REMOTE

Senior Manager, Operations & Delivery

ARDEM Data Services Private Limited

UNIT No B-1/ 5th Floor 504 & 505 DLF MY PAD, Vibhuti Khand Gomti Nagar, Lucknow – 226010, India

Telephone: (phone hidden)

Email: [email protected]

Location: India, with meaningful overlap with US Eastern Time

Role Type: Hands-on functional leader; client-facing and internally accountable

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Role Mandate

Mission

Own the performance, growth, client confidence, people, controls, and economics of ARDEM’s complete portfolio of client Operations & Delivery engagements across non-accounting managed operations.

Why This Role Exists

ARDEM needs a single senior leader who can manage the Operations & Delivery portfolio as a business and an operating function. The role exists to provide oversight with clear portfolio ownership, stronger Project Owners / Service Delivery Leads, credible client leadership, disciplined production control, and scalable delivery across data processing, back-office workflows, logistics operations, utilities support, healthcare administration, contact centre operations, and related managed operations processes.

Nature of the Role

This is a hands-on functional leadership position. This person is highly technical in Operations Management and managed-services delivery. They are an expert in production control, SLA/TAT governance, workforce and capacity planning, queue and backlog management, and process improvement.

This person leads and acts as the technical expert to the Project Owners / Service Delivery Leads. The person must be able to lead managers and teams, represent ARDEM with clients, understand operating details, make decisions, and improve the function. The role is not intended for an administrator, coordinator, policy owner, or senior individual contributor who has not carried comparable accountability.

Organizational Scope

- All client Operations & Delivery engagements, including data processing, back-office workflows, logistics operations, utilities support, healthcare administration, contact centre operations, and adjacent managed operations services.
- Direct leadership of the Project Owners / Service Delivery Leads assigned to the Operations & Delivery portfolio.
- Approximately 30 client portfolios of managed operations projects, many with teams of 1–3 FTE.
- Client governance from kick-off through stabilization and steady state, including at-risk and strategic-account reviews.
- Portfolio economics: revenue, direct cost, margin, capacity, productivity, retention risk, and expansion opportunity.
- Provide technical guidance to Project Owners / Service Delivery Leads for all production control, SLA/TAT, and operational responsibilities.

What The Role Owns

- Portfolio delivery and SLA/TAT performance
- Client confidence, retention, and escalation leadership
- Project Owner / Service Delivery Lead capability and accountability
- Staffing, capacity, succession, and personnel decisions
- Operations controls, process documentation, quality, and production readiness
- Portfolio revenue, cost, margin, and productivity
- Functional training standards and production readiness
- Support for discovery, solution design, transitions, proposals, and expansion

Four Enterprise Outcomes While all four pillars are equally important within the organization, in this role, the focus of this role is Client Satisfaction and Employee Satisfaction. The ability to support Revenue and Cost related initiatives will help you to grow within the organization. Area Expectation Client satisfaction Clients know who is accountable, receive proactive communication, see risks early, and experience controlled, dependable delivery. Employee satisfaction Managers provide clarity, coaching, fair accountability, development, and a working environment in which capable people can succeed. Revenue The function protects retention, supports expansion, enables new business, and builds capacity for profitable growth. Cost and productivity The leader controls staffing, utilization, rework, preventable failure, external spend, and the cost of weak management or poor planning.

Responsibilities

Functional Leadership

- Own the complete operating performance of the assigned function, including priorities, standards, people, client impact, risk, and results.
- Establish clear accountability below the role so responsibilities do not remain concentrated with executive leadership.
- Build dashboards, review cadences, decision rights, escalation paths, and documented follow-through.
- Identify structural weaknesses and recommend the organization, roles, skills, and capacity required for the next stage of growth.
- Technical expert on all Operations & Delivery related projects, including production control, SLA/TAT governance,



and process improvement.

Client and Cross-Functional Leadership

- Create transparent senior accountability for client-impacting commitments and material risks.
- Participate directly in kick-offs, strategic reviews, at-risk situations, and major decisions relevant to the function.
- Work with Commercial, Operations, Quality, Talent, Technology, Finance, and future Solutions/Transition resources without transferring the role’s own accountability.
- Bring facts, options, recommendations, owners, and dates to escalations rather than forwarding problems.

People Leadership

- Own hiring quality, role clarity, performance management, coaching, development, engagement, retention, succession, and necessary personnel changes.
- Assess managers and key contributors based on demonstrated outcomes, judgment, client presence, control, and leadership behaviour.
- Create backup depth and reduce dependency on individual employees.
- Hold managers accountable for timely feedback, accurate performance evidence, and completion of development or corrective actions.
- Provide direction and “coaching” to junior level leaders.

Business and Financial Leadership

- Understand the revenue, direct cost, productivity, capacity, external spend, and business value connected to the function.
- Protect client retention and enable responsible growth.
- Identify avoidable cost, rework, weak utilization, poor prioritization, and recurring management burden.
- Make recommendations that balance client experience, employee sustainability, revenue opportunity, risk, and cost.

Definition of Success

- 100% Customer Satisfaction
- High Employee Satisfaction
- High Employee Retention
- Cost and Productivity Improvements
- Positive contributions to Expansions and Revenue Generation

Candidate Profile

Required Experience And Capability

- 12–15+ years in BPO, BPM, shared services, managed operations, or a comparable multi-client environment spanning data processing, back-office operations, logistics operations, utilities support, healthcare administration, or contact centre operations.
- Expert knowledge of production control, SLA/TAT governance, workforce and capacity management, and quality frameworks.
- Proven track record managing multi-client portfolios, queues, backlog, aging, and staffing.
- Demonstrated leadership of multiple operations accounts, teams, or service lines rather than one internal operations department.
- Strong client-facing experience with Operations leaders, Directors, VPs of Client Operations, and operational stakeholders.
- Working knowledge depth across data processing, back-office workflows, logistics operations, utilities, healthcare administration, contact centre operations, and related managed operations.
- Evidence of improving underperforming teams, strengthening managers, and making difficult personnel decisions.
- Strong operational management background; Six Sigma / Lean or an equivalent process-improvement certification preferred.
- Proven history of running weekly client governance, managing escalations, and closing corrective actions.
- Comprehensive experience managing the full delivery lifecycle: transition and stabilization, steady-state production, SLA/TAT management, and continuous improvement.

Leadership Behaviours Required At ARDEM

- Own outcomes rather than coordinate activity or report problems upward without a recommendation.
- Collaborate amongst leaders and peers to enforce a team-centric approach.
- While there is a clear definition of ownership, ARDEM values cross-departmental and team-based initiatives. People are encouraged to collaborate both with junior leaders, peers, and senior leaders to ensure highest customer satisfaction.
- Remain close enough to the work to challenge assumptions, diagnose issues, and coach managers without becoming the default individual contributor.
- Use facts, operating data, and direct observation to make decisions.
- Communicate early and clearly when commitments, controls, people, clients, or economics are at risk.
- Make and document necessary personnel decisions; do not preserve weak structures because change is uncomfortable.
- Work across functions without transferring accountability or allowing cross-functional ambiguity to become client risk.
- Build repeatable systems, cadences, standards, and management depth so the function becomes less dependent on founders or heroic individuals.





Likely Candidate Sources Priority should be given to candidates from BPO, BPM, shared services, managed services, outsourcing, data operations, logistics operations, contact centre operations, or comparable environments where leaders are accountable for multiple clients, teams, service commitments, and business outcomes. Title matching alone is insufficient; recruiting must validate actual scope and authority.

Candidate Disqualifiers

- Primarily single-client or internal operations experience without managed-services, shared-services, or multi-client leadership.
- A senior title without direct accountability for managers, clients, portfolio economics, and personnel decisions.
- Treats quality, training, staffing, or client communication as someone else’s responsibility.
- Cannot explain how they have improved SLA/TAT, backlog, utilization, retention, or manager performance.
- Overly high-level leadership style with limited willingness to inspect production work and operating evidence.

Hiring Evaluation Standard

Required Interview Evidence

- Describe the largest multi-account operations portfolio you personally owned. What were the revenue, team size, client types, and service lines?
- Walk through an account that was failing on SLA/TAT or backlog. How did you diagnose the problem, what decisions did you make, and what changed?
- How do you determine whether a Project Owner / Service Delivery Lead is capable, coachable, wrongly placed, or should be replaced?
- What operating data would you require each week across a multi-account operations portfolio?
- How have you protected margin while improving service quality and employee stability?
- How would you participate in solution design for a new operations chance without taking ownership away from Commercial?

Practical Assessment Provide a fictional portfolio of eight Operations & Delivery accounts with mixed SLA/TAT, margin, staffing, quality, and client-risk data. Ask the candidate to prepare a 30-minute portfolio review identifying priorities, management actions, client actions, people decisions, and the first four metrics they would implement.

Reference Check Focus

- Actual span of control and decision authority, not only title.
- Client-facing credibility and behaviour under pressure.
- Quality of people decisions and willingness to address weak performance.
- Ability to create operating discipline and improve results.
- Truthfulness regarding failures, trade-offs, and personal accountability.

Hiring Decision Rules

- Do not hire based primarily on title, company brand, presentation quality, compensation, or immediate availability.
- A candidate must demonstrate both functional depth and management ownership.
- A strong overall impression cannot compensate for weak evidence in integrity, client communication, people leadership, decision-making, or accountability.
- Every interview decision should document demonstrated strengths, material risks, development needs, and unresolved verification items.
- Urgency to fill the role should not lower the standard; a weak senior hire creates broader and longer-lasting organizational risk than a vacancy.

First 180 Days

- Confirm portfolio inventory, account ownership, staffing, client status, economics, controls, and major risks.
- Assess every Operations & Delivery Project Owner / Service Delivery Lead and identify immediate coaching, restructuring, hiring, or replacement needs.
- Establish weekly operating, risk, and financial review cadences.
- Join priority client conversations and establish a clear senior escalation path.
- Define portfolio-wide minimum standards for documentation, backup readiness, SLA/TAT control evidence, and production release.
- Deliver a 180-day improvement plan covering retention, margin, management depth, staffing, quality, and expansion support.

Executive and Recruiting Review Points Area Expectation Final title Confirm whether the recommended title accurately reflects scope and the external talent market. Reporting line Confirm the initial reporting line and any planned transition. Inherited team Confirm current direct reports and known capability gaps. Budget authority Define approved hiring, vendor, travel, compensation, and operating boundaries. Success measures Set baseline measures during the first 60 days, then finalize 12-month targets. Search strategy Identify target companies, candidate profiles, compensation range, and recruiter ownership.

Final Hiring Standard

ARDEM is hiring a functional owner, not an additional coordination layer. The successful candidate must be able to assume real accountability, strengthen the management team, create client confidence, improve the operating system, and make the function increasingly capable of scaling without daily executive intervention.

📌 Senior Manager, Operations & Delivery (Lucknow)
🏢 Ardem
📍 Lucknow