Strategic Operations Manager

From board-level governance to real-time incident response, you’ll be the catalyst for our most critical work. Turn complex goals into seamless execution. Changing the world of pet food for good. We’re Tails.com, a dog food subscription company with a big difference. We create truly tailored food for each and every dog we serve. We start by asking people a few simple questions about their dog. Then we use that information to create their dog’s unique Tails.com recipe – so their dog gets exactly the nutrition they need, in the taste they love, delivered to their door every month. It’s clever stuff. We’ve got bold plans. Having created an entirely new category in pet food, we’re now scaling fast – backed by Purina, one of the world’s largest pet food companies. You’ll join a bunch of smart people working towards the same goals – and a bunch of smart-ish dogs, all working on their own thing. Together, we’ll change the world of pet food for good.

The role: You will orchestrate the delivery of our most critical work on behalf of the CEO and CTOO, ensuring our leadership cadence drives real results. This is a high-influence role that demands a rare blend of governance and grit: you will build and maintain governance structure to drive business-wide project delivery and incident response.

Responsibilities:

• Leadership Operations: Running the business cadence, including leadership team meetings, strategy portfolio monthlies, and cross-functional working groups.
• Board Governance: Preparing the leadership team for Board meetings by creating materials, maintaining dashboards, and compiling strategic slides.
• Incident Management: Acting as the lead Incident Manager during business-wide crises, coordinating the response on behalf of a director level sponsor.
• Enterprise Risk: Managing the company’s risk portfolio and preparing the LT to ensure they are tracking and mitigating high-priority threats.
• Process Excellence: Developing and refining core business processes, such as New Product Development, to ensure we scale efficiently.
• Capability Building: Coaching and mentoring project leads across the company to develop a "best-in-class" delivery culture.

Qualifications:

Essential:

• Operational Grit: Proven experience managing business-wide incidents or high-stakes crises with a calm, methodical approach.
• Governance & Board-Level Exposure: Experience preparing high-quality strategic materials, dashboards, and reports for C-Suite or Board-level stakeholders.
• Complex Stakeholder Management: The ability to influence senior leaders, resolve functional conflicts, and hold teams accountable for delivery.
• Process Design: Demonstrated ability to develop, implement, and refine core business processes (e.g. New Product Development or operational cadences).
• Project Leadership: Experience leading or overseeing large-scale strategic programs and managing dependencies across multiple functions.
• Business Planning: The ability to set up and execute business planning, whether GTM, operations, project or incident plans.

Desirable:

• Project Qualification: Nationally recognised certification in a project methodology and the ability to work alongside project leaders in both a linear and agile fashion.
• Commercial Fluency: Comfortable with Commercial Finance terminology and practice with the ability to add rigour to business cases and make business recommendations based on risks and opportunities.
• Sector Experience: Either a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) or technology enabled background.
• Training Delivery: Formal or informal training experience for internal audiences.
• Prioritisation: The ability to prioritise between Director driven initiatives and strategic workstreams.

What’s in it for you?

• Competitive salary, reviewed annually
• Annual bonus, based on company performance
• Flexible core hours, giving you true work life balance
• Hybrid role to ensure this role works for you
• 25 days of holiday (excluding bank holidays) which increases over time to a max of 27 days
• 9/10 day working week to enhance your wellbeing without a reduction in pay and leave allowance
• Optional 5 days unpaid leave and 1 paid volunteer day each year
• When you need a change of scenery, you can work from abroad 2 weeks every 6 months
• Health insurance for you, paid by Tails.com
• Extended maternity, paternity, shared parental and adoption pay. 6 months at 70% pay
• Flexible paid care leave to support immediate dependants, people close to you and pets
• In house L&D team, with access to year round courses to help drive your development
• 50% discount on all Tails.com
• Discounted gym membership

What’s next? If this sounds like it matches your experience and what you’d love to do, we can’t wait to hear from you! If you’re unsure whether you fit our criteria exactly, please get in touch anyway. And because we believe that diverse teams perform better, we’d especially love to hear from you if you’re from an under-represented demographic.

Our Commitment: We’re proud to be an active equal opportunity employer. We want to give everyone a fair chance to join us in changing the world of pet food for good. We do this by conducting a structured recruitment process for all candidates, as well as actively promoting our roles to communities that are under-represented at Tails.com. During your interview process you’ll meet some of our team with varying levels of responsibility and experience. We want to give every candidate a fair interview process and if you need any reasonable adjustments made, please let us know.