Head of Operations

Job description

# **Head of Operations** ## ABOUT FAIRMAT Fairmat has proven its ability to develop innovative products, industrialize them and bring them to market. Our next challenge is no longer inventing better materials. It is building a global industrial company that operates reliably, efficiently and at scale. As we expand across Europe, North America and China, success will no longer depend on individual efforts, but on building the operating system that enables every function—from customer orders and forecasting to procurement, manufacturing, quality, finance and planning—to operate as one integrated engine. ## YOUR ROLE : BUILD THE COMPANY OPERATING SYSTEM Your mission is to design, strengthen and continuously improve these systems so that Fairmat consistently delivers on its commitments while remaining agile. Your success will not be measured by the number of problems you solve yourself, but by your ability to build an organization that delivers predictably, allocates its resources intelligently, and scales through stronger systems rather than greater complexity. ## ABOUT THE TEAM Reporting directly to the CEO, you will be a member of Fairmat's Executive Leadership Team and lead the company's Operations & Finance organization. Your teams are based across Nantes, Paris, the United States and China, covering Manufacturing, Supply Chain & Procurement, Quality, Industrial Development, Industrial Planning and Finance. You will work cross-functionally with every part of the business—including R&D, Product, Sales and Marketing—to ensure customer demand, product development, industrial capacity and financial planning operate as one integrated system. WHAT THIS ROLE IS NOT At Fairmat, feedback is an input—not an answer. We expect leaders to listen carefully, understand deeply, challenge respectfully, and make decisions based on first-principles thinking, evidence and direct observation—not hierarchy, intuition or the loudest voice. You won't improve a process you haven't taken the time to understand. That means spending time on the factory floor, listening to operators, understanding technical constraints, reviewing data and challenging assumptions before making decisions. We also accept temporary fixes only if we are equally committed to eliminating the root cause. This role requires constantly moving between different levels of thinking: solving today's operational issues while strengthening the systems that prevent them from happening again. The best leaders deliver in the short term while continuously improving the medium and long term. We are looking for a builder. Someone equally comfortable discussing a production bottleneck with an operator, reviewing a financial model, preparing a Board presentation, or designing the operating model for a new factory. Finally, this role is for people who want their work to matter. If contributing to a more sustainable industrial future is not a source of personal pride, you will probably find greater fulfillment elsewhere.