Head of Operations

As the Head of Operations, you will be a senior leader within the UK Service Business Management Team, responsible for shaping and delivering the operational strategy across a diverse and complex portfolio. You will lead multidisciplinary teams including Project Managers, Project Planners, Quantity Surveyors, Contract Management specialists, and our expanding Switchgear Delivery team-ensuring project excellence nationwide.

In this pivotal role, you will balance strategic direction with operational oversight, ensuring that all projects are delivered safely, efficiently, and commercially. You will cultivate a culture of high performance, accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement to strengthen the organisation's service delivery capability.

Please note we are unable to provide visa support on this position.

• Provide senior leadership and oversight for a broad portfolio of Transmission & Distribution upgrade projects across the UK, owning the full delivery lifecycle from planning and procurement to commissioning and close out.
• Drive a proactive, industry leading safety culture, working to continuously elevate behavioural safety, compliance, and operational maturity.
• Deliver operational excellence, ensuring all projects achieve or exceed schedule, cost, quality, and customer satisfaction objectives.
• Shape and implement operational strategy, contributing to long term planning, policy development, process improvement, and service integration across the business.
• Lead financial and resource planning, developing action plans to optimise performance, manage cost, and ensure efficient use of staffing and capability.
• Ensure operational governance, assurance, and compliance, overseeing quality, responsiveness, and performance standards while initiating corrective action when required.
• Prepare and present operational and financial reporting, including monthly, quarterly, and annual KPIs for senior leadership.
• Act as a visible safety leader, reinforcing safe systems of work, engaging teams on site visits, and promoting accountability across all operational functions.
• Lead structured monthly project reviews, ensuring transparency, ownership, and clear mitigation planning around risks, issues, and opportunities.
• Own workforce planning and capability management, forecasting resource needs and playing a key role in recruitment, succession planning, and professional development.
• Strengthen cross business collaboration, aligning activities with other business units, ensuring effective knowledge sharing, and embedding lessons learned into future programmes.

• Extensive experience in senior Operations and/or Project Management leadership roles within a complex, technical, or engineering focused environment.
• Strong understanding of Field Service operations, with the ability to manage and differentiate between project based and field based delivery streams.
• Proven people leader with a strong track record of motivating, mentoring, and developing technical and operational teams.
• Highly developed organisational, strategic planning, and decision making skills, with experience driving operational transformation or large scale change.
• Strong knowledge of legislation and requirements related to utility assets, site health & safety, CDM, and environmental compliance.
• Experience within the electrical distribution, T&D, or similar industry with significant exposure to HV/EHV equipment, site operations, and safety critical environments.
• Thorough knowledge of CDM regulations and associated duties.
• NEBOSH or equivalent HSE qualification (desirable).
• SAP experience (Project Cockpit, project cost analysis, ROC) preferred.

Hitachi Energy is a global technology leader in electrification, powering a sustainable energy future through innovative power grid technologies with digital at the core. Over three billion people depend on our technologies to power their daily lives.

With over a century in pioneering mission critical technologies like high voltage, transformers, automation, and power electronics, we are addressing the most urgent energy challenge of our time - balancing soaring electricity demand, while decarbonising the power system.

Headquartered in Switzerland, we employ over 50,000 people in 60 countries and generate revenues of around $16 billion USD. We welcome you to apply today.