Vice President - Customer Operations

GEP is a diverse, creative team of people passionate about procurement. We invest ourselves entirely in our client’s success, creating strong collaborative relationships that deliver extraordinary value year after year. Our clients include market global leaders with far-flung international operations, Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises, leading government and public institutions.

We deliver practical, effective services and software that enable procurement leaders to maximise their impact on business operations, strategy and financial performance. That’s just some of the things that we do in our quest to build a beautiful company, enjoy the journey and make a difference. GEP is a place where individuality is prized, and talent respected. We’re focused on what is real and effective. GEP is where good ideas and great people are recognized, results matter, and ability and hard work drive achievements. We’re a learning organization, actively looking for people to help shape, grow and continually improve us.

Are you one of us?

GEP is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability status, or any other characteristics protected by law. We are committed to hiring and valuing a global diverse work team.

For more information please visit us on GEP.com or check us out on LinkedIn.com.

Role Overview

What you will do

The Customer Operations leader will own end-to-end post‑sales operations for an enterprise procurement SaaS portfolio, including onboarding, UAT readiness, production stability, customer analytics, and value realization at scale. The role is accountable for operational KPIs across UAT and Production, leading a 200–300 member organization from Mumbai, and partnering closely with Product, Engineering, Customer Success, and Sales to drive expansion, retention, and platform adoption. Prior software engineering experience and strong analytical orientation are essential; procurement domain experience is a strong plus.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategy and leadership
• Define and execute the multi‑year Customer Operations strategy covering onboarding, UAT, go‑live, hypercare, steady‑state operations, and continuous value realization for enterprise procurement customers.
• Build and lead a 200–300 member team (frontline managers, operations, UAT leads, release/readiness, TAMs, L2/L3, analytics, and tooling) from Mumbai; establish clear org design, operating cadence, and succession plans.
• Partner with Product and Engineering on roadmap, release readiness, incident prevention, and customer feedback loops; champion operational requirements and automation at roadmap level.
• Operational excellence and KPIs
• Own UAT and Production scorecards: UAT pass rate, defect density and severity mix, first‑time‑right deployments, change failure rate, MTTR/MTTD, incident and problem SLAs, release predictability, and deployment frequency.
• Drive standardization via playbooks, runbooks, and control plans across customers and regions; institutionalize QA gates, canary/blue‑green cutovers, rollback strategies, and post‑incident RCAs with action tracking.
• Implement a robust capacity and workforce model (forecasting, staffing, utilization, skills matrix, location strategy) to ensure on‑time customer outcomes at optimal cost-to-serve.
• Customer outcomes and value realization
• Ensure onboarding throughput, time‑to‑value, adoption of core procurement modules (eSourcing, CLM, P2P, Supplier Mgmt, Analytics), and measurable business impact (cycle times, compliance, savings, touchless rates).
• Establish executive business reviews, health scoring, and early‑warning signals; lead complex escalations and executive communications through to durable resolution.
• Align Customer Operations motions with expansion/renewal plays; partner with Customer Success and Sales to influence NRR, reduce churn, and grow ARR.
• Data, analytics, and tooling
• Build a “super analytical” operating model: instrument end‑to‑end telemetry across environments; define canonical KPIs/OKRs and dashboards; lead predictive/leading‑indicator analytics for risk, adoption, and stability.
• Own the Customer Operations tool stack (ITSM/ITIL, observability/APM, test management, release orchestration, knowledge base, RPA/AI assistants); drive automation to reduce toil and improve MTTR and quality.
• Institute data governance and hygiene across incident/problem/change records, UAT defects, and config/integration catalogs to enable high‑fidelity reporting and forecasting.
• Governance, compliance, and quality
• Enforce change, release, and incident governance aligned to SOC 2/ISO 27001 and customer requirements; ensure audit readiness and disciplined documentation.
• Run operational QBRs/MBRs, release go/no‑go boards, and cross‑functional readiness reviews; track corrective/preventive actions to closure.
• Manage partner and vendor delivery quality where work is co‑sourced; define SLAs, SLOs, and performance levers.
• Financial and portfolio management
• Own cost and productivity levers for Customer Operations; manage operating budgets, vendor spend, and efficiency programs tied to automation and right‑shoring.
• Report on ARR under operations stewardship, install base health, and customer cohort performance; articulate outcomes in business terms to the executive team.
  

Qualifications

What you should bring

• Education: Top‑tier MBA preferred (IIM/IIT) with strong academic performance; bachelor’s in engineering or computer science required.
• Experience: 10+ years in software/SaaS with progressive leadership in Customer Operations, Services/Support, or Site Reliability/Production Operations; prior hands‑on engineering or technical leadership experience is required.
• Domain: Procurement technology experience strongly preferred (eSourcing, CLM, P2P, Supplier/Commodity/Risk, Procure Analytics), or adjacent enterprise back‑office platforms (ERP/Finance/Supply Chain).
• Scale: Proven ability to build and lead 200–300 person multi‑disciplinary teams in a hub location, including managers and senior managers; experience operating in global, cross‑time‑zone environments.
• Analytics: Advanced analytical mindset with mastery of operational metrics, cohort/health modeling, root cause and statistical problem solving, and executive‑ready insights; comfort with SQL/BI is a plus.
• Process and quality: Deep familiarity with ITIL/ITSM, incident/problem/change management, release engineering, UAT governance, and agile/DevOps practices; track record improving MTTR, change failure rate, and deployment quality.
• Stakeholder management: Executive presence and communication skills for CXO‑level interactions with enterprise customers; adept at managing complex escalations and influencing roadmaps.
• Tooling: Experience with enterprise observability (e.g., Datadog/New Relic), ITSM (e.g., ServiceNow/Jira Service Management), test management (e.g., Zephyr/Xray), release orchestration/feature flags, and knowledge platforms.
  
  

Preferred metrics to demonstrate scope (include in application if possible)

• ARR portfolio handled: e.g., cumulative ARR under Customer Operations stewardship, such as $50M–$200M+.
• Customer scale: number of enterprise customers/accounts and their regional distribution (e.g., 100–300 enterprise logos, or marquee global accounts).
• Operational improvements: quantifiable gains such as MTTR reduction, UAT pass‑rate improvement, change failure rate reduction, deployment frequency increase, or deflection/automation rates.
• Team scale and mix: prior leadership of 200–300+ team with onshore/offshore mix, automation/AI leverage, and manager‑of‑managers span.