VP of Operations

Job Title: VP of Operations
Location: WMFTS - USA - Sales - Wilmington, MA
Location Type: On-Site
Website: https://www.wmfts.com/en/
Group: https://www.spiraxgroup.com/

When you join Watson-Marlow Fluid Technology Solutions, a part of the Spirax Group, you will be integrated into a cooperative and encouraging team, participate in challenging yet critical work, and experience ongoing growth opportunities to help you achieve your full potential. Visit our website to learn more.

This role will focus on:

The Vice President of Operations is a senior executive leadership role responsible for defining and executing the operations strategy for WMFTS USA. This position ensures alignment with global and divisional priorities while delivering best-in-class customer experience, operational performance, and financial outcomes.

Reporting directly to the President, the VP of Operations is a key member of the Senior Leadership Team, with accountability for shaping business strategy, driving enterprise-wide performance, and leading transformation across operations, customer service, and supply chain functions.

This role plays a critical part in enabling profitable growth through operational excellence, customer-centric execution, and scalable infrastructure, with an immediate focus on shipping backlog elimination and sustained on-time delivery performance.

What you’ll be doing

Enterprise Leadership & Strategy

• Serve as a member of the Senior Leadership Team, contributing to business strategy, growth planning, and performance management
• Define and execute the operations strategy aligned with WMFTS global and divisional priorities
• Act as a strategic partner to the President across commercial, operational, and organizational priorities
• Lead transformation initiatives to enhance scalability, agility, and customer experience

Operational Leadership

• Provide executive oversight across logistics, inventory, manufacturing/assembly, application engineering, technical services, customer service, returns/repairs, and facilities
• Drive a high-performance operating model with strong accountability, transparency, and execution discipline
• Establish and govern key performance indicators including service levels, backlog, inventory, cost, and quality

Customer Experience & Service Leadership

• Own and elevate the end-to-end customer service strategy, positioning it as a competitive differentiator
• Lead large, multi-site customer service teams to deliver a high-quality, responsive customer experience
• Define enterprise standards for order management, communication, and issue resolution
• Drive improvements in customer satisfaction, response times, and first-time resolution
• Ensure proactive and transparent communication with customers, including order status and backlog recovery
• Partner closely with Sales, Operations, and Engineering to deliver a seamless customer journey
• Leverage CRM systems and analytics to enhance visibility, forecasting, and decision-making

Shipping Backlog & Fulfillment Transformation

• Own enterprise backlog performance, ensuring both short-term stabilization and long-term improvement
• Lead cross-functional efforts to address root causes across supply chain, planning, and production
• Implement scalable processes, governance, and metrics to sustain on-time delivery performance
• Provide regular visibility and progress updates to senior leadership

Engineering & Technical Integration

• Provide leadership to application engineering and technical services teams, ensuring alignment with customer and commercial needs
• Partner with Product/Design Engineering to support manufacturability and lifecycle readiness (without direct design ownership)
• Oversee customer solution development, technical consultation, and product application support
• Lead field technical services, including installation, repair, and troubleshooting
• Drive technical capability development across internal teams, distributors, and channel partners
• Ensure consistent, high-quality technical support and customer engagement

Supply Chain, Logistics & Inventory

• Lead end-to-end supply chain strategy including logistics, warehousing, inventory, and distribution
• Optimize working capital and inventory performanc