Operations Lead (m/w/d)

Role Summary

Tax advice is an operational business. Every booking, every payroll, every transaction follows a process - and most of these processes have never been systematically questioned. They work because experienced people know their workarounds, not because they are well thought out. That's exactly the lever that no one else has in this industry.

Vogel acquires independent consulting companies and develops them further instead of melting them down. Several thousand medium-sized companies entrust us with their tax, commercial and strategic issues. This only works if there is something behind it that supports: processes that run the same at every location, technology that is actually used in everyday life, and integration that is faster with the fifth takeover than with the first. You build this layer. It doesn't exist today.

You bring experience from setting up operational systems - from a B2B scaleup, a company builder, a consultancy with your own implementation responsibility or from your own founding. You change because your mandate has become smaller than your processing power: too much coordination, too little leverage, too many concepts that others are implementing. At Vogel you will find the opposite of both - structures that are sustainable, with established clients and a strong growth base, and at the same time a setup that moves forward every day.

You are responsible for operations at Vogel across the board: the automation of processes in the core business, the internal tools and data architecture, the IT and identity infrastructure including end devices and security, the technical integration of each acquired unit and the processes surrounding the entry, contract, systems and exit of our own people. You build the team that supports these topics and distribute the priorities within it. Because the area is being created at the Munich location and there is no other level above you, you will report directly to the management and work directly with Moritz Vogel - this is the developmental nature of this first role, not a permanent situation. As the size of the area increases, your mandate grows into overall responsibility for the operation.

YOUR PERSPECTIVES

After 6 months, you have presented a reliable record of all processes across the locations - with numbers, not impressions. At least two processes in the core business are automated and in daily use. You are responsible for the technical connection of an acquired location. Your first own hire is selected.

After 12 months you will have a team of three to four people with clearly defined priorities. The operational key figures are collected and not estimated, and you know the cause of every deviation. The integration route is a described, repeatable process. The tool stack is decided.

After 24 months, you have established operations as a department that operates without daily management involvement. Each subsequent takeover follows the same pattern, and the effort per location decreases instead of increasing. The processes carry a multiple of today's volume.

Where the passage is going: The second part of the title is not an embellishment. This role is designed as the first head of the area and grows with it - from responsibility for operations to overall responsibility for operations. This is the management career in its consistent form. It is the contribution and not the year of employment that determines whether this path is effective.

Responsibilities

YOUR RESPONSIBILITY

Automation of the core business

1. Analyze the processes in financial accounting, payroll, closing and consulting at the locations - on site, on the real process, with the people who carry it out every day - and automate the parts that can be automated.
2. Responsible for the tool stack for the operational core business and the company-wide standards: what we buy, what we build ourselves, what we switch off. You decide, not a committee.
3. Get the most out of what is already there. A significant portion of the functionality we pay for is not used today.
4. Your benchmark: Every process must work with twice the mandate volume without requiring twice as many people.

Integration of acquired units

1. Responsible for the technical takeover of each new location - system connection, data migration, access, security, workability from day one.
2. Make the integration a repeatable process instead of a project: What takes three months at the first location must take weeks at the fourth.
3. Bring the acquired teams up to speed on the processes and tools that apply to us - and recognize where the acquired unit does it better than us.

Team building and operational responsibility

1. Build the operations team up to six to seven people who work in a generalist manner and each have a designated focus - you make the selection, you tailor the focus.
2. Handle the topics for which we don't yet have our own head: Tech Operations & Cloud Infrastructure as well as the automation of our HR processes from onboarding logistics to location setup for integrations. Both grow with the team into their own areas of focus - until then it's yours.
3. Be responsible for the key figures that precede sales: degree of digitization, adoption rate of new tools, lead times per location - and investigate their causes yourself instead of reporting them.
4. Stick with the system. This role leads a team and still builds things yourself - anyone who only distributes and follows up will lose their ability to judge within a year.

WHAT YOU WON'T FIND WITH US

1. No process advice that makes recommendations and then leaves. You are responsible for the implementation, not the diagnosis. Whatever you decide, you sit through it.
2. No greenfield construction in an empty space.

Vogel has established clients, DATEV is running, locations are working. What you build must work alongside ongoing operations and not stop them.

1. No corporate corset in which you wait for promotions. Growth here comes from contributions, not from years of work - and the area you take on is as big as you do it.
2. Not a pure strategy function. You are in site operations, with real processes and with real people. If you want to work exclusively at concept flight altitude, this is the wrong place.
3. No exit from a 45-hour week. The intensity remains high. Directed differently, with significantly more ownership – but not less.

FAQ

1. WHAT IS BIRD — AND WHERE DO YOU WORK?

Vogel is one of Germany's leading medium-sized business consultancies - a family business since 1959, based in Aalen - and is building the leading consulting platform for medium-sized businesses. We are growing at several locations: in Aalen/East Württemberg as an established headquarters and in Munich as a new hub. In both, we look across functions — from tax advice to consulting to the strategic teams that build the platform.

1. HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE SALARY BANDS?

Deliberately wide - and identified at every point. We differentiate based on track record and market value, not on degree: scarce, highly sought-after profiles at the top end, less scarce ones at the bottom. We calibrate exclusively to the market - two people with similar experience can earn different things with us.

1. HOW MUCH — AND HOW — DOES VOGEL WORK?

It's measured by what you move, not by hours. But it's also honest: If you're looking for 9-to-5, we're not the first place to go. We are looking for people who work intensively on their own initiative because the tasks are worth it. How you distribute your time is largely up to you. What we share: We work together face-to-face - culture, sparring and the best ideas arise in daily proximity. We are not a remote company and do not have major home office policies; Individual remote days are no problem.

1. HOW DOES THE APPLICATION PROCESS?

Slim, fast, transparent — and graded according to profile. For entry-level roles (internship, work study, career entry), two interviews and a short work sample are usually sufficient; experienced roles are a little more detailed. For selected senior roles, we are looking into incorporating a joint working day in the future so that both sides get to know each other better. The following always applies: scheduled deadlines, quick decisions, substantial feedback - regardless of the outcome.

1. HOW DOES VARIABLE PAY WORK?

Linked to performance on a quarterly basis and assessed qualitatively. The scale increases with the level: up to 20% Associate, 27.5% Manager, 35% Senior Manager, 42.5% Director, 50% VP. Expected value with good performance - you meet the requirements, set your own accents, pass the keeper test - is around 50% of the maximum; the maximum bonus is not the norm. The focus is on a holistic assessment by your manager: ownership, quality, learning curve, collaboration, impact.

1. HOW DO I DEVELOP MYSELF - WHAT CAREER PATHS ARE THERE?

Two active paths: Mastery (technical depth, expert career) and Pioneer (leadership, management). You choose the direction after onboarding, usually in years 1-3. Starting a career is not a special path, but rather the early part of the same route - from working student or intern to associate, for the best ones without having to reapply.

1. TEAM, CULTURE, HOLIDAY?

A shared lunch is an open daily option - not an obligation; If you like, you can join us; anyone can eat at any time. Plus dinners, social events and offsites on a regular basis - not as a mandatory program, but because a good team also shares time outside of work. Benefits: thoughtful and substantial, not symbolic. Vacation: 28 days.

1. I KNOW SOMEONE - IS THERE A REFERRAL BONUS?

Yes — EUR 2,500 for each successfully filled position (no internships). A short context is enough: who you are thinking about, for what role, why. Doesn't have to fit perfectly, but has to be substantial.

Requirements

THIS IS WHAT YOU BRING WITH YOU

Experience & track record

• You have set up operational systems in a growing company - typically as an operations or chief of staff role in a B2B scaleup to Series B, as an operator at a company builder such as Rocket Internet or Razor Group, as a forward deployed engineer with customer contact on real processes, or in your own startup.
• A strong consulting background is expressly welcome – McKinsey, BCG, Bain or comparable. What interests us is the craft of thinking: breaking down problems, quickly getting to the core of unfamiliar material, making decisions under uncertainty.
• What matters is where you stand: You want to be responsible for the results yourself instead of recommending them. Anyone who has already taken this step and can demonstrate a station with their own implementation responsibility starts at the top of the role.
• You have already implemented something at several locations at the same time and know why it is completely different than at one.
• You have your own build track: automations, scripts, agents, data models - things that you built yourself and that ran productively.
• Profiles that do not fit into this grid, but have automation depth and connectivity to medium-sized businesses, are expressly invited - we evaluate based on the contribution, not the label. Specifically: tax advisor or auditor who knows the industry from the inside and has built his own automation track; Business IT specialist who started with a corporation and then broke into a startup; Industrial engineer with multi-site rollout experience; Founder after selling or discontinuing his own company. This role does not follow an experience grid because it creates the grid for the area in the first place: we advertise it at several career levels, and anyone who gets in the way earlier gets in at the lower one - with the same mandate and a correspondingly different framework.

Skills & way of working

• You read a foreign process quickly and immediately see which part of it is substance and which part is habit.
• You build yourself: automations, data flows, interfaces. You don't have to be a software engineer, but you do have to be able to build the things you decide to build.
• You work with AI as a natural tool for process analysis, research and multiplying your own output. Repetitive tasks are an incentive for you to automate, not a fate.
• You explain technical decisions in such a way that a tax advisor with twenty years of experience can recognize the consequences and act.
• You lead a small team professionally and disciplinarily – selection, tailoring, development – without removing yourself from the matter.

Mindset & personality

• You have the humility to learn from practitioners. The tax specialist with twenty years of experience knows things about her process that are not shown in any diagram.
• You endure being the first: no predecessor, no team, no existing structure - and read that as the real reason for coming.
• Vogel is hierarchical in decision-making, flat in communication, autonomous in execution. Achievement is celebrated, not hidden - anyone who wants to get ahead because they are good will find the space to do so here, without political camouflage and without consensus theatre.
• You aspire to set the highest standard in everything you deliver - not because someone controls it, but because mediocrity bothers you personally.