereavement leave.
• Travel and accommodation paid on a company credit card. Travel within the UK is by your own vehicle, reimbursed at the government-approved mileage rate.

Scientific Safety Alliance is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates.