Chief Operation Officer - COO
Role: Second Coach / Systems Coach
Your Role
The COO is the Second Coach of Sherpa, responsible for execution discipline, system flow, and operational coherence.
The COO ensures the organization operates daily according to the rules, structure, and principles defined by the CEO.
System Readiness & Operational
- Planning
- Translate CEO direction and rules into daily operational reality
- Ensure recruitment, legal, onboarding, payroll, and invoicing flows are aligned
- Validate that processes, tools, and people are ready before scaling or new client starts
- Identify operational bottlenecks before they become incidents
- Set operational priorities across Recruitment managers without taking ownership from them
Execution Coordination & Flow Control
- Coordinate daily execution between: Recruitment managers, Labour Managers, Risk & Security andShared Services
- Ensure clean handovers between: recruitment → legal → arrival → deployment → payroll → invoicing
- Intervene when tasks fall “between roles” or ownership becomes unclear
- Enforce timelines, discipline, and follow-through
Recruitment & Deployment Oversight
- Oversee recruitment timelines and volume delivery against plans
- Ensure Recruitment managers are realistic in promises and delivery
- Identify early risks in sourcing, agent performance, or timing
- Step in when recruitment execution threatens delivery or stability
- Escalate structural or repeated failures to the CEO
Legal, Risk & Compliance Oversight (Operational)
- Maintain daily awareness of: migration risks, documentation gaps and absconding signals
- Ensure Risk & Security stop-decisions are executed immediately
- Prevent operational pressure from bypassing legal or ethical boundaries
- Escalate critical or systemic risk directly to the CEO
Workforce Stability & Operational Discipline
- Monitor workforce stability across all Recruitment managers
- Ensure Labour Managers react immediately to absences, enforce discipline consistently and maintain field presence
- Intervene when workforce instability becomes a pattern
- Support corrective actions before issues escalate to crisis
Commercial & Financial Flow (Operational Level)
- Ensure service delivery matches: timesheets, payroll inputs, invoicing
- Identify operational behaviors causing: hidden costs, margin erosion and payment risk
- Coordinate with Finance on cash-flow-impacting issues
- Flag situations where operations must change to protect financial health
Incident & Escalation Handling
- Act as first escalation point for: operational breakdowns, cross-role conflicts and repeated execution failures
- Decide immediate corrective actions within delegated authority
- Escalate to CEO when: ownership breaks down, rules are resisted and problems become systemic
- Ensure decisions are executed, not debated
Continuous Improvement & System Evolution
- Observe how processes perform in real conditions
- Collect feedback from Recruitment managers and field operations
- Propose improvements to: SOPs, workflows and role interfaces
- Remove unnecessary steps, duplication, or friction
- Ensure evolution strengthens clarity and discipline, not complexity
You Bring
- Strong experience in operational management in complex, people-heavy environments
- Ability to enforce discipline without bureaucracy
- High sense of responsibility and integrity
- Clear judgment and strong escalation instincts
- Ability to coordinate multiple roles under pressure
- Hands-on mindset without stealing ownership from others
- Respect for authority, structure, and accountability
Sherpa DOO
About Sherpa Sherpa is an international workforce agency connecting global talent with leading employers across Europe. We recruit and deploy skilled foreign workers through a full-service model — from selection to arrival — with speed, precision, and care. We are not corporate — we are professional, self-driven, and transparent.