Chief Operating Officer

About 1st Formations

At 1st Formations, we empower entrepreneurs to start, run, and grow their businesses with confidence.

Running a business shouldn’t be slowed down by company formation, statutory compliance, accounting, or payroll. From day one, these essentials should be seamless, reliable, and intelligently handled — freeing founders to focus on building and scaling.

We’re a leading UK provider of company formation and compliance services, building a modern, fully integrated technology platform that supports founders at every stage of their journey. Our platform brings together formation, compliance, accounting, payroll, and ongoing business support in one cohesive experience.

No stitched‑together services.

No legacy workflows disguised as software.

Just a single, scalable platform built for ambitious founders who want to move fast, stay compliant, and grow with confidence.

• £18m annual revenue, including £9m ARR
• Over 1 million companies formed
• Certified B Corp and Carbon Neutral Business
• Forecast to grow 5x–10x over the next three years

We are seeking a commercially minded Chief Operating Officer (COO) to lead enterprise-wide performance, alignment, and operational excellence across 1st Formations and its associated business lines.

This is a high‑impact executive role with broad strategic influence and full accountability for translating the company’s vision into scalable execution across legal, accountancy, compliance, and customer operations. The COO will integrate and align multiple service lines and functions, ensuring cohesive performance, operational resilience, regulatory integrity, and delivery against the Group’s commercial objectives.

As a key strategic partner to the CEO and Board, the COO will shape long‑term direction while driving disciplined execution, sustainable growth, innovation, and measurable performance outcomes across the portfolio.

• Lead the development and execution of an enterprise-wide operating strategy that aligns all business lines and functions with the company’s long-term commercial vision.
• Oversee and align the performance of legal, accountancy, compliance, customer operations, and support functions — ensuring cohesion, accountability, and consistent delivery standards across the Group.
• Drive cross‑functional integration, breaking down silos to ensure unified customer journeys, operational efficiency, and shared performance objectives.
• Partner with the executive team to define growth strategy, evaluate new service lines or expansion opportunities, and ensure operational readiness to scale.
• Establish and own group-level KPIs, performance dashboards, and governance frameworks to drive transparency, accountability, and data‑led decision‑making across all business units.
• Strengthen leadership capability across the organisation, coaching senior managers and ensuring each function operates with clear ownership, commercial discipline, and measurable impact.
• Lead operational transformation initiatives, including systems, technology, automation, and process redesign, to enhance scalability and competitive advantage.
• Ensure operational resilience, enterprise risk management, and regulatory adherence across all regulated activities within the Group.
• Cultivate a high‑performance culture grounded in accountability, collaboration, continuous improvement, and customer‑centricity.

• A commercially astute executive operator with experience leading multi‑disciplinary or multi‑entity service businesses.
• Proven experience aligning diverse business units under a cohesive operating model while maintaining performance accountability at both group and functional levels.
• Strong strategic capability combined with the credibility and judgment to operate at Board level.
• Deep understanding of regulated, professional services, or compliance‑led environments.
• A data‑led leader who translates strategy into measurable execution and sustained commercial results.
• A unifying and influential leader who builds alignment across diverse teams and raises standards across the organisation.
• A change‑oriented executive who strengthens operational…