Deputy Chief Operating Officer

King’s College London is a leading global university, attracting ambitious students and staff from across the world and recognised for its academic excellence, global reputation, and significant research impact. Central to King’s Strategy 2030 is a commitment to delivering outstanding education and research, working in collaboration with high-performing, inclusive, and digitally enabled professional services.

This is an exciting and pivotal moment to join King’s as the university strengthens its operational foundations and advances institutional excellence in a rapidly evolving higher education landscape. Significant investment is being made in the performance, resilience, and continuous improvement of professional services to ensure alignment with King’s strategic ambitions and to provide outstanding support to our academic ambition and objectives.

Reporting to the Senior Vice President (Operations)/COO, the Deputy Chief Operating Officer will play a critical leadership role in shaping, enabling, and assuring the operational performance of professional services across the university. The postholder will lead key parts of the COO’s head office team, including the PS performance and planning function, university-level health and safety, strategic risk management, university wide business resilience and act as a key point of escalation for operational issues, ensuring clear and effective assurance and compliance across a complex organisation.  They also line manage the Faculty Directors of Operations, providing leadership; this will require close working with the Senior-Vice-President (Academic).

Working closely with Vice-Chancellor Senior Team members and peers on the University Executive, the Deputy Chief Operating Officer will ensure that our strategic objectives are grounded in operational reality and successfully embedded into business-as-usual activity. A strong emphasis will be placed on fostering a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring service enhancements deliver tangible, institution-wide benefits while supporting the university’s broader strategic ambitions.

As a senior leader, the role-holder will work collaboratively across faculties and professional services, directly managing senior colleagues and chairing key management fora. They will contribute to institutional decision-making through engagement with the University Executive and will deputise for the Senior Vice President (Operations) as required.

King’s is seeking an operationally experienced and strategically minded DCOO with a proven track record in operations leadership, financial and performance management, and organisational change, alongside the ability to build trusted relationships, work collaboratively, and inspire confidence across diverse stakeholder groups. The postholder will have worked in large, complex organisations with matrix structures.

For further information, please visit the job description and to apply, visit the Jobs at King’s pages. For a confidential and informal conversation, please contact James Ralphs or Robyn Eade within King’s inhouse Search team.

The closing date for applications is Friday 24th July at 10.00hrs.

Type / Role:

Subject Area(s):

Location(s):