Fast grow UK subsidiary bank has begun the search for a new COO.

 

Up to £200k base for perfect candidate.

Discretionary bonus

Healthcare + Pension

4 days a week in London city offices.

 

This is a pivotal executive leadership role for an experienced Chief Operating Officer who combines strong operational leadership with deep regulatory awareness. Reporting directly to the Chief Executive Officer and holding the SMF24 Chief Operations Function under the Senior Managers & Certification Regime (SM&CR), the COO will play a central role in shaping the organisation's operational strategy, resilience and long-term success.

 

As a member of the Executive Committee, the COO will influence key business decisions, drive operational excellence and ensure the organisation remains resilient, scalable and well-positioned for future growth. Working closely with the Board, regulators and senior stakeholders, the successful individual will help foster a culture of accountability, continuous improvement and collaborative leadership across the business.

 

This is an opportunity to make a genuine impact, leading critical operations, sponsoring transformation initiatives and ensuring the organisation delivers exceptional service while maintaining the highest standards of governance and regulatory compliance.

 

Skills / Knowledge Required

 

·        Extensive senior leadership experience in banking operations within a UK-regulated financial institution.

·        Deep understanding of PRA/FCA regulatory frameworks, including SM&CR, operational resilience requirements, outsourcing rules and conduct expectations.

·        Demonstrable experience performing or directly supporting an SMF24 role.

·        Strong expertise in operational resilience, business continuity, crisis management and end-to-end operational process oversight.

·        Proven experience managing an Operational Middle Office.

·        Strong track record of involvement in IT projects, technology-enabled change and operational transformation.

·        Proven ability to manage operational risk within the first line of defence.

·        Strong governance and committee experience with Board-level influence.

·        Excellent leadership skills and ability to drive cultural change.

·        Strong analytical, strategic planning and problem-solving capabilities.

·        Exceptional communication skills and ability to engage with regulators and senior stakeholders.

 

Job role

 

Regulatory Leadership (SMF24)

 

As the approved holder of the SMF24 Chief Operations Function, you will:

Fulfil all SMF24 responsibilities in line with PRA and FCA requirements and expectations.

Ensure the organisation's operational framework remains robust, well-controlled and aligned with regulatory standards.

Promote and uphold the principles of the Senior Manager Conduct Rules across the operational environment.

Build and maintain trusted relationships with regulatory stakeholders.

 

Operational Leadership & Oversight

 

You will provide strategic leadership across the operational landscape, ensuring that processes, controls and capabilities support the organisation's ambitions.

Responsibilities include:

Maintaining oversight of core operational processes, systems and controls across the business.

Ensuring operational activities are efficient, scalable and aligned with the firm's risk appetite.

Driving operational effectiveness through ongoing improvement, innovation and simplification.

Providing leadership and oversight of the Operational Middle Office and associated operational functions.

 

Operational Resilience

 

Operational resilience sits at the heart of this role.

 

You will:

Lead and continually enhance the firm's Operational Resilience Framework.

Oversee the identification and management of Important Business Services (IBS) and associated impact tolerances.

Ensure the business can continue to deliver critical services during severe but plausible disruption scenarios.

Sponsor scenario testing, operational mapping and remediation programmes.

Maintain oversight of business continuity planning, crisis management and disaster recovery capabilities.

Deliver meaningful insight and reporting to Executive and Board-level stakeholders.

 

Governance & Executive Leadership

 

As a key member of the Executive Committee, you will help shape the organisation's strategic direction while ensuring strong governance remains embedded throughout the business.

You will:

Contribute to strategic planning, risk management and executive decision-making.

Provide clear and insightful reporting to the Board and Board Committees.

Champion a culture of accountability, transparency and operational excellence.

Support the business in balancing commercial objectives with regulatory expectations.

Outsourcing & Third-Party Oversight

 

You will ensure the organisation derives maximum value from its third-party partnerships while maintaining appropriate oversight and control.

This includes:

Overseeing outsourced services and key third-party relationships.

Monitoring service performance, resilience and regulatory compliance.

Ensuring outsourcing arrangements remain aligned with applicable regulatory requirements and business needs.

Identifying and mitigating risks arising from external dependencies.

 

Change, Transformation & Technology

 

The COO will act as a senior sponsor for strategic change initiatives that enhance operational capability and support the organisation's growth ambitions.

You will:

Lead and sponsor technology-enabled transformation programmes.

Ensure operational readiness for new platforms, systems and business capabilities.

Partner closely with technology teams and key stakeholders to deliver successful outcomes.

Balance innovation with operational stability, resilience and risk management.

Ensure change activity strengthens rather than compromises the firm's control environment.

 

Leadership & Culture

 

A key part of the role will be building high-performing teams and creating an environment where people can thrive.

You will:

Lead, mentor and develop leaders across the COO function.

Foster a culture of ownership, collaboration and continuous improvement.

Champion high standards of conduct, risk awareness and customer focus.

Ensure the function is appropriately resourced, skilled and positioned to support future growth.

Inspire teams to deliver operational excellence while embracing change and innovation.

 

What Success Looks Like

 

The successful COO will be a visible and influential leader who combines strategic vision with operational discipline. They will create an environment where strong governance, operational excellence and commercial growth work hand in hand, ensuring the organisation remains resilient, well-controlled and positioned for long-term success.

 

Your wellbeing, our mission. Join a company shaping a healthier world.

GET TO KNOW US

At Wellhub we’re revolutionizing workplace wellness. Our platform connects employees worldwide to the best partners for fitness, mindfulness, therapy, nutrition, and sleep—all in one simple subscription. Headquartered in NYC with team members in Europe, North America and South America, we’re on a mission to make every company a wellness company.

We believe work should be fulfilling, inspiring, and balanced. Here, you’ll find a team that values wellbeing, collaboration, and different perspectives, where passion and creativity push boundaries to create real impact. Your contributions will help shape a healthier, more balanced world for you and millions of people globally.

Join us in redefining the future of wellbeing!

THE OPPORTUNITY

We are hiring a Founder VP to build and lead our Occupational Health bet inside New Ventures, based in Brazil!

Occupational health is one of the largest, most regulated, and most stubbornly analog corners of corporate wellbeing. In Brazil alone it is a multi-billion real market: every company is legally required to run occupational exams, manage regulatory compliance (NR-01 and the new psychosocial-risk mandate, eSocial reporting), and look after the health of its workforce. Yet the industry still runs on paper, manual scheduling, fragmented clinics, and reports nobody reads. It is a market begging to be rebuilt. We intend to rebuild it, and to do it at AI speed.

In New Ventures, a small squad owns each new bet end to end, from earliest hypothesis through validation, MVP, and scale. The Occupational Health bet starts where the pain and the legal mandate are sharpest: regulatory and occupational compliance (SST), delivered at a fraction of the cost and friction of the incumbents. Over the long term, it has the potential to connect to the corporate health programs Wellhub already runs for millions of members and to the broader health and benefits stack, but that convergence is where the bet can go, not where it begins. Your job is singular: win this market.

You will own this bet the way a startup founder owns a company: single threaded, accountable for the outcome, not for slides. You set the vision, priorities, and roadmap. Your commercial and operations team reports directly to you, and you partner with our Product, Design and Engineering craft leaders, who staff your squad and multiply it with a fleet of AI agents. You take the bet from thesis through to a working product, first paying customers, and a business that scales. None of us have done this exactly like this before. That’s the adventure: it’s more fun to be a pirate than join the navy.

YOUR IMPACT

• Own the outcome of your bet: be the single threaded owner of the Occupational Health bet. The thesis, vision, priorities, and roadmap are yours, and you are accountable for turning it into a real, growing business in this market.
• Redefine an archaic market, don’t replicate it: you are here to change how occupational health works, not to ship a slightly nicer version of what exists.Close the loop between occupational, broker, and benefits data to create value and insights for targeted health actions. Question every legacy step (the manual exam booking, the paper ASO, the compliance theater) and rebuild the workflow around the member, the company, and AI. If the answer is “more of the same,” it is the wrong answer.
• Run it like a mini-startup: lead a small, single-threaded squad and your own commercial and operations team. Talk to HR and SST buyers every week, sell the first deals yourself, design the operating model, and set the pace. A small team plus a fleet of AI agents delivers what a much larger org used to.
• Make AI the product and the operating fabric: embed AI deeply into both the customer experience and the back office, not as a feature bolted on top but as the core mechanic that lets a lean team modernize an industry built on manual labor. Direct agents to compress compliance, scheduling, triage, and reporting that incumbents do by hand.
• Earn the right to expand: win first where the pain and the mandate are sharpest, then, over time, connect occupational health to the corporate health programs Wellhub already runs and to the broader health and benefits stack. That convergence is the long-term prize, not the starting offering. Be the person who can see the whole board while staying ruthlessly focused on the first move.
• Build the commercial engine: own go-to-market end to end, from ICP and pricing through pipeline, first customers, partnerships, and the path to repeatable revenue. You know this market’s buyers, brokers, and channels, and you know what it takes to win them.
• Bring product taste, founder mentality, and thrive in ambiguity: call great products great and bad products bad without flinching. Make decisions with incomplete information. Move toward the unknown rather than away from it. Treat the bet as if its survival depends on the choices you make this week, because it does.
• Live the mission: inspire and empower others by genuinely caring for your own wellbeing and your colleagues. Bring wellbeing to the forefront of work, and create a supportive environment where everyone feels comfortable taking care of themselves, taking time off, and finding work-life wellness.

WHO YOU ARE

• A domain expert who wants to disrupt the domain: you have deep, hands-on knowledge of managing health programs inside companies, ideally in the occupational health and safety (SST) market, or in an adjacent space such as corporate benefits, health plans, digital health, or insurtech. You know how the sausage is made today, the exams, the regulatory cycle, the clinics, the brokers, the HR buyer, and you are frustrated enough by it to rebuild it.
• A founder, not a caretaker: you have founded, run, or led a business or a major P&L as a general manager, and you are accountable by instinct. You came up close to the market and the customer, you’ve carried a number, and the best signal you’ve left a team is a business that grew and a model that worked, measured in customers and revenue, not headcount.
• A modernizer with a track record: you have taken something analog and made it digital, or taken something slow and made it fast. You’ve led change in a process-heavy environment, whether by building new operating models, digitizing operations, or acquiring and integrating technology, and you can point to what measurably improved.
• Commercially sharp: Extensive experience in or around corporate health, benefits, or SST, with real fluency in how this market buys and sells, including its operating model (ambulatories, exam networks, credentialed providers, brokers). You can name the customer problem behind every deal you’ve closed, in the customer’s own words, and you can build the engine that closes the next hundred.
• Genuinely AI-native, or determined to become it: you have an authentic enthusiasm for AI that goes beyond reading about it. You reach for AI as the default way to do more with less, you want to direct a fleet of agents to dismantle manual work, and you are comfortable being a beginner again on the things AI changes every month. You don’t need to write the code, but you need to put AI at the center of how this bet wins.
• Comfortable across the full lifecycle, sharpest from zero to one: you’ve taken things from earliest hypothesis through validation, first customers, and scale, and you know the work is different at each step.
• Bias to ship, with taste: you believe shipping and selling is the only way to learn, but you know which corners cannot be cut, especially where compliance and member trust are on the line. You ship Monday and iterate Tuesday, not “ship after the perfect plan.”
• English proficiency: advanced English is required, you’ll work daily with stakeholders across BR, US, and EU.

We recognize that individuals approach job applications differently. We strongly encourage all aspiring applicants to go for it, even if they don’t match the job description 100%. We welcome your application and will be delighted to explore if you could be a great fit for our team. For this specific role, please note that deep, hands-on experience managing health programs inside companies (occupational health / SST strongly preferred, or a closely adjacent market), a track record of founding or running a business or P&L, demonstrated experience modernizing an analog or process-heavy operation, genuine enthusiasm for and fluency with AI, and advanced English are mandatory requirements.

WHAT WE OFFER YOU

With thoughtful benefits, emotional wellbeing resources, and a culture that empowers you to take ownership of your role and your wellbeing, we create an environment where you can thrive in all dimensions of your life.

Our flexible benefits program allows you to customize some of the benefits, according to your needs!

Our benefits include:

WELLHUB: Free Gold+ membership with access to onsite gyms and studios, digital fitness programs, and online wellness resources for meditation, nutrition, mental wellbeing support, and more! Add up to three family members to your plan, ensuring access to wellness for those who matter most to you.

WELLZ: A complete emotional wellbeing program with a unique approach. It offers personalized journeys that combine individual therapy sessions (52 per year) and on-demand content.

HEALTHCARE: Health, dental, and life insurance.

FLEXIBLE WORK: As a Flexible First company, we offer hybrid and remote options to give you the freedom to work in a way that suits you. The model for this specific role can be discussed with your recruiter and hiring manager. When you join, use our home office reimbursement to set up your home office.

FLEXIBLE SCHEDULE: Flexibility for us isn’t just about where we work—it also means being able to shape how and when we get things done. Together with their leaders, employees define schedules that align with their time zones, team needs, and personal routines.

PAID TIME OFF: It’s important to take time away from work to recharge.Employees receive vacations after 6 months and additional 3 days off per year + 1 day off for each year of tenure (up to 5 additional days) + an extra holiday for your birthday!

PAID PARENTAL LEAVE: Welcoming a new child is one of the most special moments in your life. Take the time to be present and enjoy your growing family. We offer 100% paid parental leave to all new parents. Parents giving birth are eligible for an extended leave and a ramp-back period to return part-time while they get settled.

CAREER GROWTH: Access world-class platforms, participate in interactive sessions,  build your personalized development roadmap, and explore internal opportunities. We focus on continuous learning and feedback to support your journey toward personal and professional success.

CULTURE: You’ll join a team of passionate people who come together to break boundaries, support each other, and create a meaningful impact in workplace wellness. We win together, building trust through open communication and a culture where every perspective matters. Learn more about our shared culture and values here.

And to get a glimpse of life at Wellhub… Follow us on Instagram @lifeatwellhub and LinkedIn !

Diversity, Equity, and Belonging at Wellhub

We aim to create a collaborative, supportive, and inclusive space where everyone knows they belong.

Wellhub is committed to creating a diverse work environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law.

Our commitment to inclusion also extends to how we recognize and reward our people. We’re proud to be Syndio Fair Pay Certified, reflecting our ongoing dedication to equitable and fair pay practices across our global team. Read more about it here.

Questions on how we treat your personal data? See our Aviso de Privacidade para Candidatos.

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