What is our mission?

Orbital is on an exciting mission to revolutionise global cross-border payments by innovatively combining traditional fiat banking rails with stablecoins over blockchain rails for a variety of use cases. Our class leading B2B payments platform offers multi-currency e-money accounts (corporate IBANs) combined with a suite of digital assets services. Our company sits at the frontier of payments & fintech, by intersecting blockchain and traditional (fiat) financial services, and is leading the way to bridging those two worlds for corporate enterprises globally.

We believe blockchain technology is firmly here to stay, and we want to be the first to bring a combined offering of fiat & crypto payment services under one exciting platform. Learn more about our team and company story here.

What is the purpose of this role in the delivery of our mission?

The Director of Operations is the Chief Delivery & Trading Operations Officer’s deputy across the entire operational function. This role exists to take operational ownership of the day-to-day running, performance and continuous improvement of all operational sub-functions — Payment Operations, Customer Services & Integration Support, and Trading Operations.

This is not a functional-specialist role. You will not own any single operational vertical; instead, you will own the end-to-end operating model that sits across all of them — the standards, processes, controls, documentation, and performance frameworks that make our global function scalable, resilient, and excellent.

We are looking for a true self-starter - a systemic thinker who naturally identifies gaps before being asked, designs solutions, and drives change all the way through to embedded implementation. Equally central to your success will be people development. You will provide hands-on, intensive coaching to our talented functional team leads, materially accelerating their strategic autonomy and capability.

What are the key responsibilities / activities of the role?

Operational leadership

• Serve as the principal operational leader and act as the Chief’s deputy across all operational functions, stepping in to deputise on operational matters and representing the function across the Group where required.

• Translate company and Chief-level strategy into operational execution.

• Provide a single, senior point of operational coordination across Payment Operations, Customer Services & Integration Support, and Trading Operations.

• Take operational items off the Chief’s desk, exercising independent judgement and bringing solutions.

Process optimisation & operating model design

• Own the design, documentation and continuous improvement of the operating model across all operational sub-functions, ensuring it is scalable, efficient and robustly governed.

• Actively interrogate the operation for systemic gaps, inefficiencies, single points of failure and unowned risks - driving remediation proactively.

• Establish and own consistent operational standards, SOP and documentation framework spanning all functions, ensuring institutional knowledge is robustly captured.

• Drive operational initiatives and change programmes from inception through design, build, and rollout, embedded adoption and formal sign-off.

• Define, instrument and track cross-functional operational KPIs, using data to direct where improvement effort is spent. Maintain a clear, proactive performance picture for the Chief and the Executive Committee, using data to direct where improvement effort is spent and surfacing trends before they are requested.

Leadership & team development

• Line-manage and help to develop each team lead, setting clear standards and expectations. Dedicate structured time to raise the bar on their proactivity, systemic thinking, documentation discipline, and strategic ownership.

• Build depth, redundancy and succession across the operational function, reducing key-person dependencies.

Operational resilience, business continuity & incident management

• Act as Deputy Chair of the Emergency Committee, stepping in to lead on the Chief’s behalf when required, and providing senior operational leadership during live events.

• Step in on operational resilience, business continuity, and major-incident matters, coordinating detection, live response, resolution, stakeholder communication, and post-incident reviews across operational functions.

• Contribute to the design, maintenance, and regular testing of Orbital’s operational resilience and business continuity frameworks. Assist leadership in building out and maturing these areas across the Group.

Governance, risk & controls

• Partner closely with Technology, Product, Finance, Compliance, and Partnerships to ensure total operational feasibility, readiness, and appropriate governance ahead of any client-impacting changes or new flows.

• Register and act as a regulated / approved individual in the relevant areas of remit, in whichever Group entity or jurisdiction the business requires, helping to diversify regulated-individual coverage across senior operational leadership and representing Orbital in a regulator-facing capacity.

• Ensure the operation meets its regulatory, licensing, security and risk obligations on a consistent, auditable basis.

What are the essential skills, qualifications and experience required for the role?

• Proven, hands-on experience across high-volume merchant payment acceptance and treasury/liquidity management. EMI or crypto experience is preferred but not essential; a comparable regulated, payment-intensive environment (online gaming, CFD/brokerage or similar) is equally valid, provided the experience relates directly to payments and treasury.

• At least 5 years in a senior, autonomous leadership post managing multiple teams, with a track record of defining your own deliverables against company goals.

• A demonstrable track record of actively experimenting with and embedding AI tools to automate workflows, tasks, and operational processes.

• Clear evidence of designing and optimising scalable operational processes from scratch, rather than just managing an inherited system.

• An ambitious, fast-learning operator who moves fluidly between high-level strategic design and meticulous operational detail.

• Evidence of operating as a genuine self-starter: identifying problems and opportunities unprompted and driving them through to fully implemented outcomes.

• Strong people leadership and a real, evidenced ability to coach and develop team leads, lifting their capability and autonomy.

• Experience contributing to operational resilience, business continuity and/or major-incident management in a regulated environment.

• Eligible and willing to be registered and approved as a regulated / fit-and-proper individual with relevant regulators across the Group’s jurisdictions, and to represent Orbital in a regulator-facing capacity.

• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to operate credibly at Executive Committee level.

What are the desirable skills, qualifications and experience that would be beneficial for the role?

• Experience in the cross-border payments industry and/or exposure to digital assets and stablecoins.

• Experience leading operations through a period of scaling, transformation or restructuring.

• Track record of chairing or deputising on crisis / incident management or emergency committees.

• A solid working understanding of FX and how markets operate — including trade settlement, currency controls, and the distinction between brokers and market makers.

• Relevant advanced qualification (e.g. MBA) or equivalent practical track record.

Salary: Base salary starting from £80,000 per annum depending on experience.