Operations & Offices Manager

Role Purpose

The Operations & Offices Manager is responsible for ensuring that BlackStone eIT's people, assets, compliance, and facilities operate reliably and consistently across all company locations. With offices spanning the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco, and a large consultant workforce distributed across multiple countries, the role demands strong operational discipline, cross-border coordination capability, and the ability to lead a geographically dispersed team of varying skill levels.

Reporting directly to the Chief Process Officer, the successful candidate will be expected to run the Operations function with a high degree of autonomy — resolving day-to-day challenges independently, managing upward in a structured and concise manner, and maintaining consistently high standards of service to the business and its employees.

Key Responsibilities

People Operations — Onboarding & Offboarding

• Own the end-to-end onboarding process for new joiners across all company geographies, ensuring Day 1 readiness in coordination with HR, IT, and Finance.
• Manage the procurement, preparation, and handover of equipment to new joiners, maintaining accurate asset records throughout.
• Oversee the full offboarding process, including equipment recovery, insurance cancellations, and all required documentation before a leaver is formally closed.
• Manage employee medical insurance enrolment on joining and cancellation on exit, liaising directly with insurance providers and country coordinators.

Visa, Immigration & Compliance

• Manage employee visa issuance, renewals, and cancellations across UAE, KSA, Jordan, and Egypt, coordinating with PROs and government authorities.
• Maintain a proactive tracking system for all visa, permit, and commercial registration expiry dates — initiating renewals well ahead of deadlines.
• Oversee company commercial licences and registrations across all operating jurisdictions.
• Ensure full compliance with regional labour laws in the UAE, KSA, Jordan, Egypt, and the US, and maintain readiness for audits at all times.

Payroll & Finance Operations Support

• Review and approve all Operations-originated payroll inputs — expense additions, deductions, and reimbursements — submitted by country coordinators before they reach the HR payroll cycle.
• Ensure country-level payroll and expense submissions are accurate, complete, and delivered on time each month.
• Coordinate with HR Payroll to resolve any Operations-originated variances or exceptions prior to Finance submission.

Office & Facilities Management

• Supervise country Operations coordinators and support staff across regional offices, maintaining consistent operational standards.
• Manage office leases, facilities, utilities, maintenance, and vendor contracts across all company locations.
• Oversee travel, accommodation, and transportation logistics for employees and consultants being mobilised to client sites or regional offices.
• Manage medical insurance programme renewals and provider relationships; monitor coverage terms and claims handling.
• Monitor administrative and facilities budgets; identify cost savings and escalate variances as appropriate.

Process Improvement & Reporting

• Document, standardise, and continuously improve operational processes and procedures across all geographies.
• Identify gaps, manual workarounds, and automation opportunities; present recommendations to the CPOO with clear rationale.
• Support company-wide reporting, compliance checks, and operational audits as directed.

Requirements

Team Structure

The Operations & Offices Manager directly manages a team of country Operations coordinators and support personnel based in Egypt, Jordan, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. The team is diverse in terms of seniority and skill level — ranging from qualified operations professionals who manage country-level processes independently, to operational and administrative support staff who require structured guidance, clear task ownership, and regular follow-up to deliver consistently.

The successful candidate must be comfortable leading a team of mixed capabilities: setting appropriate expectations at each level, communicating instructions clearly and simply where needed, and creating accountability structures that work for both high-autonomy and lower-autonomy team members without compromising overall performance standards.

Requirements

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Operations Management, or a related field.
• 7–10 years of experience in multi-country operations, office management, or administrative leadership roles.
• Proven track record managing a distributed team across multiple geographies and time zones.
• Hands-on experience with visa, immigration, and government liaison processes in KSA, UAE, and/or Jordan.
• Experience managing medical insurance programmes and vendor contracts.
• Demonstrated ability to build and enforce operational procedures in environments with inconsistent or absent process.
• Strong working knowledge of regional labour and compliance frameworks across KSA, UAE, Jordan, and Egypt.
• Proficiency in MS Office and experience working with ERP or operational management systems.
• Flexible to work across multiple time zones and working week structures (Saturday–Wednesday for KSA; Monday–Friday for Egypt and Jordan).

Skills & Competencies

• Operational discipline: able to design, document, and enforce processes and hold a team accountable to them.
• Cross-border coordination: comfortable managing country-level operations remotely, without physical oversight.
• Team leadership across skill levels: experienced in managing teams that span a wide range of seniority and capability — from qualified coordinators to blue-collar support staff — adapting communication style, task assignment, and performance management accordingly.
• Executive communication: structured and concise in managing upward; knows what to escalate and when; maintains composure under pressure from demanding senior stakeholders.
• Service orientation: approaches colleagues as internal customers, providing efficient, professional, and friction-free support — particularly important given the wide variety of employee profiles the Operations function serves.
• Problem-solving: resolves operational blockers independently and escalates only what genuinely requires senior intervention.
• Attention to detail: rigorous in maintaining records, tracking deadlines, and ensuring compliance documentation is always current and complete.

Preferred (Advantageous)

• Prior experience in an IT staffing, systems integration, managed services, or professional services environment.
• Experience coordinating payroll inputs across multi-currency, multi-country payroll cycles.
• Experience managing equipment procurement and asset tracking for a dispersed, consultant-heavy workforce.
• Very Good English language proficiency (KSA and UAE coordination).

Originally posted on Himalayas