Head of Operations — IG Singapore & Emerging Markets

Overview

We're looking for someone who can turn intent into outcome — the person who takes "we should do something about that" and comes back with "it's done, here's what's next." The Head of Operations is the operating backbone of IG's Singapore and Emerging Markets business: the person closest to the CEO, who owns the work that doesn't fit neatly into any one team's box, and who makes sure the strategy on the whiteboard actually shows up in the numbers.

This is not a process-administration role. It is a builder's role with a strategist's brief — part chief-of-staff, part internal consultant, part hands-on operator. It will suit someone who is comfortable with ambiguity, impatient with inertia, and genuinely satisfied by a well-run cross-functional project.

Location: Singapore Reports to: CEO, Singapore & Emerging Markets Type: Permanent, Full-Time

Why This Role Exists

A regional CEO can only be in one room at a time. This role exists to be in the others — to drive the strategic projects that cut across Product & Tech, Marketing, CX, Sales, Compliance and Finance, and to ensure nothing important falls through the gaps between them.

In a regulated brokerage operating across multiple emerging markets, the distance between a good idea and a delivered outcome is usually operational, not intellectual. We generally know what we want to do. We need someone who owns how it actually happens — across functions, across borders, and across the reality of standing up business in markets that don't yet have a playbook.

What You'll Do

Be the CEO's execution arm. Own the strategic agenda end-to-end: take the priorities that matter most to the regional business and drive them to completion, whether that is a market-entry sequencing decision, a CX restructuring, or an internal reporting overhaul. You'll run the operating cadence — the reviews, the QBRs, the "what are we actually tracking" conversations — and you'll be the person who turns a leadership offsite's worth of intentions into a roadmap with owners and dates.

Run the strategic projects nobody else owns. The most important problems rarely have a natural home. Client tiering for support coverage, revenue-recognition within regulatory constraints, new-product operational readiness, vendor and platform decisions — you'll lead these as cross-functional efforts, pulling in the right people and holding them to the outcome.

Own emerging-markets expansion mechanics. Translate "we want to be in market X" into operational reality: entity setup, licensing and regulatory groundwork, local hiring sequencing, payments and banking rails, and the infrastructure that lets a new market actually transact. You'll partner with Compliance and Legal to navigate MAS and host-jurisdiction requirements, and you'll be disciplined about sequencing — product-market fit before acquisition spend, not the other way around.

Make the business legible. Build the KPI and reporting frameworks that tell the CEO and the wider leadership team the truth about performance — across client metrics, CX SLAs, marketing efficiency, cost lines and revenue. If a number matters, you'll ensure it is measured, trusted, and reviewed by the right people on the right cadence.

Drive efficiency without the bureaucracy. Find the friction — in workflows, in tooling, in org design — and remove it. Benchmark against how the best brokerages and exchanges operate, identify the gaps, and build scalable solutions rather than one-off patches. Cost discipline is part of the brief, but the goal is a sharper machine, not a slower one.

Operate within the regulatory perimeter. This is a licensed financial services business. Every operational decision lives within a compliance and risk framework — AML/KYC, conduct, capital, reporting obligations. You won't be the Compliance function, but you'll design processes that are compliant by construction and partner closely with Risk and Compliance rather than working around them.

Strengthen the teams. Review org structure and leadership capability, define what good looks like at the team level, and coach where it counts. Build a culture where capable people are given autonomy inside clear frameworks, and where continuous improvement is a habit rather than a slogan.

What You'll Bring

You've done this in a regulated, fast-moving financial or fintech environment — a brokerage, an exchange, a payments business, or somewhere with comparable operational intensity. You are as comfortable in a regulatory-readiness conversation as you are deep in a spreadsheet. You've built things from zero, not only optimised what already existed.

You think in systems and act with urgency. You can hold a strategic view and a hands-on one at the same time, and move between them without dropping either. You influence without authority, because most of what you'll drive sits in other people's teams. You are comfortable with ambiguity and have the judgment to know which problems to fix now and which to leave alone.

Emerging-markets experience, an understanding of crypto and derivatives products, and familiarity with the MAS regulatory environment are all strong advantages.

The Fit

You'll work directly with the CEO, so trust and discretion matter as much as capability. This is a high-autonomy, high-accountability seat — frustrating if you want clearly bounded lanes, and energising if you want to own outcomes that genuinely move the business. We give capable people room to operate inside clear frameworks, and this role is the clearest example of that approach.

Number of openings

Head of Operations - Singapore and Emerging Markets

Job description