Chief Operating Officer

Job Description Summary:

The COO role has been created in recognition that the organization’s growth, scale, and global complexity have expanded the scope of the CEO position beyond what can be sustainably managed. As the company continues to grow, dedicated executive capacity is required to focus on capital investment discipline, production systems, and group-level operational insight, serving as the primary point of contact for GP, GGP and Pedigree production and Capex matters across the organization.

This position will serve as a member of the Aviagen Group Board and will be accountable for reporting on all matters related to operations and CAPEx. In this capacity, the COO will provide the Board with transparent insight into operational performance, production standards, capital deployment, and execution risks, ensuring informed oversight and timely decision-making.

Key Accountabilities: 

Pedigree and GGP Production.  The COO owns global Aviagen Pedigree and GGP production with direct line authority over operating leaders and production functions.  This role is fully accountable for production efficiency, execution quality, and operating cost for Aviagen pedigrees and GGPs worldwide. This responsibility includes:  

Key Responsibilities include:

• Setting enterprise production standards.  Establish, approve, and maintain required production standards, operating procedures, and performance expectations.  Ensure consistency, safety, quality, and efficiency. This includes working with group R&D to define required methods, controls, and metrics, and updating standards as business needs, technology, or regulatory requirements evolve.
• Directing day-to-day operational execution.  Provide direct leadership and direction over daily production operations.  Including setting priorities, allocating resources, approving operating plans, and resolving execution issues. Ensure operations are accountable to schedules, and cost targets, and that leadership teams execute with discipline and urgency. 
• Enforcing performance accountability.  Hold leaders and teams directly accountable for meeting agreed production, cost, quality, and delivery targets. This includes establishing clear performance objectives, reviewing results, addressing underperformance promptly, and taking corrective action through coaching, restructuring, or personnel decisions as required.
• Intervening decisively where results fall short.  Act decisively when production performance, discipline, or results deviate from expectations by directing immediate corrective actions, reallocating resources, changing operating approaches, or making leadership changes where necessary to restore performance and ensure objectives are met.

Global Production.  The executive will act as the CEO’s primary operating partner for global production matters, integrating production performance, and mitigating operational risk into a cohesive enterprise view. The purpose of this partnership is to place group level responsibility for coordination, integration, and structured review with the COO, enabling alignment, consistency, and continuous improvement while allowing the CEO to remain focused on enterprise strategy, external relationships, and long-term growth.  

Key Responsibilities include:

• Provide enterprise-level coordination, governance, and technical leadership by defining standards, facilitating cross-regional alignment, challenging assumptions, and ensuring transparent performance reporting—without assuming line authority for production execution.
• Establish and maintain senior level working relationships with Regional Presidents and their leadership teams to balance business unit, regional, and enterprise priorities, and to ensure production standards and capital plans are applied consistently across the organization.
• Establish and maintain global production standards and performance benchmarks, ensuring clarity of expectations, comparability of results, and transparency of performance across regions and operating units.
• Provide structured challenges and escalation where production performance, discipline, or execution deviates from agreed standards - bringing issues forward with data-based analysis, clearly articulated risks, and actionable recommendations for corrective action.
• Ensure consistent execution, efficiency, and quality by coordinating with regional leadership to embed agreed production standards into local operating practices, management routines, and performance review processes, while respecting regional accountability.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives across the global production footprint, identifying systemic bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and cost drivers; sponsoring cross-regional improvement efforts; and ensuring lessons learned are captured, shared, and adopted group-wide.
• Strengthen alignment between strategic objectives, capital deployment, and operational execution, ensuring production capabilities, capacity plans, and improvement initiatives are directly linked to enterprise priorities and approved investment strategies.

Global Capex Review.  Ensuring all major proposed investments in the global production operations are rigorously evaluated, challenged, and prioritized prior to CEO final review and approval. This includes establishing and enforcing capital approval standards; reviewing business cases, financial returns, and operational assumptions; validating capacity, timing, and readiness.  The COO will facilitate resolution of any cross-regional trade-offs; and ensure capital deployment aligns with strategic priorities, production requirements, and risk tolerance.

The COO is responsible for ongoing monitoring of approved investments, accountable for intervention where performance, cost, or timelines deviate from expectations.

Key Responsibilities include:

• Conduct ongoing monitoring of approved capital investments, tracking performance against financial, operational, and timeline expectations.
• Hold leaders accountable for early identification and escalation of deviations in cost, schedule, or performance, and drive timely intervention in partnership with the CEO and regional leadership.
• Ensure post-investment reviews and lessons learned are incorporated into future capital planning and execution discipline.