When Does a Scale-Up Need Its First Head of Operations?
Somewhere in most growing businesses there is a board pack that three people built, each counting pipeline slightly differently, and a founder apologising for it before anyone has opened it. That is usually the moment a scale-up needs its first operations hire, and it tends to arrive a stage earlier than the business thinks it can afford one. In practice the signs are senior people buried in admin, reports that disagree depending on who ran them, the same client error happening twice, and a new market with nobody owning the practical set-up.
There are two common mistakes, and they are the same mistake at different levels. One is hiring a COO to fix something a hands-on operations manager could have fixed in six months, which gives a senior person a title and no operation to run. The other is hiring an operations manager and quietly expecting them to redesign the company. It is the same pattern we covered in CRO vs VP Sales: a good hire, made for the wrong problem. I have spent 15 years at Ultimate Asset and now run operations here, so this is written from inside the seat.
When does a scale-up need its first operations hire?
I would not trust anyone who gives you a headcount, because what matters is how much of the week the senior team spends holding things together, and that varies enormously between businesses of the same size. What breaks first is almost always a handover, the point where something agreed by one person has to be delivered by another. Four signs tell you it is happening.
The first is senior people buried in admin. A head of sales building quotes, a founder approving every invoice, a CRO tidying the CRM before every forecast call. Salesforce’s State of Sales report (4,050 sales professionals in 22 countries, published 3 February 2026) found the average seller spends 40% of their time selling. Salesforce sells the software this work runs on, but the direction matches what I see from the desk, and it is a good question to ask of your own team: how much of the week does your best seller spend selling?
The second is reports that disagree depending on who ran them. Two people give the board two pipeline numbers and both are defensible because nobody ever wrote down what a stage means. From what founders tell us, investors now expect cleaner reporting earlier in a company’s life than they did a few years ago, so a problem that used to stay internal now surfaces in front of the people funding you.
The third is the same client error happening twice. An invoice sent wrongly, a customer onboarded with the wrong terms, a renewal date missed. Once is bad luck, and nobody should be blamed for it. The second time it usually means the process lives in one person’s head, and that person has been busy or on holiday, which in a growing business is most weeks.
The fourth is a new market with nobody owning the practical set-up. Contracts, entities, payments, time zones and local rules are not the job of the commercial leader opening the market, who rarely wants them and does not have the time. Employment, tax and data rules differ by country, so this is also where you need local advisers. Our Executive Search service covers UK & Europe, North America & Asia, and it goes better when someone owns the boring parts from the start.
If you can fix the process yourselves, quickly and confidently, you should. Often one person spending a few weeks agreeing definitions, choosing one system as the source of truth and writing down who owns what is enough to buy another year. A fractional or interim operations lead is a sensible step too. The ScaleUp Institute’s Annual Review 2025 reports that 6 in 10 of the 1,009 scaleup CEOs surveyed want more help accessing non-executive directors and fractional executives, so the appetite for part-time senior help is there.
Operations manager, Head of Operations or COO: which does a scale-up need?
| Hands-on operations manager (for example, sales operations) | Head of Operations | COO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The job | Fix and run what exists in one area, such as the CRM, forecasting or deal process | Design and own the operations function across the business | Run the operating rhythm of the whole business alongside the CEO |
| Best when | One area is clearly the problem | Several areas are creaking and nobody owns them | The founder wants to step back from the day to day, or the business is complex enough to need a second leader |
| Usually reports to | A founder or function head | The founder or CEO | The CEO, with a seat on the leadership team |
| Risk if hired too early | Asked to redesign the company | A title with no authority | A senior person with no operation to run |
Take sales operations as the clearest example of the hands-on version. A good sales operations manager owns the CRM and the definitions inside it, runs the forecast rhythm, keeps quotes, commission plans and territory records straight, and makes sure what a seller agrees reaches finance and delivery correctly. Titles vary, and some businesses call this revenue operations once it stretches across marketing and customer success as well. This is my own description from the desk, so treat it as a working definition. The business at this stage does not need a function designed yet. It needs someone close to the work who can see what is slowing the sellers down and fix it, which is usually a sales operations hire before it is a Head of Operations hire.
Salesforce’s survey points the same way. It found that 79% of high-performing sales teams prioritise data hygiene, against 54% of underperformers, and the respondents included sales operations staff themselves. That hygiene is the day-to-day work of the role.
A Head of Operations is a different hire. They design the function, set priorities across areas and usually manage other people, which means the business needs enough going on to justify it. The COO conversation is different again, and it tends to begin when the founder wants to stop running the day to day, when a fundraise or an exit is coming, or when the business has grown complicated enough that the CEO needs a second leader. A founder who wants to stop approving invoices needs something much smaller than a founder who wants to hand over the running of the company, and the brief should say which one you are.
What does a first operations hire do in 2026?
Two things have changed in the last few years. Scale-ups are running leaner than they were, so the first ops hire is often asked to cover what a small team would once have done. And AI tools have changed what that person can do. The role used to be mostly running process. Now you want someone who can run process and also connect your systems, automate the repetitive parts and keep the CRM clean enough for the forecast to be trusted, and build the reporting the board asks for without a week of copying and pasting. That is my own view from the desk and from the briefs we work on, and it is the biggest shift I see in what founders ask for.
There is a catch. Automating a broken process only makes it faster, and AI works on the data you already have. Salesforce’s 2026 survey found that 51% of sales leaders using AI say disconnected systems are slowing their AI initiatives. A good first hire will ask which numbers matter and which systems should be the source of truth before they build anything, and will sometimes tell you that the answer is a spreadsheet and a rule.
Finding that person is not easy. The ScaleUp Institute’s review found talent and leadership is a leading challenge for 55% of scaleup CEOs, second only to access to markets at 58%. That survey covers all sectors, so read it as a general signal for businesses at this stage.
What does a Head of Operations cost?
Our salary surveys do not include a Head of Operations or a sales operations figure, so I will not give you one. Anyone quoting a single number for either without saying where it comes from is guessing, because the titles cover very different jobs. What decides the right figure is scope: how many people the role manages, how many areas it owns and whether it reports to the founder or sits on the leadership team. If you are weighing seniority against budget, tell us what you are trying to fix and we will say honestly where the market sits and where our own data runs out.
What does it cost to wait?
Time, mostly, and it builds slowly. Senior people lose hours they would have spent on revenue, reports lose credibility, and a client who has been caught out twice starts to wonder what else is loose. None of it is dramatic, which is why it gets tolerated for longer than it should. A hire made at the wrong level then adds its own delay, because the seat needs filling again, and we have set out what happens when a critical hire stays open for 30, 60 or 90 days. You can test your own numbers in our recruitment cost calculator.
Common questions
When should a start-up hire its first Head of Operations? When the founder and a few senior people are spending a meaningful part of every week holding the business together, and signs like disagreeing reports, repeat client errors or an unowned new market are appearing. There is no reliable headcount trigger.
Head of Operations or COO: which does a scale-up need? A Head of Operations designs and owns the operations function. A COO runs the operating rhythm of the whole business alongside the CEO, and usually fits when the founder wants to step back or the business is complex enough to need a second leader. If one area is the problem, a hands-on operations manager may be enough.
Can a scale-up use a fractional or interim operations lead? Yes, and it is often a sensible first step. It works when the problem is clear enough to fix in a defined period, and less well when the business needs someone to build and manage a team over years.
What is the difference between sales operations and a Head of Operations? Sales operations supports the sales team’s process, data, forecasting and reporting. A Head of Operations owns the practical running of the business across several areas, usually including sales operations, finance processes, systems and onboarding. A scale-up often needs the first before the second.
How much does a Head of Operations cost in the UK? The right number depends on scope, team size and reporting line. If you are weighing this up, drop us a note and talk us through what is creaking. It does not need to be a live brief. We can give you an honest view of whether you need an operations manager, a Head of Operations, a COO or something smaller, and whether it is worth hiring yet at all. You can submit a brief when you are ready, or read about our work across Adtech, MarTech and SaaS.
About the author
Val Dani Diaz, Head of Operations, Ultimate Asset
Val Dani Diaz has spent 15 years at Ultimate Asset and now runs operations for the business. Ultimate Asset is a specialist recruitment firm for Adtech, MarTech, SaaS and Emerging Media, offering Executive Search, Contingent Search and Project & Multi-Hire across UK & Europe, North America & Asia. Founded in 2005, with more than 20 years in its markets.
Sources: Salesforce, State of Sales 2026; ScaleUp Institute, Annual Review 2025.
