Business Operations Lead

Summary

Join Climate KIC, a leading climate innovation initiative, as a Business Operations Lead – Knowledge sharing and Optimisation. This role is crucial in driving operational excellence across grant management, project delivery, and knowledge-sharing practices. You will lead the development and standardisation of project management processes, foster rigorous adherence to grant policies, and act as a key integrator, ensuring systems, processes, and policies are effective, streamlined, and consistent across the grant lifecycle. You will bridge teams, optimise cross-functional workflows, and foster collaboration, supporting Climate KIC's mission to deliver multi-funder, portfolio-driven impact. This role is a strategic anchor for Climate KIC's transition toward multi-funder excellence, improved project delivery, and collaborative knowledge-sharing. You will play a central part in building systems, empowering teams, and ensuring operational coherence, driving Climate KIC's capacity to deliver transformative climate action.

Requirements

• Project Management Excellence: Significant experience leading project delivery and lifecycle management, with a track record of implementing project management disciplines and optimising delivery processes
• Knowledge Sharing & Community Building: Experience establishing Communities of Practice or leading knowledge-sharing initiatives—curating, promoting and maintaining best practices across diverse teams
• Multi-Funder Expertise: Strong understanding of project management business processes in public or non-profit organisations operating in multi-funder environments, i.e. governance, compliance, regulatory frameworks
• Systems & Process Knowledge: Proficiency in Project Portfolio Management (PPM) tools and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems as means to support operational excellence and knowledge capitalisation
• Communication & Collaboration: Exceptional communication skills with the ability to engage stakeholders, translate complex processes, and foster collaboration across internal and external teams
• Curious & Proactive : Always seeking opportunities to improve processes and systems
• Collaborative Leader : Comfortable leading by influence across multiple teams and disciplines. Ability to communicate effectively, and inspire and motivate people
• Resilient & Adaptive: Thrives in uncertainty, adapts quickly, and can operate in a fast-paced, evolving environment
• Growth-Oriented : Committed to learning, experimentation, and continuous improvement

Responsibilities

• Lead and Improve Grant Management Practices: Ensure rigorous adherence to grant policies and compliance across the entire grant lifecycle—from pre-award to post-award delivery
• Operational Oversight: Manage day-to-day grant operations, ensuring accuracy, timeliness, and alignment with funder requirements and internal policies
• Streamline Grant Processes: Design, document, and implement standardised workflows to improve efficiency and consistency in grant management
• Compliance & Reporting: Ensure all grant-related processes meet internal and external audit and compliance requirements while supporting data integrity and accurate reporting
• Develop Project Management Discipline: harmonise, set professional standards and share internal as well as external good practices (knowledge) around project management, ensuring these practices are robust, repeatable, and scalable
• Ensure Alignment & Consistency: Integrate and align project management methodologies with broader business operations—ensuring processes across teams are coherent and connected
• Operational Tools & Systems: Support the adoption and optimisation of project management and ERP systems (e.g., GRETA, and the introduction of the PPM tool), ensuring tools are fit-for-purpose and embedded across the organisation
• Moderate the Project Management Community of Practice: Establish and maintain a vibrant Community of Practice to foster peer learning, knowledge exchange, and cross-functional collaboration
• Operational Knowledge Management: Systematise lessons learned, ensuring the continuous capture, documentation, and dissemination of best practices across project and grant management
• Centralised Tools & Templates Platform: Develop and maintain project management assets incl. guidelines, templates, good practices and training material
• Design & Deliver Learning Initiatives: Develop and deliver training sessions, guides, and toolkits to ensure consistent understanding and application of project management and grant processes
• Process Reengineering: contribute to the redesign and ongoing refinement of end-to-end business processes, moving beyond grant-specific workflows, incl. by identifying and implementing process improvements to streamline operations, reduce complexity, and enhance collaboration across the organisation
• Process Clarity: Contribute to defining sequential phases and key decision points essential for successful project execution, that reflects decision makers, key accountabilities, gating factors and hand-off points
• Act as an Organisational Integrator: Ensure alignment across grant management, project delivery, and business operations—eliminating silos and fostering a connected operating system. In particular, collaborate closely with the Deal Desk, Finance, Legal, and Portfolio teams to ensure smooth handoffs and alignment across end-to-end workflows
• Support Systems & Workflows: Ensure operational systems and workflows are designed to support a diverse range of funder types and adapt to evolving funding requirements

Benefits

• We meet at our local offices to exchange and connect and use online collaboration tools to work with each other and with our community
• On occasion, we meet in person as teams, and once per year as an organisation
• We offer a high degree of flexibility to accommodate working patterns
• We’re happy to discuss your situation during the interview and see how best we can support you
• Ideally, the successful candidate will be based close to one of the Climate KIC offices, but we support fully remote or hybrid forms of working and offer a high degree of flexibility