Senior Operations Manager, Sero
£58-65k
Offers share option scheme: after 12 months with Sero, you will be granted an option over a set number of shares, based on your salary and level in the business at the time of grant
2 days a week in office
Sustainability platform for property owners and developers
Be an early applicant
Sustainability platform for property owners and developers
21-100 employees
Be an early applicant
£58-65k
Offers share option scheme: after 12 months with Sero, you will be granted an option over a set number of shares, based on your salary and level in the business at the time of grant
2 days a week in office
21-100 employees
Company mission
Sero's mission is to make having a Net Zero Carbon home a possibility for everyone.
Role
Who you are
- Proven experience in an operations management or senior delivery management role, ideally within retrofit, energy, construction, housing or a related regulated sector
- A demonstrated ability to lead and develop a multidisciplinary team, with direct line management experience across multiple reports
- A track record of managing several complex programmes or contracts at once, with oversight of delivery risk, resource and performance
- Genuine commercial accountability, including owning budgets, forecasts, invoicing and profitability across a portfolio of contracts
- Confident stakeholder and partner management, with clients, contractors and consultants across different seniority levels
- Intermediate or above Excel, comfortable with lookups, pivot tables, charts and Power Query
- Comfortable using Jira or an equivalent project tracking tool to monitor delivery progress and team workload
- Willing to use AI tools to improve the speed and quality of your work, from reporting and documentation to communication and planning
- Awareness or experience of PAS 2030, PAS 2035 and retrofit delivery in social housing would also be desirable
- Familiarity with relevant funding schemes such as SHDF, ECO or WHQS would also be desirable
- You put people first, and enjoy developing and supporting a team to do their best work
- You stay calm under pressure and adapt well when priorities shift
- You balance commercial pragmatism with a real commitment to quality and compliance
- You are a clear, warm communicator who builds trust across technical and delivery colleagues alike
- You take a proactive, problem-solving approach, and like removing blockers for others
- You believe in doing things the right way, with honesty and fairness in how you lead
What the job involves
- To tackle the climate emergency, we deliver innovative energy and retrofit solutions that reduce the carbon footprint of homes at scale. We work closely with social housing providers, local authorities and delivery partners to help them understand what their buildings need to reach net zero. This is a senior role at the heart of that mission, and your contribution will be key to our continued success as we grow our impact
- You will hold day-to-day accountability for how our programmes run: keeping projects on track, managing a team of Retrofit Coordinators and Project Managers, and making sure our commercial commitments are met to time, quality and budget
- You will provide the operational backbone that allows our delivery programmes to run smoothly at scale. That means clear priorities, a well-supported team, healthy client relationships and a continuous eye on risk
- Technical and compliance decisions are made in partnership with our Head of Delivery, so your focus is on keeping the operation moving, well resourced and commercially sound
- Our work is rooted in social housing retrofit, but it reaches into utilities, building services, technology, renewables and zero carbon design
- Success here looks like calm, well run projects, a team that feels supported and clear on its priorities, and partners who trust us to deliver
- Lead the day-to-day delivery of Retrofit Services, deciding what is prioritised week to week across projects and functions so the most important work moves first
- Keep a holistic view across all live projects, bringing separate teams together and building long-term efficiencies
- Steer the early stages of major new contracts through mobilisation until they become business as usual
- Spot and resolve operational risks and delivery bottlenecks early, escalating technical and compliance questions to the Head of Delivery in a timely, well-structured way
- Line manage the Retrofit Coordinator team and Project Managers, creating clarity, support and accountability across all direct reports
- Own resourcing and capacity planning across projects, making sure the right skills and focus are in the right place
- Support the growth of your team through regular one-to-ones, clear expectations, honest development conversations and training
- Take ownership of budgets, forecasts, monthly invoicing and profitability across your projects, addressing variances early
- Work closely with Key Account Managers to balance contractual scope, delivery reality and commercial margin, raising material tensions with the Head of Delivery before they become programme risks
- Act as a senior point of contact for partners on delivery and commercial matters, and support tendering and bid work
- Keep improving our processes and tools by working with our Tech team, embedding consistent ways of working
- Maintain oversight of compliance with PAS 2035, scheme requirements and Sero standards, working with the Head of Delivery so technical decisions are well governed and documented
- Support the Head of Delivery in building a robust set of standard operating procedures to support the growth of the Operational team
- Working Hours: We consider full-time to be 37.5 hours per week between 7am and 7pm, Monday to Friday, though this could also work as a part-time role. How you shape your working pattern is up to you, as long as you are meeting the needs of the role. We think work should suit your lifestyle, so we welcome you to work when you can be most effective
Application process
- Alongside your CV, we'd like a short covering note and a written response (600–800 words) to the question below, structured under the headings Situation, Task, Action and Result (the STAR format)
- Describe a time when you led a team through a period of change (for example a restructure, new joiners or leavers, a merged team, or a shift in how the team worked) while keeping multiple live projects on track under pressure. Tell us how you decided what to prioritise, how you brought your team with you, what you chose not to do, and what the outcome was for the programme, the client and your team
- Please use a real example from your own experience, written in the first person, and be specific about numbers (team size, project values, timescales) where you can. You're welcome to use AI tools to help you draft and edit your response, just as you would in the role, though the example, the decisions and the judgement should be your own. If your example involves confidential information, please anonymise the client or scheme rather than leaving out the detail
Our take
Increased education and awareness of global warming have resulted in an increased demand for carbon net-zero homes, yet facilitating such sustainability is unachievable for most developers. Adapting or building a property to be sustainable requires specialist infrastructure which makes it significantly more expensive than standard property, whilst budget alternatives come with a compromise on comfort for the occupants.
Sero provides a sustainability platform for property owners and developers, featuring software tools that provide step-by-step plans for achieving carbon-zero homes, day-to-day energy breakdowns, and holistic dashboards of property portfolio sustainability data. The company also provides a platform called Comfort Service for property occupants, offering insights into how sustainable their energy usage is and what they can do it improve it whilst keeping their home comfortable.
Many companies already provide sustainable property services, but Sero stands out by working directly with property developers to deliver on a mass scale. Furthermore, the company’s approach of providing a comfort dashboard for property occupants helps to ensure that developers’ sustainability goals are met without a compromise on housing quality.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Company benefits
- 6% Er pension contributions
- 26.5 days annual leave + BH
- Equity Scheme
- Private Healthcare
- Flexible working hours
Company HQ
City Centre, Cardiff, UK
Leadership
James Williams
(CEO)Experience as Project Manager and Head of New Business for Eco2 Ltd. from 2013 to 2018. Co-founder and CEO of Sero Homes since 2018.
Andrew Sutton
(CIO)Experience working on the Welsh Government Advisory Panel for Decarbonisation of Existing Homes since 2018. Co-founder and CIO/CDO of Sero Homes since 2019.
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