Chief Operating Officer

Job Purpose

The Chief Operating Officer (COO) is the operational leader of Input Output (IO) and the CEO’s peer on running the company. The role owns the business infrastructure that makes everything else possible, including how IO plans, decides, measures, delivers, and improves as an organisation.

IO is moving from a centralised operating model to one where business units have greater autonomy, supported by shared enterprise infrastructure. The COO leads that transition, replacing informal, person-dependent processes with adaptive, AI-enabled systems that scale. The role is accountable for the design and deployment of IO’s business operating system, including the frameworks, workflows, metrics, and governance structures that let the organisation run at scale without depending on individual heroics.

The COO leads Enterprise Operations, ICT, AI, People, Finance, Legal, and Venture Studio operations. The role works in close partnership with the CEO, and with C-suite peers including the Chief Technology Officer, Chief Product Officer, Chief Scientist, and Chief Financial Officer, to shape and execute organisational strategy. The COO also plays a critical supporting role in the rebuild of IO’s engineering and delivery capability, partnering with the CTO to bring the organisational rigour of elite software companies into IO’s operating model.

The COO co-owns the technical rebuild of IO’s engineering capability, bringing the organisational rigour and engineering culture of elite software companies to a technically ambitious, globally distributed team.

Requirements

Key Responsibilities

Running the Company

• Own IO’s operational model, including the structures, systems, and rhythms that keep the organisation coherent across business units and geographies.
• Build the frameworks that enable functional autonomy while maintaining enterprise-wide alignment.
• Serve as the primary operational decision-maker for the company, with a clear view of what is happening, what is stuck, and what needs to change. This includes decision authority on facilities costs and M&A costs.
• Manage IO’s Book of Work, including what is in flight, what is next, what is blocked, and what needs to stop.
• Lead the Executive Committee, driving the operating cadence of the executive team, including agenda, decisions, and follow-through.
• Set the meeting philosophy for the executive team: meetings exist to answer why IO is not hitting its KPIs, and what remedy needs to be installed.
• Partner with the CEO to agree the internal communications strategy, including how change is explained and adopted across the company.

Business Operating System

• Own the design and deployment of IO’s business operating system, including the frameworks, workflows, metrics, and governance structures that enable the organisation to run at scale without person-dependency.
• Partner with the Business Operating System Design team to ensure the operating model is built for adoption, and that it works for the people using it.
• Lead the transition from informal processes to systematic, AI-enabled infrastructure, replacing individual expertise with scalable, institutional knowledge.
• Ensure the operating system continuously adapts through feedback loops and AI-driven insights, so that the infrastructure improves itself over time.

Metrics, KPIs, and Performance Management

• Identify the metrics that matter for the survival and success of the business, and build the operating system tuned to those metrics.
• Set the KPI framework across the organisation, including how KPIs are defined, cascaded, measured, and reviewed.
• Ensure decisions are grounded in measurement, and hold executive peers and function leaders accountable for the metrics in their domain.
• Drive continuous improvement through visible, quantitative signals rather than opinion or narrative.

Supporting the Engineering and Delivery Rebuild

• Support the CTO in the rebuild of IO’s engineering and delivery organisation, providing the operational scaffolding, governance, and enterprise services required.
• Partner with the CTO to help import the operating disciplines of elite software companies, including delivery discipline, product-engineering collaboration, and technical hiring standards, into IO’s wider operating model.
• Partner with the CTO and the Chief People Officer on technical headcount strategy and workforce planning, ensuring IO can attract and retain the calibre of engineers and product leaders the mission requires.
• Support the integration of engineering velocity and delivery metrics into IO’s performance management framework, so that delivery is measurable and improving.

Enterprise Services

• Drive the Enterprise Services model, ensuring People, ICT, Finance, and Legal operate as a coherent, SLA-driven internal service capability.
• Set service standards and performance expectations across enterprise functions, and hold function leaders accountable for delivery.
• Own contracts management, procurement, and vendor strategy at the enterprise level, including major supplier relationships and cross-functional contracts.
• Own enterprise facilities, workplace, and remote-first operations, including how IO supports a globally distributed workforce.

AI-Native Operations

• Set IO’s strategy for how AI is used across the business, partnering with the VP of AI and Data to build AI-first workflows across operations.
• Own the workforce architecture model, including where AI agents operate, where humans direct, and how that balance evolves.
• Apply cybernetic principles, including feedback loops, requisite variety, and distributed control, to real operational problems, and design systems that self-regulate and improve.
• Champion IO as a demonstration case for what an AI-enabled organisation can achieve, including the practical build-out of agentic systems in support of operations.

People, Culture, and Talent

• Work with the Chief People Officer (CPO) to ensure IO attracts, develops, and retains the talent it needs to execute its mission.
• Partner with the CEO and CPO on organisational design decisions, acting as the operational architect of the structure while the CEO sets strategic direction.
• Partner with the CPO to oversee compensation frameworks, performance management, and enterprise learning and development.
• Drive a culture of accountability, psychological safety, and continuous improvement, and set the standard through how the role operates.
• Champion leadership excellence across the functions in the COO’s remit.

Finance, Legal, and Risk Stewardship

• Hold group-level budget authority across the functions in the COO’s remit, ensuring resources are always allocated to strategic priorities.
• Partner with the CFO to deliver rigorous annual and quarterly budgeting, reliable reporting, and a clear view of IO’s financial health.
• Bring strong risk and cost sensing to major operational decisions, including a clear-eyed view of sunk costs, hidden dependencies, and what IO is signing up for when it commits.
• Ensure Legal and Compliance operate proactively, identifying risks before they become incidents.
• Own enterprise operational risk, business continuity, and incident response at the executive level.
• Partner with ICT and Legal on information security, data governance, and privacy at enterprise level.

Venture Studio Operations

• Own the operating model of IO’s Venture Studio, including how ventures are incubated, resourced, and moved through the studio pipeline.
• Ensure ventures have access to the enterprise services they need, and that shared infrastructure scales with the portfolio.
• Partner with the CTO, Chief Product Officer, and Chief Innovation Officer on the operational side of technical incubation and spin-outs.

CEO Partnership and External Presence

• Act as the CEO’s operational peer, taking the weight of running the company so the CEO can operate at highest leverage on strategy, external relationships, research direction, and ecosystem leadership.
• Represent IO in high-stakes operational and governance contexts, including board reporting, regulatory conversations, and partner negotiations.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with IO’s functional leaders, board members, and key external partners.
• Tell the CEO what needs to be heard, with the honesty and directness that peer-level trust requires.

The above list of responsibilities is not exhaustive. You will be expected to perform additional tasks as required by the evolving needs of the role and the organisation.

Key Competencies

Span of Control

• Oversees organisation-wide and enterprise-level operational functions across IO, including Enterprise Operations, ICT, AI, People, Finance, Legal, and Venture Studio operations.
• Manages multiple VPs and divisional leaders across those functions.
• Influences the company’s overall direction and performance through broad functional leadership.

Strategy

• Shapes and aligns organisation-wide strategic decisions alongside the CEO and President.
• Ensures that functional areas, including finance, operations, technology and people, are aligned to support key growth and transformation goals.
• Operates with executive-level autonomy to set policies, allocate resources, and shape strategic initiatives across the operational domain.
• Collaborates with the CEO and President on cross-functional priorities, but otherwise operates with significant independence.

Budget Responsibility

• Holds enterprise-level budget responsibility across the functions in the COO’s remit, including approval authority for facilities costs and M&A costs.
• Approves large-scale resource allocations and collaborates with the President and CEO on cross-functional and enterprise-wide financial decisions.

Reporting Line

• Reports directly to the CEO and serves on the executive leadership team.
• Collaborates with peers in the C-suite, including the Chief Technology Officer, Chief Product Officer, Chief Scientist and Chief Financial Officer, to shape and execute organisational strategy.

Scope of Influence

• Drives performance standards, innovation, and cross-functional cooperation at the organisational level.
• Shapes policies and initiatives that affect the entire enterprise, including the business operating system, governance, enterprise services and workforce architecture.

Executive Leadership

• Leads the operational function at enterprise level, including the business operating system, enterprise services and workforce infrastructure.
• Owns the leadership bench for the operational domain, ensuring structure, capability and succession.
• Manages other senior leaders, including VPs and EVPs, and sets standards for leadership development and performance across the organisation.
• Collaborates with C-suite peers to align leadership expectations across the company.
• Champions leadership excellence within the operational function.

Specialist Skills

• Strong systems thinking and cybernetics, with the ability to apply feedback loops, requisite variety and adaptive control to real organisational problems.
• KPI and metrics-oriented, with the instinct to ask where the organisation wants to go, how it will get there and how it will measure progress.
• Deep interest in AI and agentic systems, including hands-on experience building agentic tools, even at an individual or small-team scale.
• Strong operational leadership across multiple functions, including People, Finance, Legal, ICT and enterprise operations.
• Proven ability to design and run governance frameworks, OKR systems and operating cadences that are actually adopted by large organisations.
• Strong risk and cost sensing, with the ability to see the full implications of significant commitments before they are made.
• Technically literate enough to earn the respect of engineers and product leaders, and to make sound investment trade-offs across ICT, AI and data.
• Comfortable with globally distributed, async-first teams.
• High emotional intelligence, low ego and a servant-leader orientation, with the ability to lead through relationships and clarity rather than hierarchy.
• Excellent judgment when handling confidential, commercially sensitive and high-impact strategic matters.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to speak with precision to boards, ExCom and working teams alike.

Education and Experience

• Extensive experience as a progressive leader, including significant time at C-suite or equivalent executive level with a broad functional remit.
• Proven track record leading operations at scale inside an engineering-led company. The industry (software, hardware, chemical or other) matters less than the depth of operational experience in an engineering environment.
• Experience leading multiple functions simultaneously, including operations, people, finance and technology- adjacent functions, in a complex global organisation.
• Experience leading large-scale organisational transformation, particularly transitions to distributed operating models.
• Background at a world-class software or technology company in a senior operational or general management role.
• Experience as a genuine peer or operational partner to a CEO or founder, operating as a co-leader rather than as a subordinate executing instructions.
• Strong background in OKR design, governance frameworks and cross-functional programme delivery.
• Demonstrated experience of AI, agentic systems and AI-enabled operations, including hands-on experimentation and experience building agentic systems.
• Familiarity with Web3, blockchain or deep tech is advantageous, and intellectual curiosity about the space is required.
• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Business or equivalent professional experience.