SVP / VP of Operations

About Emergence

We are a holding company, and we plan to be a generational one. We buy businesses to keep them, and we want to be the permanent home where good companies grow for generations. That means we’re building a company meant to last, for companies meant to last. Our own standards, systems and habits have to be sturdy enough to serve the businesses we own long after any of us has moved on.

The leaders who run those companies keep real authority. Our job is to give them standards, support and shared systems that make their work easier across HR, operations, IT and finance. We promise founders a long-term home that protects their people and their life’s work. We promise operators the capital, tools and autonomy to grow what they run, with clear accountability for results. We promise investors steady, compounding returns from patient capital. And we hold ourselves to one test: every company grows faster after joining Emergence than it did before.

We hire people who are humble, hungry and hold high standards.

The role

You’ll run the operating side of Emergence alongside the CEO. That means setting how the company runs day to day, making sure decisions turn into action and building the shared functions our companies rely on: legal, security, IT, governance and integration.

You’ll be the person the CEO leans on most. Some weeks that means preparing a board meeting. Other weeks it means closing an acquisition, fixing a process that’s slowing everyone down or stepping into a problem nobody else owns.

The scope grows as you show you can carry it. Over time, the CEO will look to you to oversee more of the business, including some of our operating companies directly.

What you will do

Run the company with the CEO

• Set Emergence’s operating cadence and hold everyone to it

• Help the CEO decide where their time goes, and make sure what gets decided gets done

• Prepare the Emergence board and operating company boards with the CEO and Head of Finance

• Pick up the work that crosses teams and has no clear owner, then hand it off cleanly

• Act for the CEO when they’re not in the room

Build the shared functions

• Lead legal, security, IT and governance, and hire the right leader for each as we grow

• Decide what we build in-house, buy or outsource

• Set the minimum bar every operating company has to meet on security, IT, contracts, privacy and compliance, then help them get there

Make acquisitions land well

• Own how we bring new companies into the group, from signing through the first 90 days

• Get involved in diligence early, so operating risks come up before we sign

• Look back at every deal and fix whatever slowed it down

Support our operating companies

• Spot companies that are drifting off plan early, and get them the right help

• Take on oversight of specific operating companies as the CEO hands them over, working with their Operating Partners

What you bring

Nobody has done exactly this job, so we do not look for a matching résumé. We look for what carries over.

• You pick up unfamiliar functions fast, ask sharp questions and say plainly what you don’t know yet

• You can move people with or without formal authority. Operators who’ve worked with you would do it again

• You hire people better than you, including in functions you’ve never practiced

• You’ve seen messy startups and large organizations up close, and you know what to borrow (and not) from each

• People trust you with hard things, and you know what to say, to whom and when

For this role, specifically

• 5+ years in operating roles. That might have been as a COO, head of operations, chief of staff to a CEO or in portfolio operations at a PE firm or holding company

• You’ve worked closely with a CEO or founder and made them better at their job

• You’ve built a standard, cadence or playbook from nothing, and people still use it

• You’ve built a function from scratch, starting with hiring the person to run it

• You’ve run a P&L, or worked close enough to one that operators see you as one of them

• You’ve been part of bringing an acquired company into a larger group

• You’ve worked in regulated businesses and owned part of compliance or risk

• You communicate clearly and directly, including at board level