THE OPPORTUNITY

As the driving force behind Apollo, our cutting-edge marketing intelligence platform, the Head of Product Operations will play a pivotal role in shaping its future. This is a unique opportunity to lead and innovate within our dynamic and fast-growing business, where your hands-on approach and strategic insight will directly influence the evolution of a platform that’s central to our success. We’re looking for a proactive leader who thrives on complexity and is ready to make a real impact, ensuring Apollo continues to deliver exceptional value for our clients. Join us, and be part of a journey where your contribution truly matters.

WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING:

The responsibilities of the role are as follows, organised into the 5 core competencies of the role:

Enabling Operational Excellence

• Project & Incident Management
• Accountable for the health of our daily operations including effectiveness of agile rituals, use of task-tracking software and stakeholder communication
• Responsible for the daily leading of delivery & support resources to ensure timely, high quality output of Apollo's analytics services to customers
• Responsible for deeply immersing yourself in the core output of the business, building client & domain knowledge, and developing trusted relationships to garner influence and legitimacy
• Responsible for evolving our ways of working, within-team and with the business, to increase efficiency, collaboration and quality of output
• Responsible for defining a strategic product operations plan, gaining buy-in, effectively prioritising, and delivering a roadmap of incremental improvements to Apollo operations
• Responsible for documenting and socialising processes, flows and touchpoints

• Responsible for defining SLAs and key metrics to enable estimations, accountability and visibility for all stakeholders involved

Developing People

• Accountable for the overall output of the Analytics team, supported by the technical Analytics leads
• Responsible for directing/mentoring/coaching (as appropriate) team members to develop their competencies, impact and career growth
• Responsible for mediating all HR and line-management policy to team members and exemplifying the fulfilment of line manager responsibilities
• Responsible for evolving the team structure and developing managers to enable the team to grow and scale
• Responsible for relevant hiring responsibilities as they relate to open roles in your team
• Responsible for contributing to the shaping of our team structure and enterprise resource planning
  
• Accountable for overall management of onboarding projects (non-technical aspects relating to quality such as timeliness, prioritisation, communications etc.)
• Responsible for capacity management; allocation of team resource between "project" work and BAU
• Responsible for formalising onboarding project plans, maintaining progress tracking and producing status highlight reports for stakeholders
• Responsible for basic scrum master responsibilities during weekly project work - overseeing ticket status, progress and chairing rituals
• Accountable for the incident management process; escalation, incident tracking and learnings / mitigation actions
• Responsible for ensuring communications of known issues and active incidents are prompt and appropriateEnsuring Customer Success
• Accountable for overall customer success strategy and ensuring key customer forums take place and that they are followed up on
• Responsible for defining the customer success plan, in consultation with the senior analytics consultant, and providing status updates to senior internal stakeholders
• Responsible for defining product steering structures and best practices surrounding administration of existing products and services
• Responsible for contributing to the evolution of our commercial models and applicability for different customer profiles
• Responsible for contributing to the evolution of our marketing strategy and operational model to ensure we retain focus on quality of service
  
  

Training & Enabling Users

• Accountable for overall training and enablement to maximise the impact and value of the delivery of our services to our users
• Responsible for user engagement, product advocacy and feedback loops (surveys, working groups, town halls etc.)
• Responsible for tracking adoption, deriving insights and acting on information to drive improved engagement
• Responsible for defining and guarding a process for communicating product news including releases to users as appropriate
• Responsible for defining and rolling out a training plan for new and existing employees to ensure proper use of product capabilities
• Responsible for the establishing and stewarding of a self-serve knowledge base for internal users
• Responsible for collaboratively ensuring accountability amongst our internal user base for process adherence

THE SKILLS YOU WILL BRING

In order to thrive in this role, you will need the following skills & experience:

• Experience defining and managing operations for a software product in a fast-paced environment
• Experience in the advertising industry, especially within a Media Agency business context
• Experience overseeing support services
• Skilled at distilling complexity
• Experience line managing a medium sized team
• Skilled as a coach/mentor
• Experience delivering people-management training
• Experience building teams E2E - defining a vision, business casing, hiring and developing team structures
• Experience with agile project management and associated tools (esp. Jira)
• Experience with incident management
• Experience running a day-to-day operational team and managing task prioritisation/delivery
• Experience in developing and delivering customer success plans
• Experience chairing user engagement forums
• Exposure to different commercial models and routes to market
• Experience designing and delivering training plans and in relevant tools
• Skilled in building rapport and communicating effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders of varying levels of experience & seniority

BEHAVIOURS

The following behaviours are especially critical for the fit to this role:

• Organised - you are highly organised and don’t drop the ball, yet you prioritise effectively and take a value-oriented and pragmatic approach
• Optimistic - you are naturally positive and see the best in people, you see opportunities where others see problems and you are a creative problem solver
• Meticulous - you are detail and task oriented and you are absolutely not afraid of getting hands-on, whilst also as knowing when to delegate and steer
  

Strategic - you are able to set a vision and create & enact a detailed plan, adapted to the environment and business priorities

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM US:

Working at Medialab comes with lots of perks including all the usual things you would expect, such as a competitive salary package, pension, season ticket loans, cycle to work scheme, weekly social events and big summer / end of year parties.

On top of that, we offer extra incentives which make life at Medialab even more rewarding:

• 25 days holiday, (including office closure between Christmas and New Year)
• Birthday day off
• Mental Health Awareness Day off
• Holiday buying scheme
• Hybrid working between office and home.
• Flexi-hours
• Work abroad scheme.
• Private Medical Insurance
• Health Cash Plan
• Life Assurance
• Discounted Gym Membership
• Retail discounts
• Quarterly reviews to enhance career progression.
• Continuous professional development and training - CPD Platinum accreditation by the IPA
• Internal mentoring programme
• Membership to Bloom and bespoke mentorship for female talent
• A long weekend/week away at Medialab’s expense for long service
• Charity volunteering days fully paid.
• Free access to Health and Wellbeing Apps.
• Free professional counselling.Access to Mental Health Allies (1 in 15 employees are trained in Mental Health First Aid).
• Enhanced parental leave pay for new parents
• Virtual Dentist

WHO WE ARE:

Medialab is the UK’s leading independent media agency, and one of the fastest growing. We’re a media agency that’s made differently. Purpose-led, data-driven, founder-run and proudly independent.

Our independence means we can focus 100% on doing the right thing to secure success for our clients and our brilliant people. We work with a wide variety of clients including SunLife,Standard Life, Laithwaites Wine, EMMA, Save the Children, Mind, Guide Dogs, Alzheimer’s Society, RNLI and Clearscore.

We’re a diverse team of 150 people (and growing), based near Oxford Circus. Our people-first, purpose-driven culture has been key to our success. We commit to creating a more sustainable future through our partnership with FuturePlus, and foster a diverse and inclusive culture, though a number of DEI Communities to drive real change. We offer a supportive environment for working parents, carers, those who are (peri)menopausal and anyone else who needs it, and flexible working opportunities to all, from day one.

Our entrepreneurial spirit means success is rewarded and there are no limits to what you can achieve, which our employees agree with, by supporting our place in Campaign’s ‘Best Places to work’ for 4 years in a row, and we recently won Silver in Campaign’s Agency of the Year Awards.