Zilch
Director of Operational Planning & Value Realisation
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Who we are:
Zilch is a payment tech company on a mission to create the most empowering way to pay for anything, anywhere. Combining the best of debit, credit and savings, we give our customers the option to earn instant cashback or spread the cost of pricier purchases, completely interest free and with no late fees. Pretty great, right?
We started in 2018 with a small team and a big dream - to make credit accessible to all. Since then, we've achieved double unicorn status and taken on more than 5 million customers. There are some exciting projects coming up and we’ve got big growth plans.
Want to join us?
About the role:
The Director of Operational Planning & Value Realisation is responsible for the commercial stewardship of Service Operations.
The role provides executive ownership for the planning, analytical and commercial disciplines that ensure operational investment, AI adoption, workforce strategy and transformation activity translate into measurable improvements in customer outcomes, operational efficiency and financial performance.
Working alongside Operational Excellence, the Director ensures Service Operations not only creates value through continuous improvement, but consistently realises that value through disciplined planning, commercial governance and operational optimisation.
Primary Accountabilities
The Director is accountable for ensuring Service Operations continues to improve its economic contribution to the wider business. This includes executive ownership for:
- Operational planning
- Workforce strategy
- Supplier strategy
- Business Analysis
- Commercial modelling
- Operational investment appraisal
- Benefits realisation
- Cost-to-serve optimisation
- Productivity improvement
- Efficient growth
- Commercial governance of operational transformation
The role ensures Service Operations remains commercially efficient as customer volumes, AI capability and product complexity continue to grow.
Day to day responsibilities:
Commercial Stewardship
- Provide executive ownership for the commercial performance of Service Operations.
- Ensure operational investment decisions maximise customer outcomes alongside financial performance.
- Develop robust commercial frameworks supporting operational decision making.
- Partner with Finance to improve visibility of operational economics.
- Ensure Service Operations contributes positively to broader business performance.
Operational Planning
- Lead long-term operational planning. Develop strategies covering:
- Workforce capacity
- AI adoption
- Outsourcing
- International expansion
- Operational resilience
- Resource allocation
- Ensure Service Operations remains scalable as the business grows.
Business Analysis & Value Realisation
- Lead the Business Analysis function.
- Develop robust business cases supporting operational investment.
- Establish consistent approaches to:
- Opportunity sizing
- Commercial modelling
- Investment appraisal
- Benefits realisation
- Ensure every significant operational initiative has clearly defined success measures and measurable financial outcomes.
- Track realised benefits and challenge initiatives that fail to deliver expected value.
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Workforce Strategy
- Lead Workforce Management.
- Develop long-term workforce strategies that balance:
- Customer demand
- AI capability
- Automation
- Internal capability
- Outsourced delivery
- Operational resilience
- Ensure workforce planning evolves beyond forecasting into strategic operational capacity planning.
Supplier Strategy
- Lead Supplier Management.
- Develop long-term sourcing strategies that balance:
- Customer outcomes
- Operational resilience
- Commercial performance
- Scalability
- Ensure supplier strategy evolves alongside increasing automation and international growth.
- Lead executive supplier governance.
Executive Decision Support
- Provide analytical support for executive operational decision making.
- Develop executive dashboards covering:
- Cost-to-serve
- Productivity
- Operational investment
- Benefits realisation
- Workforce strategy
- Supplier performance
- Support prioritisation of operational investment.
- Provide evidence-based recommendations to the Operations Leadership Team.
Leadership Responsibilities
- Lead the teams responsible for:
- Workforce Management
- Business Analysis
- Supplier Management
- Develop a culture of commercial thinking.
- Embed disciplined planning and evidence-based decision making.
- Build organisational capability in commercial modelling, investment appraisal and benefits realisation.
- Coach leaders to understand the economic impact of operational decisions.
Success Measures
The Director will be accountable for improvements in:
Commercial
- Cost-to-serve
- Productivity
- Return on operational investment
- Benefits realisation
- Financial contribution of Service Operations
- Operational efficiency
Planning
- Forecast accuracy
- Capacity utilisation
- Workforce planning maturity
- Supplier performance
- Operational scalability
Strategic
- Financial value realised from transformation
- Quality of investment decisions
- Readiness for international expansion
- Readiness for AI-enabled operating models
- Commercial sustainability of Service Operations
What does success look like
The successful candidate is likely to have experience leading commercial, planning or strategy functions within an operational environment. Likely backgrounds include:
- Director of Business Planning
- Director of Commercial Operations
- Director of Operational Planning
- Director of Value Realisation
- Head of Operational Finance
- COO of a business unit
- Operations Strategy leader within consulting
The individual will bring experience in:
- Commercial leadership
- Financial modelling
- Operational planning
- Workforce strategy
- Supplier management
- Business case development
- Investment appraisal
- Benefits realisation
- Executive stakeholder management
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Experience supporting AI-enabled operational transformation and large-scale operational change would be advantageous.
Leadership Profile
The successful candidate will be:
- Commercially astute with strong financial acumen.
- Highly analytical and numerate.
- Comfortable operating at executive level.
- Curious, pragmatic and outcome focused.
- Able to balance customer outcomes with commercial priorities.
- Comfortable making complex investment recommendations.
- Confident influencing without relying on hierarchy.
- A strong systems thinker capable of connecting operational decisions to wider business performance.
What Success Looks Like
Within 12 months the Director will have:
- Established a single operational planning framework across workforce, supplier strategy and transformation.
- Introduced a consistent benefits realisation framework across Service Operations.
- Embedded commercial governance across all significant operational investment decisions.
- Improved cost-to-serve whilst maintaining or improving customer outcomes.
- Developed a long-term workforce strategy supporting AI adoption and international growth.
- Created executive visibility of the economics of Service Operations.
- Demonstrated measurable financial value from operational transformation.
- Positioned Service Operations as a commercially disciplined function that consistently converts operational improvement into measurable business value.
Benefits:
Compensation & Savings:
- Pension scheme.
- Death in Service scheme.
- Income Protection.
- Permanent employees enjoy access to our Share Options Scheme.
- 5% back on in-app purchases.
- £200 for WFH Setup.
Health & Wellbeing:
- Private Medical Insurance including;
- GP consultations (video, telephone or face-to-face).
- Prescribed medication.
- In-patient, day-patient and out-patient care.
- Mental health support.
- Optical, dental & audiological cover.
- Physiotherapy.
- Advanced cancer cover.
- Menopause support.
- Employee Assistance Programme including:
- Unlimited mental health sessions.
- 24/7 remote GP & physiotherapy.
- 24/7 helpline for emotional & practical support.
- Savings & discounts on everyday shopping.
- 1:1 personalised well-being consultations.
- Gym membership discounts.
Family Friendly Policies:
- Enhanced maternity pay.
- Enhanced paternity pay.
- Enhanced adoption pay.
- Enhanced shared parental leave.
Learning & Development:
- Professional Qualifications.
- Professional Memberships.
- Learning Suite for e-courses.
- Internal Training Programmes.
- FCA & Regulatory training.
Workplace Perks:
- Hybrid working: office-based Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday; remote working Tuesday and Friday
- Casual dress code.
- Workplace socials.
- Healthy snacks.
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