Chief of Staff to COO

London, England, United Kingdom

4/10/2025

Hello, we're Starling. We built a new kind of bank because we knew technology had the power to help people save, spend and manage their money in a new and transformative way. We're a fully licensed UK bank with the culture and spirit of a fast-moving, disruptive tech company. We're a bank, but better: fairer, easier to use and designed to demystify money for everyone. We employ more than 3,500 people across our London, Southampton, Cardiff and Manchester offices.

Our recruitment process:

Interviewing is a two way process and we want you to have the time and opportunity to get to know us, as much as we are getting to know you! Our interviews are conversational and we want to get the best from you, so come with questions and be curious.

Closing date: Thursday 17th April, 12pm.

About the role:

As Chief of Staff to COO, this role will act as a critical partner to the leadership team, driving strategic initiatives and ensuring operational excellence. Working as a conduit across the COO teams; the role will facilitate effective communication and consistency across all levels. We're looking for a systems enterprise thinker with experience of building out enterprise wide pragmatic change. The ideal candidate will be detail orientated and adept at communicating and writing strategy.

This role will promote and celebrate diversity, equity, and inclusion at a senior level and throughout the COO function, whilst maintaining a pulse on the mood of the firm. This is a great opportunity to establish systems and practices that promote collaboration, performance, and accountability.

An essential part of the role will be to translate key data at a consultancy level into an effective and commercially focused strategy, working with senior management and influencing them on the best course of action to achieve that goal. This will include aligning objectives/goals, team/functional strategies and messaging with an ability to communicate at scale.

Key Responsibilities Include:

• Support the COO with coordinating the COO activities including the purpose, content and structure of internal meetings, development of the Operations strategy and development of the department including people plans,
• Support the COO with decision-making; reviewing and summarising information
• Support in the preparation of Board papers, governance papers and other strategically important collateral, taking input from analytics and other members of the COO Leadership team
• Attend key internal and external committees/forums with the COO (or on behalf of) with the purpose of ensuring follow-up and execution on identified next steps
• Co-ordinate the 1st Line of Defence across the COO Leadership team
• Prepare the COO for external meetings
• Assess enquiries directed to the COO, determine the proper course of action, including appropriate ownership, delegate to the appropriate owner, manage or escalate to the CEO
• Track relevant projects to ensure delivery in accordance with deadlines - identifying and removing or escalating any obstacles to completion
• Undertake periodic independent Controls effective testing, providing effective challenge where appropriate
• Identify control deficiencies and areas for enhancement
• Manage operational events and reviews including root cause analysis, containment, lessons learned and read across
• Coordinate all internal and external audit activities for Operations. Track, report and drive the completion of audit actions
• Work alongside the Finance teams to embed a culture of budget management and ensure that budgets are being met across the Bank.
• Work with Finance to create and review a cyclical budget reporting cycle to ensure adherence
• Support the review, design, and execute improvements across the COO team, find knowledge and skills gaps and help address them
• Ensure effective communication and collaboration with cross-functional teams
• Monitor and report on key performance indicators and metrics
• Define, evaluate and review COO service catalogue, including resource planning, performance and future outlook
• Review and monitor COO structure and Operating model, driving any agreed changes to meet operational or people improvements
• Develop a strategic model for COO
• Develop, implement, and trial new ways of working
• Urgent issue support, owning and coordinating resolution of any urgent issues within COO function
  
  
  

Requirements

• Lead and influence the culture of the departments ensuring that we live by our five values of: Listen, keep it simple, do the right thing, own it and aim for greatness.
• Drive a culture of self identification, risk awareness, budget management and continuous improvement
• Able to collaborate across a variety of business areas and ability to interact effectively with all levels to make things happen
• Ability to communicate effectively in a variety of media (written and verbal) to a wide range of audiences - customer, stakeholders, external bodies
• Experience in Financial Services, with significant knowledge and capability on all aspects of customer support in a regulated environment.
• Experienced in the delivery of operational performance
• High level of integrity, energy and sense of urgency to make things happen.
• Organised and can work proactively to identify and solve problems
• Work with a high degree of flexibility, self motivation and professionalism. Always being extremely discreet and very aware of your confidentiality requirements
• Think strategically; a natural problem solver, bringing an analytical and structured mindset. Relentless in the pursuit of improvement
• Use emotional intelligence to be a highly self-aware and perceptive person, you can demonstrate the ability to serve as a ‘connector'. Someone who is aware of key projects and can connect the dots across the bank
• Be a critical evaluator & voice in terms of challenging proposals and the status quo in a productive but collaborative fashion
  
  
  

Benefits

• 25 days holiday (plus take your public holiday allowance whenever works best for you)
• An extra day's holiday for your birthday
• Annual leave is increased with length of service, and you can choose to buy or sell up to five extra days off
• 16 hours paid volunteering time a year
• Salary sacrifice, company enhanced pension scheme
• Life insurance at 4x your salary & group income protection
• Private Medical Insurance with VitalityHealth including mental health support and cancer care. Partner benefits include discounts with Waitrose, Mr&Mrs Smith and Peloton
• Generous family-friendly policies
• Incentives refer a friend scheme
• Perkbox membership giving access to retail discounts, a wellness platform for physical and mental health, and weekly free and boosted perks
• Access to initiatives like Cycle to Work, Salary Sacrificed Gym partnerships and Electric Vehicle (EV) leasing
  
  

About us:

You may be put off applying for a role because you don't tick every box. Forget that! While we can't accommodate every flexible working request, we're always open to discussion. So, if you're excited about working with us, but aren't sure if you're 100% there yet, get in touch anyway.We're on a mission to radically reshape banking - and that starts with our brilliant team. Whatever came before, we're proud to bring together people of all backgrounds and experiences who love working together to solve problems.

Starling Bank is an equal opportunity employer, and we're proud of our ongoing efforts to foster diversity & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment at Starling Bank are considered without regard to race, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. When you provide us with this information, you are doing so at your own consent, with full knowledge that we will process this personal data in accordance with our Privacy Notice. By submitting your application, you agree that Starling Bank will collect your personal data for recruiting and related purposes. Our Privacy Notice explains what personal information we will process, where we will process your personal information, its purposes for processing your personal information, and the rights you can exercise over our use of your personal information.