Chief Operating Officer (Deputy)

SUMMARY:
If you've spent your career solving the problems that don't have an obvious owner (the ones that fall between departments, get argued over in meetings, and never quite make it onto anyone's KPI sheet) this role was built for someone like you.

Our client is a fast scaling independent power producer with in-house manufacturing, utility and software operations under one roof. As the business scales, the COO needs someone who can absorb the hardest, most data-heavy cross-departmental problems and take them to closure, without needing to be handed a department, a P&L, or a line of authority to do it. This is a rare opportunity to operate at the right hand of a COO in a business where engineering, commercial and operational decisions are converging fast, and where the person who can turn a messy problem into a Rand-quantified, evidence-backed case becomes indispensable almost immediately.

If you'd rather build the case that changes how five departments work together than manage the day to day of just one, and you want your analysis to carry real weight at the top of the business, this role is worth a serious look.

POSITION INFO:
Duties and Responsibilities Review operational data daily across the business and escalate emerging issues to the COO as a costed hypothesis backed by evidence, not a raw alert Design and run controlled operational pilots to prove a change on a limited sample before it's rolled out at scale Own the operational scoreboard: defining canonical metrics, thresholds and alarms across departments Define what \"correctly functioning\" looks like across an installed fleet of sites, and build the monitoring and corrective-action process behind it Act as an independent second opinion on the commercial and technical viability models behind new product offerings (e.g. solar and battery storage), stress-testing assumptions against real-world performance Build the failure-mode taxonomy behind product returns and part redeployment, and attach a Rand value to each failure to inform correct-or-accept decisions Diagnose the structural root cause behind cross-departmental conflict, whether over quality, turnaround, or stock allocation, and build the business case for resolving it Own agreed corrective actions through to closure via a standing monthly operations review, co-chaired with the COO Escalate unresolved items and structural decisions to the COO or EXCO, while owning the diagnosis and the case for change Desired Experience and Qualifications A degree in Engineering, Finance, or another quantitative discipline 8 to 12 years in an analytically intensive environment: operations, industrial engineering, manufacturing quality, management consulting A demonstrated track record of taking messy, ambiguous problems to their root cause using data, and carrying the fix through to a measured result Strong financial modelling literacy, with the ability to independently interrogate and stress-test a viability model built by someone else Confident working directly with large operational datasets (SQL, BI tools) rather than waiting on someone else to pull a report Exposure to energy, utilities, manufacturing or another asset-heavy business is a bonus, not a prerequisite: strong candidates from industrial, consulting, FMCG, or industrial engineering are encouraged to apply Comfortable working alongside AI and digital tools to sharpen decision making and productivity, not intimidated by them. Remuneration R 1 300 000 to R 1 400 000 per annum Interested? If you are interested in this opportunity, please apply via this advert link. If you wish to send your resume via email forward your CV to , insert the job title and copy the reference number in brackets in the subject line of your e-mail. If you have not had any response in two weeks, please consider the vacancy application unsuccessful. Your profile will be kept on our database for any other suitable position.