Operating Unit Head

We are looking for an executive who owns the performance of a business or delivery unit end to end — its programs, people, commercials, and outcomes. This is a Head / Director-level leader who operates strategically while keeping tactical control: setting the unit's operating strategy, holding a portfolio of programs aligned to enterprise objectives, and ensuring safe, reliable, high-quality delivery across a growing and increasingly complex book of business. Unlike a project owner, this leader thinks in interdependencies and value: aligning initiatives to strategy so the sum of the programs produces transformative organizational value, not just a set of completed deliverables.

The defining shift for this seat in 2026 is leading the unit's move to an agentic operating model with governance intact. Analysts describe the emerging pattern as an operating-model change in which each core outcome — revenue, delivery, capital efficiency — has one clear owner, and AI absorbs coordination work that once justified extra management layers, without sacrificing governance or coherence. The unit head is the owner who makes that redesign real inside their span of control.

The value this person brings is a self-sufficient, accountable delivery unit that meets its commercial and quality targets while modernizing how work gets done — capturing AI value with the operational discipline that keeps initiatives from stalling on cost or unclear return.

We are seeking an accountable unit leader — someone who has owned outcomes for a business or delivery unit and can hold delivery, quality, and commercials together at once. They lead through other leaders, are comfortable with both the numbers and the people, and can set and execute a regional operating strategy across a fast-growing book of business. They think in terms of ownership rather than tasks: clear on what each outcome owner is accountable for, and intolerant of ambiguity about who owns what.

This is an executive profile that partners across delivery teams, PMO, finance, sales, product, and HR. It suits someone open to a hybrid engagement with multi-site oversight and mobilization to the Middle East, Europe, or North America depending on the client. The person we want is decisive, commercially aware, and a genuine developer of leaders — someone who builds the bench beneath them rather than becoming the single point of dependency.

A strong candidate for this role has run a unit or large program portfolio and answered for its margin and delivery — someone who has set standards, managed risk across programs, and built the leadership bench beneath them. They have navigated ambiguity, driven cross-functional collaboration, and reset a unit's trajectory when results slipped. They bring the judgment to lead AI-augmented change inside the unit without losing operational control.

In practice, the responsibilities break down as follows:

• Unit & program ownership: Own the unit's delivery, quality, and commercial performance; set standards for planning, risk, and QA; keep a portfolio of programs aligned to business objectives and manage the interdependencies between them.
• Commercial & operational ownership: Own budget, operating metrics, and service models; manage margin and utilization; build executive and client relationships and pursue growth — increasingly accounting for AI consumption as a real unit cost against delivered value.
• Operating-model & governance ownership: Set the unit's operating strategy with clear outcome owners and workflows; establish AI portfolio intake, value realization, and governance standards so initiatives are measured and consistent.
• People & leadership development: Build and develop the unit's leadership bench and delivery teams; empower human–agent teams as AI absorbs coordination overhead.

We want to see a leader fluent in delivery and commercials who understands the technology well enough to make sound calls, and who leads primarily through people and process. Just as important, we are looking for someone ready to steer AI adoption in the unit deliberately rather than reactively — treating it as a redesign of how the unit makes decisions, allocates resources, and translates strategy into execution.

Core leadership & delivery

• Program and portfolio leadership; SDLC fluency across Agile and Waterfall.
• Commercial management (budget, margin, utilization) and operating-model design.
• Risk management and QA governance across a portfolio of interdependent programs.
• Executive stakeholder, client, and cross-functional leadership.

Delivery performance (KPIs from research)

• Steers unit-level indicators together: delivery health, quality, margin, utilization, and client/stakeholder satisfaction.
• Owns value realization and ROI on the unit's initiatives, with intake and governance mechanisms to measure them.
• Manages AI consumption cost against delivered value as part of margin discipline.

This role is delivered through Solutions Chapter Group's Human Resources chapter (Chapter 12) as a Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) engagement, under our Executive Search stream. Rather than a "post-and-pray" marketplace approach, we use a Curated Professional Recruitment model: candidate profiles are pre-vetted in our internal database, and when a required profile isn't already available, our dedicated Scout network conducts global headhunting to secure it. We screen and match candidates against each client's specific requirements, and placements may be remote or an on-site deployment with mobilization to the Middle East, Europe, or the United States.

From a recruitment-fit perspective, we screen for:

• Ownership mindset; accountable for unit outcomes end to end.
• Strategic yet execution-focused, comfortable operating through ambiguity.
• Strong commercial and stakeholder judgment.
• A track record of developing leaders, not just teams.
• Openness to the engagement model (remote or mobilized on-site) and readiness for cross-region deployment.

Areas to explore at interview *(topics only)*

• Unit / portfolio ownership and accountability
• Commercial management (budget, margin, utilization)

Operating-unit ownership, program/portfolio leadership, commercial & budget management, people leadership, AI-augmented delivery