Portfolio Performance & Growth Director
Reporting to: Sector Director
Package - £80-£90K + Bonus + Car + Private Healthcare + Benefits
Location: UK / Hybrid (Home based with travel to the SME’s)
My client is a fast growing UK Group that has a passion to drive and acquire UK SME’s and then fully support their growth under their own leadership, and require travel across the UK to manage these SME's in the group.
Role Purpose
The Portfolio Performance & Growth Director is a high-impact leadership role responsible for driving sustainable performance improvement and organic growth across a portfolio of autonomous Operating Companies and without formal line authority over the SME MD/GM, this role acts as a catalyst for value creation enhancing commercial effectiveness, margin discipline, operational performance, and cross-portfolio collaboration.
The mandate is clear: improve profitability, strengthen competitive positioning, and elevate performance standards across the sector while respecting autonomy of the individual SME's.
Key Responsibilities
Commercial Performance & Margin Expansion
- Lead structured diagnostics of commercial performance to improve win rates, pricing discipline, and gross margin.
- Drive adoption of value-based pricing methodologies where appropriate.
- Identify and eliminate margin leakage through data-led pricing and cost-to-serve analysis.
- Improve sales effectiveness through structured pipeline governance, CRM utilisation, and key account frameworks.
- Support development of recurring revenue and service-led commercial models.
Operational Performance & Excellence
- Partner with business leaders to identify operational improvement opportunities impacting cost, throughput, quality, and working capital.
- Introduce scalable performance frameworks and KPIs.
- Support implementation of continuous improvement methodologies where value accretive.
- Enhance forecasting accuracy and commercial-operational alignment.
Portfolio-Wide Value Creation
- Identify best practices within high-performing SME's across the group, and facilitate structured knowledge transfer.
- Lead cross SME workshops and performance reviews.
- Develop sector-level dashboards and benchmarks.
- Contribute to annual planning cycles and strategic reviews.
Growth & Market Expansion Support
- Provide analytical support for new market entry and sector expansion initiatives.
- Conduct structured market and competitor analysis.
- Support development of robust commercial business cases.
What we are looking for in this exciting and challenging role.
- Senior experience in industrial, engineering, manufacturing, or technical B2B environments.
- Background in Commercial Leadership, General Management, Operational Leadership, or Strategy roles.
- Experience within multi-site or portfolio structures advantageous.
- Some exposure to PLC or private equity environments preferred.
- Proven track record of delivering measurable improvement in margin, revenue, or operational performance.
Skills and experience that is key for this role -
- Influence without authority — builds credibility and drives voluntary adoption.
- Strong commercial and operational acumen.
- Analytical rigor with ability to interrogate financial and operational datasets.
- Change leadership in decentralised organisations.
- Skilled stakeholder engagement and facilitation.
- Resilience and gravitas in complex environments.
Success Measures
- Improved portfolio gross margin and EBITDA performance.
- Measurable uplift in sales effectiveness and pricing discipline.
- Strengthened operational KPIs and working capital performance.
- Increased cross SME Collaboration.
- Tangible contribution to sector value creation objectives.
If you are looking for an exciting group where you can influence and support growth and change and both Operational and Commercial improvements, and be part of a UK group driving this growth it would be an exciting role.