Director of Operations - UK

Type: Full-time, salaried employment
Location: Remote in the UK only, with expected regular travel to retailer sites across the UK
Salary Range: £98,000 - £112,000 depending on experience + stock options

Focal Systems is the industry leader in retail AI solutions. We are headquartered in San Francisco, California with operations in Canada and the UK, and a tech-hub in Poland. We are a Deep Learning first company. Our mission is to automate and optimize brick and mortar retail using deep learning computer vision. Focal Systems has been deployed at scale with some of the top retailers in the world.

We seek smart, creative and passionate people who want to help build a great and enduring company and deploy Deep Learning to the world!

About the Role

As Director of Operations, UK you will help build and lead the field operations team that installs and maintains Focal Systems shelf cameras across our UK retail partners. Our cameras are being deployed at scale, with 100,000+ units live or rolling out at leading retailers around the world, and the UK is a major part of that growth.

You will support the running of UK operations end to end: the people, the processes, the metrics, and the customer outcomes. You will work closely with senior and executive leadership to set and roll out operational strategy, and with Product, Engineering, and Customer Success to make every deployment faster, more reliable, and more cost-effective than the last.

You will be joining an established, experienced team that works in cycles. Retailer rollouts bring periods of rapid scale-up, followed by quieter maintenance periods where we scale back down, and those transitions have not always been smooth. A key part of this role is making them smoother: planning ahead for each change in pace, keeping the team steady and supported through it, and building processes that let us ramp up and down without losing quality or momentum.

This is a senior leadership role. You will develop our existing team, support during scale-up and scale-down periods, set the operating rhythm for field work, and be the person our customers and colleagues rely on when something needs to get done.

What We Are Looking For

• You are a hands-on operations leader who has scaled field teams and processes, and you are as comfortable working with stakeholders at different levels
• You run operations on data: you define the right metrics, watch them closely, and act early when they move
• You build structure where there is none, designing roles, workflows, and SOPs that hold up as volume grows and priorities shift
• You hire well, coach well, and build teams that take ownership without needing to be chased
• You understand that operations is a customer-facing function, and you take pride in exceeding what our retail partners expect
• You thrive in a fast-moving, remote-first environment and are energised by building something new

What You Will Be Doing

• Own ongoing field-service performance and SLA delivery, prioritising maintenance work and driving issues through to resolution.
• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing UK field operations team responsible for installing and maintaining shelf cameras at scale
• Own the operational plan for UK deployments, from scheduling and logistics through installation, quality checks, and ongoing maintenance
• Define, track, and report on the key metrics for field performance and SLA adherence
• Partner with executive leadership to set performance goals, budgets, and long-term operational strategy for the UK
• Analyse operational processes end to end, identify bottlenecks, and lead improvements that increase speed, quality, and efficiency
• Work across Product, Engineering, Supply Chain, and Customer Success to feed field insights back into hardware, software, and deployment playbooks
• Act as the senior escalation point for operational and customer issues, removing blockers quickly and owning the outcome
• Build strong relationships with retail partners, understand their store operations, agree success criteria, and deliver against them
• Manage relationships with any third-party installers or service partners, including performance, quality, and cost
• Establish safe working practices and ensure field activity meets health and safety requirements at every retailer site

Requirements

• 5+ years in an operations leadership role, with a track record of managing people, processes, and budgets
• Experience leading field operations, installation, or service teams across multiple sites, ideally deploying hardware at scale
• Strong working knowledge of core operational functions, including finance and budgeting, customer service, logistics, and people management
• Proven ability to plan and run operations for efficiency and productivity, using data and KPIs to drive decisions
• Experience designing and implementing new structures, roles, and processes that support rapid growth and shifting business needs
• Solid understanding of account management and customer success, and comfort working directly with senior customer stakeholders
• Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to present clearly to executives, customers, and field teams
• Ability to work independently in a remote environment and travel regularly within the UK

Nice to Have

• Knowledge of retail or grocery operations
• Familiarity with retail technology such as shopper-facing apps, back-room inventory management, or POS systems
• Experience managing third-party installers, contractors, or service partners
• Lean Six Sigma or a similar process improvement certification
• Experience in a high-growth startup or scale-up environment

Why Focal Systems

Strong Values and Mission - We are a tightly-knit team with an ambitious mission and a strong set of core values, which define our approach to business and have successfully guided us since inception.

Exceptional Team - We are a team of hard-working, fun-loving professionals from some of the most eminent universities, research labs, and tech companies of our time. We pride ourselves on recruiting exceptional individuals to help us redefine the state-of-the-art.

Outstanding Partners - We work with 10+ of the largest retailers in the world and have a world-class roster of investors, advisors and partners to support & advise us in our endeavors.

What we offer
We care deeply about the health, happiness, and wellbeing of all of our employees. We offer:

• Competitive Salary & Attractive Stock
• Generous Paid Time Off
• Pension
• Sick Leave
• Parental Leave
• Learning and Development Budget

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