About the Role
As AAC enters an exciting growth phase, we are seeking a Chief Operating Officer to lead operational strategy and drive organisational excellence across our global team, enabling sustainable expansion while continuing to attract and retain top-tier talent.
Historically, our operational framework relied on part-time support with the CEO directly overseeing all functional intersections. While effective during early stages, this structure cannot support further expansion across multiple international jurisdictions or accommodate our growing organisational complexity.
The COO will be instrumental in scaling our operational capacity, ensuring clear organisational visibility, aligning strategic objectives with team bandwidth, and supporting director-level execution. In this foundational role, you will build and refine the management structures, systems, and workplace culture needed to keep AAC agile, resilient, and high-performing.
Key Responsibilities
1. The CEO’s Operational Counterpart
You contribute to organisational decisions on structure, hiring, budget and priorities, and bring an operational and financial reality check to strategy discussions early, when it can still change the plan. You use the financial picture produced by the Director of Operations & Finance to make and defend resource allocation calls across functions, and deputise for the CEO on internal matters where appropriate. The COO is not a second strategist or a substitute specialist. The role is to integrate strategy, capacity, people, resources and execution so that AAC can deliver its mission.
2. Leadership Can See What Is Actually Happening
This requires judgement more than enthusiasm. You decide which processes are worth formalising and which are overhead, and you set what good looks like when a system comes for sign-off. We are not looking to add bureaucracy. We are looking for the smallest amount of structure that makes the organisation legible, and keeps it that way at twice the size.
- AAC’s tools and systems are standardised, adopted and used as intended, so the state of the organisation is visible from the systems rather than reconstructed by asking people.
- Everyone is onboarded properly, and stays that way as the team grows.
- Leadership clearly understands what share of resources is going to which programme and strategy.
3. Plans We Are Held To, and Can Actually Deliver
You own how AAC plans and distributes work, and whether the goals leadership is held to are delivered.
- Set the planning cycles and goals with the CEO and leadership team, making sure planning produces real choices and accountability rather than becoming a reporting exercise.
- Build a working view of where AAC’s time actually goes, by program, project type and person: light enough to sustain and honest enough to plan from.
- Own how new ideas enter the organisation, so new work is resourced by stopping or deferring something rather than added on top. This applies to ideas from the CEO and leadership team first of all.
- Plan for absence as normal, so leave, public holidays and unplanned absence are anticipated, critical processes have named cover, and overload is spotted before it becomes a problem.
4. A Director Team That Runs the Organisation
You line manage AAC’s four functional directors, several of whom are new to director level, and develop them into the role rather than absorbing the parts they find hard.
- Hold delivery accountability across unlike functions: know when something is off track before it is reported, and be able to interrogate a forecast, a campaign and a MEL finding without owning any of them.
- Resolve trade-offs between functions rather than escalating them to the CEO by default, and turn leadership decisions into action that holds without repeated chasing.
- Develop directors’ judgement and capability so that you become less necessary for day-to-day decisions over time.
5. People Practice and Internal Communication That Scale
You own AAC’s people strategy: how we hire, what we pay, how we develop people, and what we expect of managers. You set the management practice every function is held to, including review cycles, feedback norms, probation and development, while individual line management stays with each director.
- Be the point of escalation for internal people issues, with the CEO as backstop, and coach directors through difficult performance and conduct situations early rather than late.
- Build reliable internal communication for a fully remote team, with a clear home for organisation news and a regular rhythm, so important updates are announced rather than discovered.
6. Risk, Compliance and Structure Held Away From the CEO
You own AAC’s risk picture, compliance approach and organisational structure.
- Decide what is material, what is tolerated and what gets mitigated, and bring it to the CEO and board with proposed action rather than for information.
- Own AAC’s policies, insurance and compliance approach, making sure AAC operates lawfully in every country where it works or employs people, and bringing in specialist advice when needed.
- Lead AAC’s evolving entity and employment structure, including employment arrangements across multiple countries.
Why Join AAC
This is a rare chance to shape an organisation at a turning point. As AAC grows, you’ll build the structures, systems and leadership team that carry us forward, with real ownership from day one and a CEO who wants an operational partner, not an administrator.
You’ll join a small, committed, fully remote team focused on getting talented people into the roles where they can do the most for animals.
We offer flexible working hours, generous self-managed leave, and budgets for professional development and conferences, alongside a culture that values honest feedback, evidence and continuous improvement.
Ideal Candidate Profile
Essential skills and qualities:
We assess every essential criterion at a specific stage of the process.
- Organisational systems, prioritisation and capacity judgement. Making an organisation legible through proportionate tools and processes, while knowing what not to formalise. Building a truthful view of where time and capacity go and governing how new work enters, so that work is actually stopped, deferred, reassigned or resequenced as a result.
- Technology, automation and organisational improvement. A track record of getting teams to work differently through technology, AI or automation, with practical judgement about where it genuinely removes work. We are looking for increased team capability, not personal technical fluency.
- Cross-functional leadership and delivery. Setting direction and holding delivery across functions where you are not the technical expert, while maintaining a quality bar. Spotting when work is off track before it is reported and resolving trade-offs without escalating them to the CEO.
- Developing leaders and organisational people practice. Developing people into roles they have not held before, building their judgement rather than covering gaps for them, and establishing management standards across an organisation, not just one team. Sound judgement on performance, sensitive situations, and confidentiality, including holding difficult conversations early.
- Financial and risk judgement. Interrogating financial information, including runway and restricted funding, to make allocation decisions and identify material operational, employment, and compliance risks across jurisdictions. We are looking for judgement about what needs action and when to bring in specialist advice, not accounting or legal expertise.
- Executive communication and decision support. Turning complex operational, financial or organisational information into clear recommendations, trade-offs and consequences that help a CEO or board make a good decision.
- Mission commitment and evidence-led judgement. Genuine commitment to AAC’s mission, combined with a willingness to change course when the evidence shows something isn’t working.
Desirable experience:
- Scaling an organisation through a comparable step change, particularly where team size is doubling year on year, funded by a large multi-year grant with targets attached.
- Working in a fully remote, multi-country organisation, including differing employment law, holiday calendars and time zones, and transitioning contractors to employees.
- Entity structuring, spin-outs, mergers or similar transactions. This is hard to learn on the job, so we will weight it where it exists, but we do not expect it.
- Nonprofit or grant-funded experience, particularly with restricted funding and funder reporting. Equivalent rigour from another sector is fine.
- Familiarity with the animal advocacy or effective altruism landscape. Useful context, but not something we expect candidates to arrive with.
Not Sure You Meet Every Criterion?
We would still like to hear from you. We assess evidence against the criteria above, not job titles or years of experience, and we know that strong candidates from underrepresented groups are less likely to apply when they do not tick every box.
