The person

We are looking for a proven senior manufacturing leader with substantial experience in complex, high-mix, low-volume industrial environments.

You are likely to have built your operational foundations in a highly disciplined manufacturing organisation - potentially automotive, powertrain, precision engineering, rotating machinery or an adjacent sector - and subsequently demonstrated that you can apply those disciplines in a smaller, more complex environment where systems and processes need to be built rather than simply inherited.

You will bring:

• Significant executive-level manufacturing and operational leadership experience, including complex component manufacture and assembly.
• Proven multi-site and multi-country leadership experience, with the ability to run geographically dispersed plants as one industrial system.
• Deep practical understanding of lean manufacturing and Toyota Production System principles.
• A track record of improving planning, throughput, quality, delivery and operational efficiency in demanding manufacturing environments.
• Evidence of personally leading delivery or operational recovery – not simply sponsoring transformation programmes.
• Strong procurement and supply-chain experience, including supplier consolidation, make-versus-buy decisions and measurable cost improvement.
• Experience of leading significant organisational and operational change within established teams, including the confidence to challenge ingrained ways of working.
• Strong financial and commercial judgement, with an ability to connect operational decisions to margin, working capital and cash.
• Ideally, experience of aerospace and defence quality and export-control environments.
• Private-equity experience, or clear evidence of thriving within a similarly fast-paced, highly accountable and performance-oriented ownership environment.

Leadership style

We are looking for a decisive, resilient and highly practical operator who is prepared to make difficult operational calls and hold teams accountable for execution.

At the same time, this person must be low-ego and collaborative. The COO will operate as part of an executive collective, working closely with the Group CEO, business leaders and wider executive team. They must be comfortable challenging constructively and making their position clear, while supporting agreed group strategy rather than pursuing an independent agenda.

This role will particularly suit someone who gets their energy from making factories work better: spending time with teams, understanding constraints, solving problems, establishing operating discipline and seeing the resulting improvement in delivery, quality, productivity and margin.

Location and travel

Frequent on-site presence is fundamental to the role. The successful candidate should expect to spend substantial time at the principal UK manufacturing operation, alongside regular travel to other group sites in the UK and internationally.

This is not a predominantly remote executive position.

The proposition

This is an opportunity to play a defining role in the next stage of a technically sophisticated international industrial group: bringing together successful specialist businesses into an increasingly integrated, predictable and scalable operating platform.

The remuneration structure reflects the private-equity environment, combining a competitive executive salary and performance-related bonus with a significant opportunity for long-term wealth creation through value participation. Candidates should therefore be motivated by building value and sharing in the longer-term outcome rather than maximising guaranteed short-term compensation or executive benefits.