The Opportunity
Orama is an Executive Search and advisory firm operating across the UK and US. We also act as a VC, investing in our customer base (and more broadly) via Orama Ventures.
Tech has changed hugely in the last few years, and so have we. We are in the midst of a significant transformation. Our COO joined 15 months ago to drive wide-scale change across systems, workflows, positioning, and team development. There is no shortage of ideas or direction. What's needed now is someone to make it all land — on time, in full, with nothing lost in transit.
This role is fundamentally about programme ownership. You will take the COO's priorities and build the scaffolding around them: clear plans, named owners, tracked milestones, and a relentless focus on follow-through. You'll operate across the ~40-person delivery org, keeping concurrent initiatives moving and surfacing problems before they become crises.
If you're someone who gets genuine satisfaction from seeing complex, multi-threaded work come together cleanly — and who wants to do that at the centre of a business actively reshaping itself — this is a rare opportunity.
What You'll Actually Do
Own programme and project delivery
- Build and maintain a clear view of all active COO-led initiatives — scope, owners, timelines, and status
- Translate strategic priorities into structured project plans with unambiguous accountability
- Run the rhythm of delivery: weekly check-ins, progress reviews, blockers resolved before they escalate
- Own the 'last mile' — the execution detail that separates a good idea from a real outcome
- Maintain programme documentation that is genuinely useful, not just comprehensive
Manage stakeholders and keep the organisation aligned
- Coordinate across teams and geographies to ensure workstreams stay connected and dependencies are managed
- Prepare crisp briefings, status updates, and decision documents for the COO and senior leadership
- Represent the COO in meetings, own follow-up actions, and ensure commitments are tracked and closed
- Build trusted working relationships with leaders across both UK and US operations
Improve how we run things
- Identify where processes, handoffs, or workflows are creating friction and drive practical improvements
- Support the design and rollout of new systems and operating models as the business evolves
- Help build the operating cadence — meeting structures, reporting rhythms, governance — that keeps a growing firm coordinated
Act as a thinking partner to the COO
- Be a sounding board for ideas in progress — ask the right questions, pressure-test assumptions, flag what's missing
- Synthesise information from across the business to give the COO a sharper view of what's happening on the ground
- Help prepare for key decisions by ensuring the right information is in the room at the right time
Who We're Looking For
You probably have a few years' experience — enough to have run complex programmes under pressure, not so much that you're set in your ways. Your background might be in consulting, a PMO function, professional services operations, or a high-growth startup where you had to build delivery rigour from scratch. What matters more than sector is how you execute.
You are:
- Structured without being rigid — you build plans that people actually use and update them when reality changes
- A natural closer — you chase, you follow up, you do not let things drift
- Comfortable with ambiguity — you can work from a half-formed brief and create clarity from it
- A clear communicator — status updates, risk flags, and decision documents that are actually readable
- Commercially aware — you understand what matters to a professional services business and why
- Discreet — you will operate in sensitive territory and you know what that requires
Formal project management qualifications are neither required nor disqualifying. Demonstrable delivery track record is.
Why This Role
- You will own real, visible programmes — not coordination tasks on someone else's project
- You will work directly with a COO driving meaningful change across a business, with access and context most operators at this level don't get
- The business is at an inflection point — what gets delivered in the next 18 months will define its next chapter
- You will be exposed to the full complexity of running a cross-Atlantic professional services firm
- For the right person, there is a credible path to broader operational leadership as the business grows
Practicalities
- Location: London
- Travel: some travel between UK and US should be expected
- Reports to: COO
- Salary: competitive, commensurate with experience