Director of Operations / Head of Value Creation

Location: Germany-based, remote

About the Firm

The firm is a recently established European private equity investor, headquartered in Germany and with additional offices in the Netherlands and Brussels. The inaugural fund has been raised in full. The investment period is open and the firm is now deploying capital across a pan-European mandate.

The organisation is structured as a concentrated investment partnership rather than as a multi-strategy platform. Underwriting responsibility sits with a small senior investment team. Value creation is intended to exist as a separate, intellectually rigorous capability: neither an annex to the deal process nor a loosely defined portfolio-support function. The firm is therefore seeking a senior operating executive to design and lead that capability from inception.

The Opportunity

The firm wishes to appoint a Director of Operations / Head of Value Creation to work with management teams across current and future portfolio companies and, where warranted, during diligence. The role is based in Germany and may be performed remotely, subject to regular presence at portfolio companies, the firm’s offices and live transaction situations.

The appointment is deliberately broad. The firm is not seeking a functional specialist in supply chain, finance operations, or a single digital domain. It is seeking an operations generalist of unusual range: a professional able to diagnose the operating reality of a mid-s`ized European business, isolate the limited number of interventions that will compound, and then take those interventions into use. Process architecture, organisational effectiveness, commercial execution, digitisation and the applied use of AI all fall within the mandate.

The successful candidate will typically have been formed in a leading strategy consultancy and will subsequently have acquired operating experience of real duration. Exposure to earlier-stage or high-growth environments is advantageous, provided it sits alongside more institutional transformation work. The role requires analytical authority and implementation credibility in equal measure, particularly inside founder-led and owner-managed companies where influence is earned rather than conferred.

Key Responsibilities

Establish the firm’s value-creation architecture from first principles: diagnostic method, intervention hierarchy, tooling, reporting cadence and the working model with management.
Conduct operational and commercial assessments of prospective and existing portfolio companies, covering process integrity, organisational design, data and systems quality, commercial engine and digital maturity.
Identify a small number of material improvement theses. The relevant test is whether the initiative can be implemented and measured, not whether it can be presented at length.
Design and oversee the introduction of improved operating systems, workflows and tools, including selected AI-enabled applications where they raise speed, quality of decision-making or control.
Partner with management on digitisation and technology initiatives that have commercial consequence, including pricing, sales effectiveness, customer operations, forecasting, management information and internal decision support.
Convert diligence findings into a post-close value-creation agenda that can be jointly owned with management and reviewed with discipline.
Support the investment team in underwriting on questions of operational risk, scalability, systems adequacy and the credibility of identified improvement cases.
Install a lean but exacting operating cadence across the portfolio: priorities, milestones, accountability and an unsentimental account of what is changing.
Separate genuine operating improvement from transformation programmes that are largely presentational.
Build a repeatable value-creation capability of institutional quality, without importing the administrative weight of a large-cap operating-partner organisation.

Candidate Profile

A minimum of seven years of relevant experience, and more typically ten years or more, with a substantial operating record rather than a career confined to advisory work.
Formation at McKinsey, BCG or Bain, or at an equivalently rigorous strategy platform, including evidence of demanding early training.
Subsequent line or transformation experience of meaningful duration. Full-time work in a start-up or high-growth business is a distinct advantage where it complements, rather than replaces, more institutional operating experience.
An operations generalist, able to move with credibility between process design, commercial effectiveness, organisation, systems and implementation.
Demonstrated experience in IT, digitisation and AI. Interest alone is insufficient. The candidate should have put tools into production, improved operating processes and carried initiatives from diagnosis into use.
The capacity to work effectively with mid-sized European businesses, often founder-led or family-owned, in which title is secondary to substance.
A high standard of analysis combined with implementation discipline. The role requires both diagnosis and delivery.
Professional fluency in English. Strong German is a significant advantage given the firm’s coverage and the base of the role.
Residence in Germany, with the ability to work remotely and to travel regularly to portfolio companies and the firm’s European offices.

Nature of the Mandate

The firm has completed its first raise and is now allocating capital. Value creation is being constructed at the same time as the portfolio itself. The role is therefore more formative, and more exposed, than an operating seat inside an already industrialised platform.

The successful candidate will work in close proximity to the investment team, to management and to the operating reality of the companies the firm owns. The work is to improve how those businesses are run — through process, systems, commercial discipline and the intelligent application of technology — to a standard consistent with the firm’s investment judgement.

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Albert Cliff Limited