Job Title: Director of Intelligent Operations Location: London / Barcelona / Sao Paulo Department: OSS R&D Reports To: Senior Director, OSS or the Director of Innovation, Operations About the Role: We are seeking a visionary and strategic leader to join our global operations team as Director of Intelligent Operations. This role is pivotal in shaping the future of operational excellence through the application of cutting-edge technologies, including AI, automation, and cloud-native architectures. The ideal candidate will bridge business strategy and technical execution, driving scalable, secure, and privacy-compliant solutions that deliver measurable impact across the organization. A strong technical background is essential to understand and leverage the latest advancements in technology. Key Responsibilities: Design: Develop and document high-quality end-to-end solutions that meet internal requirements, ensuring they are fit for purpose, compliant, scalable, and secure. Innovation: Stay abreast of emerging technologies and industry trends, incorporating innovative solutions to drive business growth and operational excellence. Strategy: Understand both internal and external expertise, recommend strategy for the best scalable solutions across build, partner, or buy Collaboration and stakeholder management (inside and outside operations): Collaborate with stakeholders across the organisation to define areas of highest opportunity and related business / technical requirements. Build strong partnerships with Product, Technology (Dev, Architecture) and Data Science. Ensure that roadmaps are complementary, and transparent / aligned with relevant executives Team leadership and management : Leadership and mentoring of your team, movtivate the team to meet and exceed goals and objectives. Create maintain a collaborative culture within the team and across the wider organisation. Operational Impact: Identify and implement process improvements to enhance operational efficiency and reduce costs, always ‘proving’ initiatives are prioritised to target highest impact / cost reductions. This includes leveraging automation and new technologies to streamline workflows. Coordination within operations: Work closely with project management teams to ensure successful delivery of projects. Provide guidance and mentorship to technical teams across multiple projects, fostering a collaborative and high-performance work environment without direct management responsibilities. Technical Governance: Provide technical governance and assurance for proposed solutions throughout the delivery lifecycle, ensuring compliance with industry standards and best practices. Data and Analytics Handling: Manage and analyse data to support decision-making processes. Implement data governance frameworks and ensure data integrity, security, and compliance. This should include relational, graph, key-value and streaming data design constraints. Infrastructure Expertise: Design, deploy (using GitOps & IaC), and manage solutions on Azure and Kubernetes, ensuring high availability, scalability, and security. Risk Management: Identify and mitigate risks associated with solution design and delivery, ensuring robust and resilient architectures. Mentor and develop technical talent, promoting a culture of learning and growth. Requirements: Proven experience in a senior leadership role driving innovation in complex, data-driven environments. Deep understanding of cloud infrastructure, data orchestration, and AI/ML applications in operational contexts. Strong business acumen with the ability to translate strategic goals into technical execution. Track record of influencing cross-functional teams and executive stakeholders. Passion for building high-performing teams and nurturing talent. Educational Background: Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent work experience. Professional Experience: Minimum of 7-15 years of experience in technical programmes/projects and large-scale software implementations, including legacy and green-field scope. Proven experience in guiding cross-functional teams and delivering solutions for projects with multiple dependencies and constraints. Strong competence in Applications, Operability, Integration, Data, Technology, Infrastructure, and Security architecture. Technical Skills: Experience of commercial integration of AI into Operational systems, or similar, featuring LLM, Transformer, ML & traditional statistical data driven software components. Proficiency in SaaS, API design, Azure/Kubernetes hosting, and Integration technologies. Experience in developing distributed/scalable systems and high-volume, low latency, transaction/computation applications. Broad understanding of the software development lifecycle, including the application of LLM driven and Data Science DevOps/MLOps/AIOps methodologies. Expertise in data management and analytics, including data structures, data processing, data modelling, and statistical analysis. Knowledge of Python and C# for development and scripting. Leadership: Proven from-scratch creative solution development with incomplete requirements and multiple divergent opportunities, based on top-down and bottom-up business objectives. Demonstrated ability to provide guide and mentor technical teams, fostering a collaborative and high-performance work environment. Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to engage and influence stakeholders at all levels. Operational Expertise: Experience in identifying and implementing operations improvements, including automation and process optimisation. Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a focus on continuous improvement and innovation. Preferred Qualifications: Certifications: Relevant certifications such as TOGAF, Any Cloud/Azure Certified Solutions Architect, or similar are highly desirable, but not essential. Industry Knowledge: Experience in the media measurement industry and familiarity with its typical operational and compliance requirements. Our ways of working principles: Clear the fog – so that collectively, we spend our time on high-impact problem solving Think around the corner – voicing concerns, ensuring our time is well spent Take ownership and accountability – We work in swim-lanes, not siloes – our top priorities speak to the rest of the business needs Communicate and share – visualise our work, share our outcomes, build organisational improvements, share written communications timely and avoid long verbal only discussions Why Join Us? A time of change: Join us in a pivotal moment in our company strategy to embrace AI and Automation throughout our front-line with this role being pivotal to success of this strategy Pride and quality: Set the path for the best product(s) and ensure coaching, feedback, trailing is available for people to continue push the quality bar higher and accelerate growth Innovative Environment: Be part of a forward-thinking team that embraces innovation and continuous improvement. Collaborative Culture: Work in a supportive and collaborative environment where your contributions are valued.