Head of Operational Excellence; SC Cleared

Salary: £75,000-£80,000 per annum

Location:

Remote-first, with travel to the Nottingham office and customer sites as required

Employment Type:

Permanent
Security Clearance:
Active SC clearance preferred. Candidates without current clearance must be eligible and willing to undergo UK security vetting.

We are seeking an experienced Head of Operational Excellence to drive continuous improvement, cross-functional integration and AI-enabled business transformation within a specialist technology and security organisation.

This is a strategic leadership role focused on ensuring that business operations are efficient, consistent, secure and continuously improving. You will work closely with the Managing Director, Senior Leadership Team and functional leaders across Sales, Business Development, Engineering, Professional Services, Product, Marketing and Operations.

You will act as the organisation's operational integrator, bringing together processes, knowledge management, certifications, compliance and ways of working to improve performance and deliver measurable business value.

A key initial priority will be leading AI-enabled transformation across Sales, Commercial and Business Development, helping the organisation use its knowledge, data and expertise more effectively while maintaining the highest standards of security and governance.

• Drive effective integration across business functions, identifying and removing duplication, inefficiencies and operational barriers.
• Lead continuous improvement initiatives that deliver measurable gains in productivity, quality and consistency.
• Identify and prioritise activities that deliver the greatest value to the organisation and its customers.
• Establish consistent processes, governance and performance measures across functions.

• Oversee the organisation's certification and accreditation portfolio, including ISO 9001, ISO 27001, ISO 20000, ISO 22301, TickITplus, CRTF and relevant defence cyber certifications.
• Maintain compliance, audit readiness and continuous improvement across applicable standards and frameworks.
• Work with subject matter experts to maintain high-assurance operational standards aligned with MOD, NCSC, NATO and secure-by-design principles.
• Coordinate internal audit programmes, corrective actions and assurance reporting for the Managing Director and Board.

• Own the approach to capturing, maintaining and exploiting organisational knowledge and intellectual assets.
• Develop and maintain effective knowledge resources covering case studies, proposals, bid libraries, propositions, playbooks, competitor intelligence, customer insight and reusable collateral.
• Establish processes to capture learning from projects, presales, Sales, Business Development and Professional Services.
• Ensure information is accessible, secure, version-controlled and actively reused, while protecting intellectual property and sensitive data.
• Foster a culture of knowledge sharing, continuous learning and translating expertise into customer and commercial value.

Initially focused on Sales, Commercial and Business Development, you will lead the design and implementation of AI-enabled capabilities across:

• Market intelligence, segmentation and research.
• Prospect and customer insight.
• Sales and presales collateral creation.
• Proposal development, quality assurance and governance.
• Internal knowledge discovery and exploitation.
• The responsible use of external knowledge and public large language models (LLMs).

You will define and govern the organisation's approach to safe and effective AI adoption, establishing an operating model covering governance, training, tooling, security, probity and continuous improvement.

You will also guide internal teams and external technical specialists in implementing appropriate AI capabilities, including small language models (SLMs) and LLMs, ensuring technology augments existing expertise and decision-making.

A core objective will be to demonstrate measurable business benefits from AI adoption while maintaining robust security, data governance and intellectual property protection.

• Act as a trusted adviser to the Managing Director and Senior Leadership Team.
• Lead cross-functional transformation programmes, influencing stakeholders and ensuring initiatives are delivered and…