Operations Director - academic publishing services Recruiter: Tim Palmer
Our client is a high-growth international academic publishing services company. Currently seeking an Operations Director to oversee and provide strategic leadership to their publishing services team.
This is an exciting time to join a business that has been achieving 50% YoY growth for several years as they build their operations for further scale. This role reports directly to the CEO and is part of the senior management team. This role would suit someone looking to take the next step up and shape the strategy of an innovative player in publishing services.
The successful candidate will have responsibility for teams overseeing daily production, customer services, quality control, workflow improvements and strategic planning.
This role can be remote however it will be expected that the successful candidate comes to the HQ in Yorkshire when required.
Duties include:
- Engaging senior leadership and external parties to identify workflow improvements, particularly via automation, machine learning and AI (artificial intelligence) technologies.
- Management of the local UK team as well as the matrix management of a China based customer service team.
- Overseeing the full publishing service workflow from receipt of papers through to final payment.
- Overseeing relations with a team of global specialist freelance editors
- Reviewing all workflows on a regular basis to provide recommendations on improvements and engaging with the technology team to provide scoping documentation to support improvements.
- Supporting sales with tenders for work with publishers
- Overseeing quality and service standards against key performance targets
- Responsibility for improving margins
In order to be suitable:
- It is essential that you have previous experience in editing and of supervising the production workflow of academic publications.
- Superb organisational skills and the ability to work to and achieve tight production deadlines in a busy and fast-moving work environment.
- Technology literate with the understanding of how to work with technology teams to leverage technology in optimising workflows.
- Proven experience of leading customer service provision ideally within a b2c workflow (the consumer being academics).
- Strong financial management skills.
- Flexible and adaptable to working in a fast-paced environment as part of a global team.
- Previous supervisory/management skills essential.