About the Role

This is a two-year senior operations mandate focused on strengthening and professionalising execution across Securex's guarding operation. The successful candidate will own how operational standards are designed, followed, and measured, with a clear focus on SOPs, KPIs, accountability, quality, and consistent service delivery.

The opportunity is not simply to maintain the current operation. Securex is looking for a hands-on operator who can diagnose what is getting in the way of consistent execution, build stronger management rhythms and leave behind a more disciplined operation. A central part of the mandate is to identify and develop an internal understudy who can take over the function at the end of the assignment.

What you'll be responsible for

Professionalise the operating system

• Review operational processes, SOPs, reporting lines, decision rights and management routines across the guarding business.
• Identify structural gaps that are creating inconsistent execution, weak accountability or service-quality variation.
• Simplify and strengthen operating standards so they are practical, understood and consistently applied.

Build execution discipline at scale

• Create a clear operating cadence around KPIs, performance reviews, escalation, field visibility and corrective action.
• Strengthen ownership and accountability across operational managers without becoming the bottleneck for day-to-day decisions.
• Ensure systems and standards translate into consistent performance across a workforce of approximately 6,000 guards.

Raise quality and service consistency

• Set a high bar for operational consistency, quality control and reliable service delivery across sites and teams.
• Use incidents, recurring exceptions and performance data to identify systemic weaknesses and intervene early.
• Balance operational quality with commercial realities, client expectations, cost and resource constraints.

Lead people and stakeholders

• Create clarity for operations leaders on priorities, standards, ownership and consequences.
• Work effectively with senior commercial, finance, procurement, technology and other functional stakeholders.
• Build credibility from the frontline to senior leadership by combining visible operational presence with clear decision-making.

Build the successor and hand over well

• Identify a credible internal understudy early in the mandate and build a deliberate development plan around real operating responsibility.
• Transfer knowledge, systems, management routines and decision-making discipline progressively rather than at the end of the assignment.
• Leave the operations function stronger, more consistent and capable of sustaining performance after the two-year mandate.

How you show up

• You are a visible operator who wants to understand how work actually happens on the ground, not manage only through reports.
• You bring structure and discipline without unnecessary bureaucracy; standards matter because they improve execution.
• You stay calm under pressure, make clear decisions and expect ownership when performance slips.
• You can move comfortably between frontline operational detail and senior-level commercial conversations.
• You build people as deliberately as you build systems and lead diverse teams with cultural awareness and respect.

Your strong foundation

Experience

• Senior operational leadership experience in a complex, distributed or 24/7 environment with meaningful scale.
• A strong Armed Forces or Police foundation, followed by reasonable corporate or office-based leadership experience.
• Evidence of leading operational transformation rather than only maintaining an already mature operation.
• Significant operating experience in African markets, ideally across more than one country or regional environment.
• Experience in security, defence services, logistics, aviation, facilities, remote-site services or another operations-heavy environment is highly relevant.

Execution

• You have personally led large frontline operations and can clearly quantify the people, sites, geographies, budgets and KPIs you owned.
• You can translate strategic intent into practical SOPs, management routines, clear ownership and measurable follow-through.
• You use KPIs and operational data to identify exceptions, intervene early and drive measurable improvement.
• You understand workforce deployment, quality control, incident follow-through and the commercial trade-offs behind service delivery.

Communication and influence

• You can engage credibly with senior executives, functional peers, clients, field managers and frontline teams.
• You can challenge underperformance clearly and constructively without creating unnecessary friction or ambiguity.
• You turn operational complexity into simple priorities, decisions and actions that people can execute.

Commercial and business insight

• Strong commercial awareness, including the ability to balance service quality, client expectations, cost and operational risk.
• Comfort working with budgets, operational performance data and the financial implications of operational decisions.
• Or - you may not have held every expected title, but you have operated in high-stakes, high-velocity environments and can demonstrate the breadth, judgement and results this mandate demands.

This role is not for you if...

• Your strongest experience is advisory or strategy work without direct accountability for operational outcomes.
• You have limited experience leading large, dispersed frontline workforces and prefer managing small professional teams.
• You are most comfortable preserving established ways of working rather than confronting difficult operational inconsistency.
• Your leadership relies mainly on hierarchy or command-and-control rather than building capable managers who can own performance.
• You are looking primarily for a permanent title rather than a defined two-year build, strengthen and hand-over mandate.

About Securex

Securex is strengthening the senior leadership capacity around its guarding operations. The business has capable managers in place, but senior leadership is currently carrying both commercial and execution responsibilities. This appointment creates dedicated senior ownership of operational discipline, quality and consistency.

The scale is significant: the systems and processes under this mandate support approximately 6,000 guards across East Africa. The challenge is not to write more policy for its own sake, but to ensure standards, KPIs, and management routines are consistently followed and translated into reliable service delivery.

What's in it for you?

• A rare, clearly defined transformation mandate with visible operational impact at significant scale.
• The opportunity to shape how a major guarding operation is run, from process and KPI discipline to leadership accountability and quality.
• A role where operational depth, judgement and measurable execution matter more than title or corporate theatre.
• The chance to build a durable leadership legacy by developing the person who will carry the function forward after the mandate.
• A senior expatriate package aligned to the scope of the assignment; compensation, relocation, travel, taxation and related benefits will be discussed during the recruitment process.