Operations Director

Operations Director

Remote (EST)

Permanent, Full-time

About PACE.Global

PACE.Global is a boutique consultancy serving various sectors with tailored solutions in digital adoption and change management. We are trusted advisors and implementation partners helping clients navigate transformation through consulting, training, and technology enablement.

Our team supports organizations in improving productivity, safety, and innovation by aligning people, processes, and technologies. From digital strategy to execution, we deliver scalable, practical solutions grounded in industry expertise. Our approach is agile, responsive, and deeply collaborative, because lasting transformation requires more than technology alone.

Position Summary

We are looking for a hands-on operations leader who can build the operational foundation or a rapidly scaling professional services firm. This is a systems-building role: you will work directly with the COO to establish financial discipline, implement and drive adoption of processes, and create the operational infrastructure to support sustainable growth.

The ideal candidate is a rigorous systems thinker who thrives in ambiguity, operates with extreme ownership, and takes pride in building frameworks that create clarity and speed in fast-growth environments. You hold the line on standards under pressure; not just designing systems, but making them stick. PACE operates in high-uncertainty, adaptive delivery environments. The operating system you build needs to be designed for that reality.

The career trajectory here is real. The Operations Director who builds this foundation is the natural candidate for a COO seat in one of PACE's associated businesses within two to five years, with equity participation on the table. If you are looking for an accelerated path to that level and are willing to earn it, this role is worth a serious conversation.

Key Responsibilities

Delivery Operations & Project Controls

• Ensure delivery rhythms, including escalation pathways, accountability structures, and reporting cadences, are established and running reliably.
• Own procurement processes such as proposal writing, contract reviews with legal, and defining change requests.
• Own strategic oversight for the delivery engine, managed by the Delivery Operations Manager, maintaining visibility across schedule, scope, resourcing, governance, and adoption health across all active engagements.
• Build and run systems that identify and resolve what is blocked, what is overloaded, what work is invisible, and which clients or engagements are creating disproportionate operational drag.
• Spot capacity constraints and hiring needs before they become problems.
• Optimize resource allocation across engagements to prevent burnout and maintain quality.
• Flag scope creep and profitability risk before they affect margins or delivery commitments.

Financial Operations & Risk Management

• Build and run systems that reduce financial risk and enable confident decisions.
• Develop scenario planning and forecasting models to manage financial risk as we scale.
• Provide oversight on spending and accounts payable operations.
• Create quantified risk assessments for hiring and delivery decisions.
• Refine professional services pricing strategy and frameworks.

Process & Systems

• Build the enterprise operating system for adaptive execution, standardizing how PACE manages uncertainty, escalates risk, and converts successful delivery patterns and lessons learned into repeatable playbooks.
• Drive lean-driven process mapping and documentation efforts.
• Build SOPs, routines and habits tailor-made for fast growth with minimal slack.
• Drive adoption of systems that actually stick, not just documented and forgotten.
• Model the standard personally; adoption starts with the Operations Director, not with a rollout deck.
• Create governance frameworks that enable autonomous decision-making in the right contexts while maintaining appropriate oversight.

Strategic Execution Support

• Take strategic priorities defined by leadership and own the execution.
• Build complete game plans with timelines, risk responses, adoption measures, and launch plans.
• Pull the right information at the right time by learning to spot priorities through asking the right questions.
• Operate in the grey by building decision systems that create confidence and speed when things are not black and white.

Recruitment & Talent Operations

• Own the workforce plan and drive recruitment with strategic sequencing rather than reactive urgency — hiring decisions anchored to organizational risk and delivery capacity, not to whoever is needed most immediately.
• Execute hiring and recruitment processes to support rapid team growth.
• Coordinate contract writing and execution for subcontractors and employees.
• Monitor the health and engagement of critical personnel and flag retention risks before they become departures.
• Ensure the talent pipeline supports aggressive growth targets without compromising quality or burning out the team.

Team Contribution

• Manage and develop a team with clear expectations, consistent follow-through, and a coaching orientation; your goal is to make them more capable, not more dependent.
• Operate as the COO's operational partner with tight daily coordination, holding plans and standards to what has been agreed.
• Maintain high visibility and accountability in a remote environment with shared task boards and frequent touchpoints.

What Success Looks Like

The COO spends 90% of their time on strategy, business development, and mentoring because operational execution runs without them.

• At thirty days, a clear operating standard for task management is active, communicated, and being modelled by the Operations Director personally. The real state of operations, not the documented state, is understood.
• At sixty days, recruitment is anchored to a ratified workforce plan, governance rhythms are established and running, and direct reports have clear expectations and regular leadership touchpoints.
• At ninety days, you have mapped current processes, identified the biggest operational risks to the growth plan, and taken ownership of 2–3 critical systems.
• At six months, documented SOPs exist for core processes with measurable adoption, a pricing framework enables confident proposal development, financial dashboards give real-time visibility into cash position and profitability, and recruitment systems are supporting team growth.

Essential Qualifications

The ideal candidate will have:

Experience & Skills

• 7+ years in successive leadership roles in operations or finance, ideally in professional services, consulting, or high-growth environments.
• Demonstrated ability to identify weak signals and emerging risks early, and to prioritize mitigation actions before issues escalate.
• Experience creating scalable playbooks, SOPs, and governance structures in adaptive or high-uncertainty delivery environments, and converting iterative learning into repeatable systems.
• Financial literacy with the ability to read P&Ls, balance sheets, and make data-driven recommendations.
• Proven track record building financial models, pricing frameworks, or operational systems from scratch.
• Experience working in ambiguous, fast-changing environments where you had to create structure.
• Direct experience with process documentation, implementation, and measuring adoption.
• Strong analytical and systems thinking capabilities with attention to both strategic priorities and execution details.
• Lean Six Sigma Black Belt
• MBA or equivalent

Personal Attributes

• Develops people, not just systems — you build capacity in direct reports through clear expectations, coaching, and consistent follow through, not just by managing tasks.
• Calm under pressure and able to stabilize teams during uncertainty without adding noise.
• Strong situational awareness — you read patterns across risks, dependencies, and workflows before they become visible problems.
• Hands-on and execution-focused, with the ability to balance systems thinking with deliverable production.
• Highly collaborative, responsive, and comfortable operating as a true partner to leadership.
• Strong ownership mindset — you bring solutions, not just problems.
• High emotional intelligence — you reduce escalation, align diverse stakeholders, and maintain trust under pressure.
• Self-motivated, disciplined, and able to work productively with tight daily coordination.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in boutique or mid-size consulting firms (10–150 employees) that have scaled successfully.
• Experience building operations from scratch in founder-led or entrepreneurial environments.
• Track record of driving system adoption against organizational resistance.
• Comfort operating in adaptive, uncertainty-driven delivery.
• Environments where the planning system is a risk-reduction system, not a task list.
• Background in or exposure to change management, transformation delivery, or methodology-based consulting environments.
• Experience building organizational memory and knowledge management systems — capturing lessons learned and converting them into reusable operational assets.

Other Reasons to Join Our Team!

• Be a foundational operator in a company positioned to scale 10x over the next two to three years.
• Direct partnership with the COO in building operational excellence from the ground up.
• Autonomy to design and implement systems your way, with strategic direction and support.
• Work with a disciplined, committed leadership team that values operational rigor and sustainable growth.
• Competitive compensation reflecting the impact and ownership of this role.
• Flexible, remote-first work environment with a team that values clarity, action, and results.