Overview
Job Description
Zendesk is searching for a COO (VP) for our EMEA region. The role will preferably be based in either London or Dublin. The EMEA Chief Operations Officer (COO) will be a key member of the senior management team regularly reporting out to c-staff and will report directly to the Global Chief Operating Officer.
This position is critical to Zendesk’s ongoing growth and scaling in the region. She or he will oversee the regions operations and procedures across all business functions, operational strategy, and will be responsible for efficiently scaling of the business. The position’s ultimate goals is to drive extensive and sustainable growth.
Zendesk is a fast growing SaaS software company with over 145k customers in 160 countries, providing solutions for customer service, customer communications, customer experience, and CRM. Roughly 25% of Zendesk’s business comes from EMEA. Zendesk sits at the heart of the most disruptive companies in the world, companies that have put customer experience and their product at the center of their business models, and continually raise the bar on customer expectations.
The primary objectives of the position:
- Ensure regional alignment and performance across all business functions
- Build executive relationships with key customers and prospects in the region
- Connect key company-wide and HQ-driven initiatives with their regional impact and execution across all of our offices and organizations
- Drive operational excellence in the region
- Represent Zendesk publically in the region
While leading regional operational excellence & alignment you will:
- Reinforce key components of global strategy and lead the region in executing those strategies
- Help establish regional goals and priorities across all Zendesk functions in the region. Aligning, prioritizing, regional operational priorities with global priorities. Translate global goals and priorities to regional and local goals in partnership with functional leadership.
- Drive regional operational cadence
- Work with finance and key functions to manage regional costs and have view of regional costs
What you will do for regional customers:
- Build executive relationships across the region with company’s most strategic customers.
- Be the de facto executive sponsor for large accounts in the region.
- Partner with regional sales and success leaders to target these relationships and define ideal outcomes.
- Speak at key regional events. Serve as regional primary spokesperson and point of contact within region for customers, press, analysts
What you will do for regional leaders and their performance:
- Create robust partnership and alignment with each regional leader (Engineering, GTM, G&A, office leads etc)
- Help drive customer focused alignment amongst sales, marketing, and CX in region
- Lead cross-functional regional GTM QBRs
- Partner with Go-To-Market (GTM) leaders to determine the right level of investments in key sub-regions and markets
- Ensure alignment across the region (product, engineering, GTM, G&A, etc.) to holistically have a view of regional business health, regional operational health and challenges, the health of our culture across the regions, and represent back to c-staff
- The regional COO will not have hard line responsibility for any of the leaders, so will need to be able to listen closely, communicate clearly, and facilitate and drive alignment. The regional COO will be empowered to drive change
How you will influence across People & Culture:
- Helps monitor and influence culture and engagement across region
- Partner with regional Product Development leaders to assist in recruiting events and technical gatherings as necessary
- Partner with regional comms team for regional as well as office specific town halls in for consistent messaging and guidance
- Be responsible for establishing/reinforcing regional culture and guidance to build and enhance the Zendesk culture
- Establish partnerships with regional People & Places leads to identify local needs to enhance employee engagement and alignment with the global Zendesk brand
What you’ll need (Experience)
- 10+ years of SaaS management and strategic-leadership experience
- Must like people and enjoy working with them
- Must be a clear thinker and speaker
- Proven track record of growing revenue, cutting costs and increasing productivity
- Must have excellent critical thinking and problem solving skills.
- Experience diagnosing problems quickly and have foresight into potential issues
- Demonstrated career progression that illustrates the ability to prioritize critical factors for the success of the business and to lead a team through effective execution of strategy and change
- Compelling senior presence that will draw energy and cooperation toward this executive and all that they sponsor, while having the emotional intelligence, humility, and collaboration to ensure enterprise objectives are prioritized and achieved
- Must have excellent critical thinking and problem solving skills
- Able to express opinions openly and honestly and provide feedback in a timely and productive manner
- Ability to examine and re-engineer operations and procedures
- Proven ability to act as a business partner and influence leaders across various levels of an organization
- Strong budget, financial and statistical analysis skills and ability to interpret information to staff and providers
Zendesk builds software for better customer relationships. It empowers organizations to improve customer engagement and better understand their customers. Zendesk products are easy to use and implement. They give organizations the flexibility to move quickly, focus on innovation, and scale with their growth.
Interested in knowing what we do in the community? Check out the Zendesk Neighbor Foundation to learn more about how we engage with, and provide support to, our local communities.
Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster diversity & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
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