Operational Excellence Lead
Operational Excellence Lead - Automation Rockstar
🚀 Why this role exists (and why now)
TopCompare is a fast-growing Belgian scale-up on a mission to make personal finance radically transparent and effortless. Thousands of consumers use us every month to find the products they need. Behind the scenes, our ops engine needs to be as slick as our UX. That’s where you come in. We’re looking for a process-obsessed automation rockstar who sees broken workflows everywhere, and can’t help but fix them. You’ll design, automate, and continuously improve how work flows across teams so we can scale smarter, faster, and with fewer manual headaches.
Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It
You will be the architect of our operational backbone. Your mission is to look at every corner of our business, from customer onboarding to internal reporting, and ask, "How can we do this better?" You will have the green light and the resources to design, implement, and perfect the automated systems that will power our next stage of growth. This isn't about maintaining the status quo; it's about building the future, one brilliant process at a time.
1. Lead the Automation Charge
- Map, challenge, and redesign cross‑functional processes (from acquisition to customer care and partner ops).
- Build and own an automation roadmap using the right mix of RPA, low/no‑code tools (Zapier/Make/...), APIs, AI copilots, and scripts. Don't worry, we don't expect you to be able to code.
- Prioritize ruthlessly: quick wins first, moonshots second, both backed by data and ROI.
- Turn chaos into clarity: create and maintain crystal-clear SOPs, swimlanes, and control plans.
2. Drive Continuous Improvement. Lean is your love language
- Facilitate Kaizen workshops, value-stream mapping, DMAIC cycles, whatever gets to the root cause fastest.
- Install metrics and control charts that keep improvements alive (not a one-off “project” mindset).
- Coach teams to spot the 8 wastes and kill them with kindness (and automation).
3. Orchestrate Change
- Craft compelling business cases and win buy-in from stakeholders across Product, Marketing, Sales, Finance, and Compliance.
- Pilot, test, iterate. Ship improvements with phased rollouts and clear comms.
- Train end users, build playbooks, measure adoption, and iterate again.
4. Make Data Flow and speak
- Partner with Data/IT to make sure the right data moves cleanly between tools.
- Co-own key ops platforms (workflow engines, CRM/ERP modules, ticketing, RPA bots) with an eye on reliability and scalability.
- Spin up dashboards that expose bottlenecks, SLAs, and throughput in real time.
What you bring
Must-haves
- The most important: Structured problem-solver with a bias for action, proposals, and documentation is insufficient - we value action
- 3 to 7 years in Operations, Business Process Management, or similar roles in a fast-paced environment.
- Hands-on track record of automating and scaling processes across multiple teams.
- Proven mastery of workflow/automation tools (Zapier/Make, UiPath, Power Automate, Workato, etc.) and/or scripting (Python, Apps Script).
- Strong analytical skills and turning data into action.
Bonus points
- Lean Six Sigma training/certifications (Yellow/Green/Black Belt).
- Experience in fintech/financial services or other regulated industries.
- Familiarity with AI/LLM-enabled automation and prompt engineering.
Who you are as a person
- You think in systems. You have a natural ability to see the big picture and understand how all the moving parts of a business connect. You can zoom in on the details and zoom out to the strategic level with ease.
- You are obsessed with "why." You're not satisfied with "because that's how we've always done it." You have a deep-seated curiosity that drives you to find the root cause of any problem.
- You're a builder and a problem-solver. You are hands-on and love getting into the weeds to build a solution. You have a proven track record of taking a complex problem, breaking it down, and delivering a successful outcome.
How success looks after 12 months
- Manual touchpoints on key journeys reduced by double digits.
- Cycle times drop and SLA adherence rises on our top 3 operational processes.
- Automations are loved (adoption & satisfaction scores prove it) and maintained.
- A growing guild of “citizen automators” across teams, backed by rock-solid SOPs.
- Tangible productivity gains: hours saved, errors down, happier customers & partners.
What’s in it for you
- Impact you can measure: Your work touches every team and every customer journey.
- Speed & ownership: Fewer layers, faster decisions: you’ll ship, learn, and iterate.
- Cutting-edge toolkit: From AI copilots to RPA bots, you’ll choose and shape the stack.
- Growth mindset culture: We test, we learn, we share, no blame, just better.
- Great people, real values: International, ambitious, humble, and fun.
Think you have what it takes to be our next operational hero? Apply now and show us what you've got!