Director of Operations, Professional Services

Posted Oct 16

Job Title: Director of Operations, Professional Services

Location: EMEA Remote 

Department: Professional Services

Reports To: VP, Professional Services

The Director of Operations, Professional Services, is responsible for overseeing the operational aspects of the EMEA Portfolio Professional Services (PS) team at Guidewire. This role involves managing team KPIs, communication plans, operational support for project success, and other activities that ensure the successful delivery of services to clients. The Director will work closely with various stakeholders, including the Delivery Team, Director of Programme Management, PS Practices (IS, GSC, Digital etc) and PS Ops , to maintain customer satisfaction and financial health on our EMEA programmes.

An additional part-time element of the role, will be working with the SVP, Managing Director, EMEA to start to build the operational muscle of the full EMEA organization. This will entail working with the SVP and becoming part of their European Leadership Team to help run cross stream initiatives, and to bring a joined up thought process on what success looks like in EMEA. 

PS EMEA Key Responsibilities:

  • Resource Management: Work with the PS RMO and Practice Leads to proactively manage capacity planning for all EMEA projects. To be able to problem solve and identify mitigating actions for any issues in capacity short and long term.
  • Operational Support: Provide region/practice support to the full team on monitoring our adherence to PS processes and guidelines and working with the Enablement team on rolling out changes or new initiatives.
  • Programme Status Monitoring: Work side by side with the Director of Programme management to monitor the status of active and upcoming projects and assist in any risk mitigation identification and support. 
  • Reporting of KPIs: Develop and maintain system strategy and reporting mechanisms for the team’s KPIs for the financial year.
  • Communication and Enablement: Ownership of the yearly communication plan for PS EMEA and management of event organization such as RKO/Synergy breakouts, enablement sessions, cross practice monthly meetings etc. Working with the Enablement team to identify upcoming enablement sessions needed, skill gaps in teams to be addressed and themes or objectives of in person meetings.

EMEA ELT Key Responsibilities:

  • Strategic Program Execution: Oversee and drive execution of all ELT strategic programs. Manage all key stakeholders to ensure timely execution against plans. Report on progress of all strategic programs, and escalate blockers. Identify improvement opportunities on cross collaboration improvements across departments
  • Communication: Ownership of the yearly communication plan for the EMEA full team.  Work with the Enablement Team across the functions in EMEA to identify the correct attendees and own the scheduling and running of ELT/EMEA All Hands Meetings.  Work with cross functional teams to identify the correct attendees for all onsite external facing meetings such as GIF etc
  • ELT Action Log: Capture all actions coming from weekly ELT MeetingsMonitor progress of all such actions and report on the same.

Qualifications:

  • Minimum of 12 years of experience in professional services or a related field, with at least 5 years in a leadership role.
  • Proven track record of managing projects and teams.
  • Strong understanding of resource management, capacity planning, and operational support.
  • Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
  • Experience of working with different teams in Guidewire and the ability to work collaboratively with cross-functional teams and stakeholders.
  • Experience with PSA systems and other project management tools.
  • Strong Sheets/Excel and PSA Reporting skills, specifically Pivot Tables. 
  • Ability to travel - there will be adhoc travel requirements as part of this role, for example attending 4 x quarterly European leadership team meetings during the year etc

Key Competencies:

  • Self Starter
  • Strategic Thinking
  • Problem Solving
  • Leadership and Team Management