Director of Customer Operational Readiness

Are you ready to build a world class global function from the ground up? We’re looking for a visionary Director of Customer Operational Readiness to lead a new organisation dedicated to ensuring our customers are fully prepared to operate, sustain, and optimise their automated warehouse systems from day one. These are large scale, high throughput, capital intensive automation environments — and you’ll be the strategic leader who ensures every customer achieves a smooth go live, a strong ramp up, and long term operational success. We offer: Career Development Competitive Compensation And Benefits Pay Transparency Global Opportunities Learn More Here: https://www.dematic.com/en-us/about/careers/what-we-offer/ Tasks and Qualifications: What You’ll Lead: Build and Lead a Global Readiness Organisation Define the vision, strategy, and operating model for a new global function. Recruit, develop, and lead regional readiness managers, operational consultants, training leaders, and transition specialists. Establish global standards, governance, and repeatable frameworks for customer readiness. Develop a Comprehensive Readiness Framework Create a structured methodology covering organisational design, staffing, training, maintenance, safety, IT/controls readiness, data preparation, spare parts strategy, and operational governance. Build maturity assessments, readiness scorecards, risk models, and tracking tools. Ensure consistent deployment of best practices across global projects. Engage Senior Customer Stakeholders Work directly with C‑suite, VP, and Director‑level leaders to align readiness activities with their operating model and strategic goals. Facilitate workshops, planning sessions, and executive reviews. Act as the customer’s internal advocate, escalating risks and aligning resources. Ensure Successful Go‑Live & Transition to Operations Partner with Project Execution, Engineering, IT, and Commissioning teams to integrate readiness into project timelines. Lead pre‑go‑live assessments and sign off on readiness criteria. Ensure a seamless handover to Customer Service, Managed Services, and Lifecycle Support. Align with Service & Support Organisations Ensure service contracts, maintenance plans, spare parts strategies, SLAs, and KPIs match customer capabilities. Confirm training, documentation, and support resources are in place before go‑live. Support value‑added services such as remote monitoring and performance optimisation. Drive Continuous Improvement Capture lessons learned and feed them into product development, engineering standards, and service offerings. Champion proactive risk identification and mitigation. Build internal and customer‑facing knowledge bases to accelerate future ramp‑ups. What You Bring: Required Experience 12+ years in warehouse automation, supply chain operations, logistics, manufacturing, or related engineering/operations fields. Proven leadership experience building and scaling global or multi‑regional teams. Expertise in operational readiness, commissioning, ramp‑up, customer success, or large‑scale transformation programmes. Strong understanding of automated material handling systems, industrial controls, and WMS/WCS/WES software. Executive presence with the ability to influence senior stakeholders. Excellent strategic planning, risk management, and cross‑functional leadership skills. Ability to travel globally (20–30%). Preferred Experience Background in solution integration, design‑for‑operations, or lifecycle service models. Experience in consulting, Lean/6‑Sigma, or organisational change management. Familiarity with multi‑year service contracts or outsourced operations models. Success Looks Like High customer readiness scores and reduced risk at each milestone. Smooth go‑lives and ramp‑ups that meet throughput, availability, and SLA targets. Fewer start‑up issues, escalations, and readiness‑related delays. Seamless transition to service teams with minimal disruption. Strong customer satisfaction, referenceability, and long‑term retention. Adoption of readiness standards across global project teams. Technical & Core Competencies Deep expertise in warehouse automation and operational transition. Skilled in readiness planning, risk assessment, and performance tracking. Strong cross‑functional collaborator across engineering, PM, software, and service. Executive‑level communication and influence. Strategic, analytical, and structured problem‑solver. Effective change leader who drives customer adoption and operational transformation. Dematic is proud to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants. Dematic prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, religion or belief, age, sex, national or ethnic origin, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training. KION brands keep the world moving – globally, regionally, and locally. KION is the Supply Chain Solutions Company. With over 42,000 employees in more than 100 countries, we enable smart, sustainable, and reliable supply chains worldwide - wherever goods are stored, moved, or delivered. KION offers its customers the full spectrum of solutions to make their supply chains future-ready. Our international brands, Linde Material Handling, STILL, and Baoli and our regional brands, Fenwick and OM, stand for outstanding technological innovation, intelligent automation and service excellence in forklift trucks and warehouse equipment. Dematic complements this expertise with state-of-the-art automation technology and AI-supported software solutions that optimize intralogistics across warehousing, production, and distribution. Whether locally or globally – we offer exciting career opportunities in an innovative environment shaped by our core values: Integrity, Collaboration, Courage, and Excellence. Together, we create the magic of supply chain solutions. Join our team – Push it forward.