Chief Operating Officer - Immigration - SVP
Vialto Partners
Job Description
Purpose
The Immigration Chief Operating Officer (COO) is accountablefor theday-to-day operation of the Immigration Service Line, ensuring the businessoperatesat scale, delivers sustained margin improvement, and releases capacity to support growth.As a Senior Vice President, this role provides enterprise-level operational leadership across Immigration, with accountability for translating strategic priorities, transformation outcomes, and growth opportunities into a globally consistent, commercially disciplined operating model.
Partnering closely with the Immigration Global Lead and the Office of Transformation, the COO ensures that approved strategic and transformation recommendations are translated into a durable, efficient, and execution-ready operating model. The COO owns the operational, financial, and workforce leversrequiredto turn change into measurable business outcomes across all regions.The role will also lead the operational standardization of M&A integration activity within Immigration, ensuring that acquired or transitioned businesses are brought into consistent operating practices, delivery standards, performance expectations, and governance routines.
Key Accountabilities
Strategic, Commercial & Transformation Enablement
Partner with the Immigration Global Lead to executeagreed strategicpriorities into operational priorities that drive margin expansion, scalability, and capacity release.
Work in close collaboration with the Office of Transformation, which leads the design and delivery of transformation initiatives, to ensure recommendations are implemented, embedded, and sustained into business-as-usual operations.
Take ownership for operational adoption, sustainability, and value realisation of transformation outcomes, including benefits tracking and ongoing optimisation.
Drive disciplined execution of agreed operating model changes across regions, making trade-offs across cost, talent, technology, and delivery capacity to achieve commercialobjectives.
Establish andmaintainoperational governance that ensures transformation outcomes are consistently implemented, measured, and improved post-implementation.
Ensure transformation efforts are connected to measurable commercial outcomes, including margin improvement, scalability, productivity, quality, and capacity release
Global Operating Model & Execution Leadership
Own and continuously improve BAU performance of the global operating model, within approved delivery and excellence frameworks, ensuring it supports scalable delivery, consistent quality, and efficient use of resources across all territories.
Pull together regional and country leadership teams around a single, globally coherent way of working, balancing standardisation with local regulatory and market requirements.
Oversee day-to-day operations across delivery centres, driving utilisation, throughput, and operational efficiency.
Establish standard operating rhythms, performance dashboards, and KPIs that provide clear visibility into capacity, productivity, quality, and cost.
Drive a rigorous operational discipline, ensuring deviation from targets are quickly addressed through corrective actions and leadership interventions
Identifyand mitigate operational risks, ensuring business continuity, compliance, and adherence to global standards.
Set and reinforce global standards for how Immigrationoperatesacross markets, ensuring regional flexibility where required while reducing unnecessary variation in core processes, decision rights, delivery practices, and performance management.
Lead the ongoing simplification and standardization of operational practices to improve consistency, reduce complexity, and enable scalable growth.
M&A Integration, Standardization & Operational Readiness
Lead the operational standardization of M&A activity within Immigration, ensuringacquired, transitioned, or newly integrated teams are brought into a consistent global operating model.
Define the core operating standards, governance routines, performance expectations, and integration milestones required for M&A deals to move from transaction close to sustainable business-as-usual operations.
Partner with the Immigration Global Lead, Corporate Development, Finance, HR, Technology, Legal, and Transformation teams to ensure operational integration plans are commercially sound, executable, and aligned to Immigration’s global delivery model.
Assess operational differences across acquired or integrated businesses, including process, people, technology, reporting, controls, and client delivery practices, and develop pragmatic plans to bring them into standard ways of working.
Ensure M&A integration activity supports margin improvement, scalability, client service consistency, risk management, and capacity planning.
Establish repeatable playbooks, metrics, and governance mechanisms for Immigration M&A integration, reducing reliance on bespoke approaches deal by deal.
Monitor post-integration performance and address gaps in adoption, efficiency, quality, or compliance to ensure deal value is realised and sustained.
Own and actively manage the Immigration inorganic growth funnel, working with the Immigration Global Lead and Corporate Development toidentify, prioritise, and track potential M&A targets in line with Immigration’s strategic growthobjectives.
Oversee operational due diligence for potential M&A deals, coordinating with Finance, HR, Technology, Legal, and the Office of Transformation to assess target operating models, delivery capability, talent, and integration risk ahead of deal approval.
Own the onboarding and integration of successful acquisitions into Immigration, and drive post-deal value creation, ensuring acquired businesses reach target synergies, margin, and operational standards within agreedtimeframes.
Margin, Financial & Performance Management
Own, in partnership with Finance tomaintaina single sourceof truth for financial and operational performance, including revenue, margin, utilisation, working capital, and cash flow.
Playa central rolein budgeting, forecasting, and financial planning, ensuring operational decisions actively support margin improvement and sustainable growth.
Use data-driven insights toidentifyopportunities for cost optimisation, leverage improvement, and capacity release.
Support shared accountability with the Immigration Global Lead for profitability and long-term financial performance.
Ensure M&A integration plans include clear financial, operational, and performance assumptions, with mechanisms to track whether expected synergies, efficiencies, and margin improvements are being delivered.
Use operational and financial insights toidentifywhere standardization across regions, delivery models, oracquiredbusinesses can improve profitability and release capacity for growth.
Workforce Strategy, Capacity & Capability
Collaborate with HR to own execution of the global workforce strategy aligned to growth plans, evolving delivery models, and transformation outcomes.
Translate transformation recommendations into practical workforce actions, including changesto workforcedeployment, skill application, location strategy, and ways of working.
Monitor and actively manage workforce capacity, utilisation, productivity, and turnover to ensure the organisationoperatesatoptimalefficiency.
Ensure global workforce planning avoids structural underutilisation, bottlenecks, or talent shortages, particularly in critical delivery and specialist roles.
Ensure workforce implications of M&A activity are assessed early and translated into practical integration plans, including role clarity, leadership alignment, capacity planning, location strategy, skills, and ways of working.
Partner with HR and business leaders to ensure acquired or integrated teams are effectively aligned to Immigration’s operating model, performance expectations, and leadership routines.
Experience & Profile
Senior operational leadership experience ideally within a global professional services firm (e.g. legal, consulting, accounting, advisory, or similar).
Proven experience embedding large-scale transformation outcomes into BAU operations, rather than solelydesigningor running transformation programmes.
Demonstrated experience supporting M&A integration, post-deal operational standardization, business integration, or large-scale operating model alignment.
Understanding of professional services economics, including utilisation, leverage, margin management, capacity planning, and delivery models.
Demonstrated ability to align and influence global, matrixed leadership teams, including senior partners and executives.
Strong commercial mindset witha track recordof improving margins, scaling operations, and releasing capacity to fund growth.
Comfortable operating alongside a central transformation function, with clarity on ownership between design, delivery, and BAU adoption.
Strong ability to bring structure, consistency, and execution discipline to complex environments where legacy practices, regional differences, oracquiredbusiness models need to be standardized over time.