Head of System Operations – Control room
Location: Reading
Salary: £110,000 + Car Allowance + Bonus + Benefits
Are you ready to take a pivotal leadership role at the heart of a leading UK infrastructure business? We're seeking a passionate and strategic Head of System Operations to deliver network performance and drive innovation.
About the role
As Head of System Operations, you will lead the proactive, centralised control function that ensures reliable supply by optimising the use of assets. Your mission is to keep the system running efficiently and safely while meeting key targets in quality, customer satisfaction, engineering, and optimisation.
Key responsibilities include:
* Developing customer-focused control, planning, and supply optimisation strategies.
* Leading and managing teams across Transmission Control, Network Management, Strategic Control, Production & Outage Planning, and Calm System Operations.
* Overseeing financial delivery of system operations, balancing cost-effectiveness with optimal control strategies.
* Shaping operational and IT strategies to support system performance.
* Providing governance and oversight during operational events, seasonal changes, and incident responses.
* Leading outage planning with a system-wide perspective.
* Developing and delivering a People Strategy including recruitment, training, and succession planning.
* Managing the organisation’s response to incidents.
Who you are
* An experienced senior leader with a solid track record in large-scale infrastructure or regulated organisations.
* Well-versed in energy, infrastructure, or wider utilities with a broad functional understanding.
* Skilled at collaborating with operational teams to lead transformational change, cost reduction, and performance improvement.
* A strategic thinker, decision-maker, and influencer comfortable engaging from executive level to frontline operations.
* Experienced in incident and control room management—media skills are a distinct advantage.
If you are ready to drive operational excellence in a fast-moving, mission-critical environment within a dynamic utilities or infrastructure business, we want to hear from you. mark.etherington@middlmore.co.uk