disguise sits at the heart of the most inspiring live and virtual experiences in the world, leading the market in building a software and hardware solution that designs, sequences and controls the most spectacular productions across film and TV, broadcast, live and corporate events.
Role Purpose:
The VPO will be one of the key senior management team positions at Disguise, working in close partnership with the COO and the leadership team.
The VPO will be responsible for assisting the COO (& CFO) drive profitable growth and value creation specifically across the Operations (& Finance) team/s, directly leading the Head of Operations & BI, Head of Procurement & Supply Chain and Senior Manufacturing Engineer to manage the extensive organic and acquisition growth and integration.
Working with the COO, you’ll seek out and execute on opportunities for improvement and prioritise them to set and execute the global operations strategy and roadmap in line with overall company objectives.
Responsibilities include:
- General
- Lead the global Business Operations and BI, Procurement & Supply Chain and Manufacturing teams, developing a high performance, agile working environment that is able to adapt, change and grow with.
- Deliver operational improvement that allows disguise to grow its people, processes and culture at a higher pace and effectiveness.
- Help embed and support new process and technology solutions to drive improvements in global team performance and productivity.
- Understand and document processes and procedures to allow global consistency and compliance,.
- Cultivate a collaborative and positive culture across team with a hands-on approach, helping develop a group of bright, young and highly motivated individuals
- Work with team leads to establish personal goals that continue to drive and challenge them
- Adapt the structure and scale of the team as the company's needs change
- Ability to deal with rapidly evolving area of technology and business with ability to stay at the cutting edge.
- Direct, manage and deliver through the application of comprehensive processes.
- Collaborate and partner with others across the business to plan and execute projects, ensuring that teams have appropriate direction and resources to deliver on aggressive, but achievable timeline.
- Ensure the team’s success by proactively removing schedule and roadblocks with a positive, solution focussed mindset.
- Collaborate with peers to creatively solve problems and drive company-wide objectives.
- Track, produce, analyse, and action upon key metrics & milestones to ensure strategies and initiatives are delivered on time.
- Assist the COO in communicating the company roadmap
- Specifics
- Supply Chain & Procurement - Supporting the Head of Supply Chain & Procurement execute the hardware supply chain strategy and procurement initiatives, including:
- Optimise both existing suppliers and/or establish new suppliers that can provide the global supply, support and distribution required of our product development roadmap to meet our ever-growing market penetration.
- Negotiating major client contracts & commercial partnership agreements, ensuring economic, legal and risk aspects resulting in robust commercials
- Ensure continuity of supply and continuous cost management (reduction and avoidance) of direct materials to drive gross margins through intelligent sourcing and strategic relationships with key manufacturer’s/ suppliers
- Analysis and strategic direction on indirect/ overhead contracts/ commercial partnership agreements to ensure maximum quality and value
- Fulfilment & Logistics - Support the Head of Operations and Business Information execute the fulfilment and logistics strategy and initiatives, including:
- Ensure supply and demand (including peak/ high demands) across the supply chain are in harmony, delivering 100% OTIF
- Manage and report stock levels of both Finished Goods and Component inventory to maximise service levels whilst minimising risk and cash
- Establish and manage 3PL partner/s that enable seamless distribution and storage of goods globally
- Manage movements of goods (inwards and outbound) including management of RMAs and Service Centre materials
- Control and management of capital requests (internal servers and auxiliary equipment)
- Manufacturing Engineering & Service Centres - Support the Senior Manufacturing Engineer execute the strategies to support a growing portfolio of products and network of Service Centres, including:
- Manage and optimise the build quality, standards, documentation, bills of material, etc across 3rd party manufacturing partners
- Ensure existing and future partners have the continuous capability, capacity and quality standards, to cope with continuous enhancing technologies
- Drive NPI, bridging the gap between hardware design and operations/ 3rd party manufacturing to ensure smooth and efficient transition from concept to reality
- Lead the customer service strategy with the continued establishment of service centres across the globe supporting in-country RMAs and upgrades
- Develop and implement robust automated tools to test, track and feedback information relating to servers and manufacturing processes
The Requirements
- Experienced at scaling global product and technology-focused businesses.
- Demonstrable ability to execute strategy. You are able to be impactful and effective as well as play the role of number two to the COO.
- Proven experience of how to organise and operate a growing company to use great technology to build amazing products for users
- Strong organisational leadership skills, self-motivation, and growth-oriented mindset to lead, motivate, and inspire the team to deliver high-quality outcomes and be held accountable for their performance.
- You demonstrate a balance of process and culture. You understand that most processes work in the right culture. You know when to nudge culture, change process or both to achieve even greater impact.
- You’ve developed a deep toolkit of different approaches and you know when and how to use them.
- Ideally have experience of leading operations globally, not just in one location or timezone.
- Fantastic stakeholder management skills including C-Suite communication and presentation
- The ability to ruthlessly adapt priorities with agility and finesse
- Growth Mindset
- Subject Matter Expertise
- Strategic Thinking & Foresight
- Change Management skills
- Decision Making ability
- Emotional Intelligence
- Employee Coaching experience
- Proven company leadership experience
Behaviours
- Collaborative, a natural team player.
- Thriving in a dynamic and fast-paced environment.
- Self-motivated, brave and ambitious for the company.
- Respectful of diversity.
- ‘All in,’ committed and passionate about the company.
About disguise
Building on our two-decade legacy in the live event space, where our workflow has powered global concert tours for artists like U2 and Beyoncé, festivals like Coachella and Glastonbury and theatre productions like Frozen and Harry Potter, in the past year we have also led the way in Extended Reality (xR) for remote virtual production.
Our award-winning xR workflow has enabled over 300 productions in the past 12 months, for music artists such as Katy Perry and Billie Eilish, broadcast TV channels like ITV and Eurosport, enterprise businesses like SAP and Siemens, educational institutions like the University of Michigan and notable VFX studios like Framestore and DNEG.
We partner closely with Epic Games, NVIDIA, Netflix and many more to further develop and democratize our virtual production solution and enable teams anywhere to create their best story with the most innovative tools.
With offices in London, LA, Barcelona, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul and Tokyo, we are a fast-growing company that hires bright, creative, talented individuals across the world to push the boundaries of visual experiences and build lasting relationships with our community.
We were delighted to be recognized as one of the Financial Times’ top 1000 fastest growing businesses for 2021. Watch our showreel to see just some of the incredible work of how disguise products are used
Our values
- Honest. We are real with ourselves and our clients and share our ideas with openness and transparency.
- Evolutionary. We innovate using our user’s ever-changing needs so our technology remains ahead-of-the-game.
- Fearless. We take the best path, not the easiest, and innovate where it’s right, not where it’s simplest.
- Resilience. We don’t give up until we find the right solution, even if it means going outside our remit.
- Belong. We create an environment where everyone feels like they belong and is empowered to do their best work.
Our benefits
We have a really competitive benefits package as we want to make sure we retain the best talent out there. Our benefits for every perm hire, globally include:
- LTIP scheme - disguise is aiming for $1bn 'unicorn' valuation in 2025, which would mean a payout to ALL employees (representing between 3 month and 2 years worth of salary)
- Salary - reviewed every twelve months w/ equal pay for equal work, and proactive pay increases for growing responsibilities
- Above and beyond gift voucher awards
- Long service rewards (3, 5, 10+ years)
- Gig allowance - £400 (or equivalent currency) on tickets every year
- Flexible hours - some people start work at 10am , and others begin at 7am and finish earlier. Create a pattern that works for your team and for you
- Hybrid working between home and our offices
- Enhance holiday entitlement - 20% above the statutory
- Belonging policies - including (but not limited to) support for Parental, Fertility, Miscarriage, Menopause and Transitioning
- Mental health and wellbeing - subscription to the calm app, weekly desk-yoga and mental health first-aid buddies
- Healthcare cash back plans & employee assistance programmes
- Training
- Coaching & mentoring
Don’t disguise your differences.
Innovation comes from everyone. We strive to create a workplace that reflects our diverse audience. We celebrate our people for their full authentic selves, and embrace uniqueness. Inclusion and Equity matter at disguise. We create together and we create everywhere.
