** This opportunity is now successfully closed**

Opportunity:     Vice President, Operations
Company:           Serious Labs
Location:            Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

About Serious Labs:

Serious Labs is an award-winning technology company that develops virtual reality (VR) training solutions for the global heavy equipment industry.

Serious Labs offers companies a significant competitive advantage in the form of safe and accessible training, quick and convenient setup, and objective machine assessment. With industry-tailored and advanced certification content, Serious Labs’ mission is to provide your work force with the tools they need to get home safely each day.

Overview of Opportunity:

With a primarily internal focus, the Vice-President, Operations (VP Ops) will help Serious Labs realize its full operational potential in concert with the CEO. To achieve this objective, the VP Ops will work closely with other leaders throughout the company.

The VP Ops will be responsible for fostering and overseeing operational excellence at Serious Labs spanning across product development, cultural leadership, leading the execution of the strategic plan, and overseeing the provision of corporate services (e.g. HR, internal communications, accounting). This executive leader will play a vital role in carrying out Serious Labs’ strategic objectives, including leading high-tech products through their lifecycles from conception to retirement/renewal.

Key Accountabilities:

Leadership and Strategic Planning

  • Work closely with the CEO to execute on the vision, strategy, and direction for the organization
  • Collaborate, engage, and maintain strong relationships with a broad range of internal stakeholders

Operations

  • Ensure sound operational management of the product development, logistics, finance, and human resources areas by working closely with leaders in these business functions
  • Manage resources and overheads to meet or exceed the goals and objectives for these business functions
  • Ensure that corporate resources and expertise are effectively utilized and that business best practices are consistently implemented

Product

  • Build a strong team of Product Managers, Technical Product Managers, and Business Analysts who will own and drive forward product initiatives
  • Hold strategic accountability for the delivery of products by establishing and overseeing a world-class Product Lifecycle Management process – from conception through launch and retirement or renewal, including content, design, resourcing, and operational support
  • Focus on enhancing growth of products across all channels, driving the overall vision, and overseeing the strategy for the product roadmap
  • Oversee applications for external product review (e.g. safety associations and accrediting bodies) to ensure that Serious Labs products receive accreditation on time and on budget
  • Drive innovation and improvement of Serious Labs’ core products
  • Manage day-to-day product activities to deliver business success

Mentorship and Culture-Building

  • Drive a culture of cooperation, operational excellence, and “one team” mentality in accordance with Serious Labs’ core values: Collaboration, People First, Better Every Day, Passion, and Innovation
  • Provide clear direction, mentorship, and career development support for the entire team including several reports at the Director level
  • Facilitate information-sharing to build alignment and collaboration throughout the organization

Qualifications:

  • BSc/BA in Business Administration, Computer Science, or relevant field; MSc/MBA is a plus
  • 10+ years of diversified operational leadership roles in technology-driven, product-centric organizations
  • Understanding of, and experience overseeing, business functions such as HR, Finance, Logistics, Policies & Procedures, Internal Communications, etc.
  • Experience and understanding of software product leadership and operational management (agile/scrum experience beneficial)
  • Strong operational leadership skills including cost control, resource allocation and maximization, and large-scale project management
  • Demonstrated experience in transforming business requirements into successful operational and product strategies
  • Proven ability to synthesize complex technical information and then design strategies, solutions, workflows and procedures which can be adopted by stakeholders
  • Superior strategic, analytic, and problem-solving skills
  • Ability to build consensus and relationships among executives, clients, and employees
  • Excellent interpersonal, communication, and public speaking skills with high emotional intelligence
  • Ambitious and results-oriented
  • Demonstrated ability to make good decisions based on limited information
  • Flexible, with a strong work ethic and an entrepreneurial spirit to accommodate high level of responsibility and multiple priorities

 

About Pender & Howe:

Serious Labs has retained Pender & Howe to lead the recruitment initiative for the Vice President, Operations position.

This search is led by Glenn Lesko and Travis Hann. For consideration, please email a copy of your CV in confidence to Travis Hann at [email protected].