Head of Operations

Reports to: CEO / Board / relevant committee

Location: UAE (ADGM or DIFC, as applicable)

Status: Full-time, senior leadership, approved person or equivalent

Role purpose: Lead the operational operating model of a regulated retail investment platform, ensuring the business can safely scale client growth, maintain robust outsourcing governance, deliver reliable platform operations, and demonstrate strong operational resilience and control. The role owns the operational capability of the business, while working closely with Compliance, Risk, Legal, Technology, and client-facing teams.
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Key responsibilities:

• Own client onboarding operations, account opening workflow, verification coordination, and operational throughput.
• Oversee platform operations, trade support, cash movements, reconciliations, and exception handling.
• Manage outsourcing relationships with brokers, custodians, technology vendors, payment providers, and support partners.
• Monitor SLAs, service incidents, backlog levels, and operational performance metrics.
• Lead business continuity planning, disaster recovery arrangements, and resilience testing.
• Coordinate operational implementation of regulatory or internal change projects.
• Maintain operational MI and dashboards for senior management and board review.
• Lead root-cause analysis for operational incidents, control breaks, and process failures.
• Ensure documented handoffs and controls exist across all critical workflows, especially where services are outsourced.
  

Regulatory accountability

• Maintain an operating model that supports safe retail client servicing, onboarding, trading, payments, reconciliations, and support.
• Ensure all outsourced and interdependent service providers are governed through clear SLAs, oversight routines, escalation paths, and documented controls.
• Maintain operational readiness for new client phases, product launches, or platform expansions.
• Ensure the firm can evidence operational resilience, incident response, and recovery capability to internal governance and regulators.
• Provide board-ready reporting on capacity, service quality, incidents, remediation, and operational risk trends.
  

Reserved matters and escalation rights

• No new client growth phase may proceed without documented operational readiness sign-off.
• No new vendor, platform integration, or outsourced critical service may go live without testing, control validation, and approval.
• Material operational incidents, repeated SLA breaches, failed reconciliations, or control gaps must be escalated immediately to senior management and relevant committees.
• The Head of Operations may recommend suspension of onboarding, trading, or service activity where operational risk is not acceptably controlled.
• Material resilience or continuity weaknesses must be reported with remediation timelines and ownership.
• Operational evidence supporting regulator-facing submissions must be reviewed and approved through the firmʼs governance process.
  

Interfaces with Compliance:

Operations owns execution, process control, resilience, and service delivery. Compliance owns regulatory interpretation, compliance monitoring, policy advice, and challenge. The Head of Operations should partner with Compliance on client onboarding controls, complaints routing, breach escalation, and regulatory change implementation.
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Candidate profile:
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Must have

• 10+ years in operations leadership within regulated financial services, fintech, wealth management, asset management, or retail investment platforms;
• 5+ years at Head of Operations / COO level in a client-facing regulated environment; strong track record of scaling operations through growth phases;
• Deep experience with outsourcing governance, broker/custodian relationships, and operational resilience;
• Strong governance, reporting, stakeholder management, and issue-resolution skills.

Nice to have:

• Experience in ADGM or DIFC regulated environments;
• Familiarity with Islamic finance operational requirements;
• Experience with virtual assets operational infrastructure;
• Arabic language skills.