Chief Operating Officer

Responsibilities

• Own IO’s operational model, including the structures, systems, and rhythms that keep the organisation coherent across business units and geographies.
• Build the frameworks that enable functional autonomy while maintaining enterprise-wide alignment.
• Serve as the primary operational decision-maker for the company, with a clear view of what is happening, what is stuck, and what needs to change. This includes decision authority on facilities costs and M&A costs.
• Manage IO’s Book of Work, including what is in flight, what is next, what is blocked, and what needs to stop.
• Lead the Executive Committee, driving the operating cadence of the executive team, including agenda, decisions, and follow-through.
• Set the meeting philosophy for the executive team: meetings exist to answer why IO is not hitting its KPIs and what remedy needs to be installed.
• Partner with the CEO to agree the internal communications strategy, including how change is explained and adopted across the company.
• Own the design and deployment of IO’s business operating system, including the frameworks, workflows, metrics, and governance structures that enable the organisation to run at scale without person-dependency.
• Partner with the Business Operating System Design team to ensure the operating model is built for adoption, and that it works for the people using it.
• Lead the transition from informal processes to systematic, AI-enabled infrastructure, replacing individual expertise with scalable, institutional knowledge.
• Ensure the operating system continuously adapts through feedback loops and AI-driven insights, so that the infrastructure improves itself over time.
• Identify the metrics that matter for the survival and success of the business, and build the operating system tuned to those metrics.
• Set the KPI framework across the organisation, including how KPIs are defined, cascaded, measured, and reviewed.
• Ensure decisions are grounded in measurement, and hold executive peers and function leaders accountable for the metrics in their domain.
• Drive continuous improvement through visible, quantitative signals rather than opinion or narrative.
• Support the CTO in the rebuild of IO’s engineering and delivery organisation, providing the operational scaffolding, governance, and enterprise services required.
• Partner with the CTO to help import the operating disciplines of elite software companies, including delivery discipline, product‑engineering collaboration, and technical hiring standards, into IO’s wider operating model.
• Partner with the CTO and the Chief People Officer on technical headcount strategy and workforce planning, ensuring IO can attract and retain the calibre of engineers and product leaders the mission requires.
• Support the integration of engineering velocity and delivery metrics into IO’s performance management framework, so that delivery is measurable and improving.
• Drive the Enterprise Services model, ensuring People, ICT, Finance, and Legal operate as a coherent, SLA‑driven internal service capability.
• Set service standards and performance expectations across enterprise functions, and hold function leaders accountable for delivery.
• Own contracts management, procurement, and vendor strategy at the enterprise level, including major supplier relationships and cross‑functional contracts.
• Own enterprise facilities, workplace, and remote‑first operations, including how IO supports a globally distributed workforce.
• Set IO’s strategy for how AI is used across the business, partnering with the VP of AI and Data to build AI‑first workflows across operations.
• Own the workforce architecture model, including where AI agents operate, where humans direct, and how that balance evolves.
• Apply cybernetic principles, including feedback loops, requisite variety, and distributed control, to real operational problems, and design systems that self‑regulate and improve.
• Champion IO as a demonstration case for what an AI‑enabled organisation can achieve, including the practical build‑out of agentic systems in support of operations.
• Work with the Chief People Officer (CPO) to ensure IO attracts, develops, and retains the talent it needs to execute its…