Vice President of Operations - Professional Services

Run and scale the delivery engine behind a growing technical professional-services and software company. You will lead a roughly 40-person organization, influence the performance of most company revenue, and partner directly with the CEO on strategy, growth, and acquisition integration. It is a high-impact operating role with a credible path toward broader COO-level responsibility as the business grows.

This confidential company serves public-sector clients nationwide and is expanding organically and through acquisition. It needs a hands-on leader who can bring financial discipline, clear accountability, and a scalable operating cadence without burying a fast-moving, relationship-driven business in bureaucracy.

This is not a back-office role or another layer of project management. You will lead through leaders, own delivery performance, and make the staffing and commercial calls required to improve utilization, contract achievement, quality, and margin. There is no billable target; your capacity is reserved for running the organization.

The Opportunity

Reporting to the CEO and serving on the senior leadership team, you will lead the Delivery/PMO leader and technical Capability Leads across approximately 40 consultants, project managers, and specialists. Because consulting revenue flows through billable delivery, your organization influences roughly 70% of company revenue.

You will own the delivery operating system: capacity, staffing, utilization, hours billed, budgets, contract achievement, scope discipline, quality, escalations, and portfolio margin. You will also help shape company strategy—pricing, staffing mix, investment and cost decisions, annual operating goals, new-business growth, net dollar retention, recurring-revenue mix, and the productization of repeatable offerings.

As future businesses are acquired, you will lead operational integration across systems, staffing, standards, and delivery practices. Broader COO-level scope is a real possibility, although there is no fixed timetable; expanded responsibility will follow demonstrated performance and business need.

What You Will Own

• Lead and develop the Delivery/PMO leader and Capability Leads through clear goals, 1:1s, performance conversations, and real accountability.
• Build a trusted cadence for staffing, capacity, delivery reviews, escalations, resource allocation, and portfolio performance.
• Create visibility into where delivery makes or loses money by project, capability, and person—and act on the findings.
• Improve utilization, hours billed, budget and contract achievement, scope discipline, quality, and gross margin.
• Review scopes, budgets, schedules, staffing assumptions, pricing, and complex pursuits before commitments become delivery problems.
• Make final allocation, people, budget, and scope calls when issues cannot be resolved at the leadership level.
• Replace recurring workarounds and individual heroics with repeatable practices that scale with revenue and headcount.
• Serve as executive sponsor for significant accounts and bring senior operating judgment to client, CEO, and business-development conversations.
• Lead the delivery-side integration of future acquisitions.

What Success Looks Like

• First quarter: establish command of delivery economics by project, capability, and person; put a working operating cadence in place; and clarify decision rights.
• Year one: leaders own outcomes at the right level, staffing and capacity reviews run on a rhythm the organization trusts, utilization and margin move for understood reasons, project performance is more visible, and fewer issues require CEO intervention.

What You Bring

You may come from professional services, consulting, managed services, systems integration, cloud or IT services, engineering or architecture services, software-connected services, military leadership, or another project-based operating environment. GIS experience is not required. The exact industry matters less than your ability to lead accountable teams, understand delivery economics, and build operating discipline in a growing company.

Strong candidates typically bring:

• Substantial operating and leadership experience—often 7+ years—with accountability for teams, leaders, delivery quality, staffing, client outcomes, and financial results.
• Commercial fluency in utilization, capacity, hours billed, project budgets, scopes, contracts, pricing, gross margin, and staffing tradeoffs.
• Evidence of building, fixing, scaling, or materially improving a real operating environment with measurable results.
• Sound judgment under pressure and the ability to make clear decisions with incomplete information.
• The EQ to earn trust before driving hard changes, plus the ownership mindset to stay hands-on while building systems that reduce fire drills.
• Credibility with technical professionals and senior clients without needing to be the deepest technical expert in the room.
• Learning speed, curiosity, and comfort exploring how automation and AI may improve services economics.

Pure strategy experience without hands-on operating ownership is unlikely to be enough.

Helpful Experience

• Project-based services contracts, scopes, budgets, pricing, and delivery economics.
• Scaling or restructuring a services organization.
• M&A integration.
• Professional-services automation, PSA, resource-management, ERP, or delivery-operations platforms.
• Public-sector contracting, GIS/geospatial, or technical consulting.
• MBA or comparable graduate business training.

A bachelor's degree or equivalent professional or military experience is expected; field of study is not a screen.

Compensation and Logistics

• Base salary: $170,000–$200,000 annually.
• Performance opportunity: an annual incentive may be offered, with a potential target of approximately $25,000. Terms are not guaranteed and will be confirmed during the offer process.
• Long-term upside: equity or broader profit participation may become available as scope grows; it is not guaranteed on day one.
• Benefits: health coverage and a retirement-plan match.
• Location: remote within the United States, with a preference for candidates in the greater Chicago area.
• Travel: limited travel as needed, especially early in the role.
• Status: full-time, exempt.

Hiring Process

This is a confidential search moving with urgency. The process is expected to include an initial screening conversation, a case exercise, a deeper behavioral interview, and a final onsite meeting before offer.

The hiring company is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, protected veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic.

At Urrly, fairness matters. We use AI to review every application against the same clear requirements for the role. Candidates are evaluated only on job-related factors such as skills, certifications, and experience, not personal attributes.

Apply now and get a response within 24 hours.