Chief Operating Officer

ABOUT THE COMPANY

ACER is an independent, not-for-profit educational research and development organisation focused on creating and promoting research-based knowledge, products and services that can be used to improve learning across the life span.

 

Position overview

The Chief Operating Officer (COO) oversees the day-to-day smooth running of the company and global offices. The COO will run the organisation’s end to end operations and ensures the strategy is executed effectively.

 

The COO is a senior enterprise executive accountable for ACER’s operational performance across Finance, Information Technology, Facilities and international operations.

 

The role is central to ensuring ACER’s strategy is translated into disciplined execution, strong governance and sustainable organisational performance.

 

The COO will work with the CEO, the Chief Information Officer, the Executive Team and the Chief People and Transformation Officer to develop and align the Information Technology (IT) roadmap and digitisation agenda to the ACER strategy, to strengthen ACER’s digital capability, scalability, long-term financial resilience and impact across the globe.  This includes forming a view on the capability required at the Executive Team level to deliver the IT roadmap and digitisation agenda.

 

Working closely with the CEO and Executive Team, the COO supports sustainable growth, the build of organisational digital and technological capability and ensures ACER has the operational discipline and capability to deliver efficiently, effectively and in alignment with ACER’s strategic priorities and risk appetite. The COO will be responsible for ensuring investment decisions are sound, in a global context, and that risk settings are robust. The COO will need to partner with the Executive Team to build operations that can scale, and ensure we pursue our mission and long‑term strategic objectives.

Position context

ACER is a national, independent, not-for-profit organisation with a global footprint spanning Australia, the UK, India, Malaysia and the UAE. With more than 440 staff and a broad portfolio of assessment, research, professional learning and digital product development, ACER continues to evolve to improve learning across the globe.

 

The organisation is undergoing significant transformation—structural, financial, technological and cultural—to position ACER for the next decade. The COO will provide executive oversight of enterprise operations, strengthening governance and decision‑making frameworks for investment and performance. The COO will act as a trusted sponsor of major digital, technology, data and operational initiatives that are essential for ACER’s future growth and competitiveness.

 

The role will closely complement and partner with the Chief People and Transformation Officer (CPTO). While the CPTO leads enterprise transformation governance, culture, workforce capability and organisational alignment, the COO will focus on translation of the ACER strategy into coherent financial and business plans, setting up the reporting and governance functions to oversight optimisation across ACER, ensuring delivery capability, efficiency and enterprise‑wide operational coherence.

 

Together, with the CPTO, these roles will lead the redesign and modernisation of ACER’s operating model, ensuring it is fit for a digital, global, commercially stronger future with a culture that honours our heritage and legacy but enables the transformation.

 

The COO will work with the global offices and work with their Boards, the Senior Executive Group, and the ACER Board to support a high-performance, future-oriented and values-aligned organisation.

Job responsibilities

Finance Leadership

• With the CFO, translate organisational strategy into sustainable financial plans, ensuring resources are aligned to ACER’s purpose, priorities and risk appetite.
• Lead the development of multi‑year financial plans and scenarios that support growth, resilience and long‑term organisational viability.
• Lead commercial and financial analysis to support major investment decisions, business cases, pricing models and new initiatives.
• Provide rigorous evaluation of investments, including digital initiatives, property decisions and commercial opportunities to ensure value for money and strategic fit.
• Partner with the CEO and Executive to assess trade‑offs between financial performance, mission outcomes and risk.
• Hold P&L responsibility across the ACER Group (including international offices), supporting commercial performance and alignment with ACER’s strategy.
• Support innovation and growth by ensuring financial frameworks enable, rather than constrain, well‑governed investment.
• Oversee medium and long term financial planning, and ACER’s commercial strategy.
• Act as a trusted advisor to the CEO, the Executive and to the ACER Board on financial strategy and risk.
• Provide strong leadership to the finance function, setting strategic direction and modes of operation that enhance resource utilisation and commercial acumen across the company.  Foster a culture of financial literacy and accountability.

Operational Transformation and Governance

• Provide executive oversight of the financial outcomes associated with delivery of ACER’s strategy ensuring that the operating model is appropriately funded, and that the delivery units are aligned for performance.
• Develop the financial models and performance metrics to monitor and track the financial transformation of ACER.
• Establish strong governance, delivery discipline and benefits realisation frameworks for all major initiatives in partnership with the CPTO.
• Ensure the rationalisation and consolidation of products, platforms and services to reduce complexity, duplication and cost.
• Oversee the evolution of ACER’s digital delivery models to harness contemporary technology to improve global reach, consistency and quality.
• Ensure digital products are commercially viable, operationally sustainable and aligned to ACER’s purpose and reputation.
• Lead enterprise‑wide workflow redesign and automation initiatives to improve efficiency, quality, transparency and scalability.
• Ensure effective integration of systems, data and processes across ACER’s international offices.
• With the CPTO, support the redesign of ACER’s operating model to transition the organisation to a digital‑first environment.
• With the CPTO, ensure initiatives are sequenced, resourced, governed and measured effectively across all divisions and global subsidiaries.
• Establish and own enterprise wide planning, including PISA oversight, with a focus on cost, resourcing, scheduling and delivery.

Digital & Technology Leadership

• Align digital and technology priorities with ACER’s strategic plan, transformation agenda and operating model.
• Establish clear governance, accountability and decision‑making frameworks for technology investment, delivery and performance.
• Act as a trusted executive sponsor for major digital and technology initiatives.
• Work with the CPTO to ensure technology capability uplift is supported through workforce planning, skills development and change management and that the right capabilities are in place to lead the transformation of ACER.
• Champion the uplift of enterprise data capability, including data quality, accessibility, analytics and insight.

Property and Facilities Oversight

• Provide strategic oversight of all property and facilities management activities, including leases, maintenance programs, compliance obligations and capital works.
• Ensure ACER’s Melbourne facilities are effectively managed to support operational performance, staff wellbeing and organisational reputation.
• Lead long-term facilities planning, balancing cost, capacity, risk and flexibility across the property portfolio.
• Oversee major capital investments and refurbishment programs, ensuring strong governance, value for money and minimal disruption to operations.
• Work with the CPTO to set and evolve ACER’s workplace strategy to support working from home and office based arrangements.
• Develop business cases and commercial models that maximise return on ACER’s property assets while managing risk and maintaining operational integrity.
• Drive continuous improvement and innovation in facilities management and workplace services.

International Office Leadership

• Provide strategic direction and leadership  to ACER’s international offices (UK, UAE, Malaysia, India) and in line with the new strategy and any changes to the operating model agreed by the ACER Board and Executive team.
• Strengthen global collaboration, consistency and integration across regions.

Governance & Reporting

• Report to the Board and relevant committees as required by the CEO.
• With the Company Secretary, ensure compliance with regulatory, contractual and sector‑specific obligations.

Culture, Safety & Wellbeing

• Champion a fair, inclusive, respectful and psychologically safe workplace aligned with ACER’s LEARN values.
• Lead wellbeing frameworks and initiatives that support staff resilience during transformation and change.

Other Duties

• At the request of the CEO, represent ACER in internal and external forums where strategic workforce or transformation matters are discussed.
• Undertake additional executive duties at the request of the CEO aligned with the scope and seniority of the position.

Organisational accountabilities

• Proactively contribute to achieving individual, team and organisational objectives while demonstrating ACER’s leadership behaviours:

• • Developing Self – self-awareness, reflection and continuous growth
  • Embracing Change – leading and championing change across the organisation
  • Pursuing Excellence – driving continuous improvement and high standards
  • Setting Directions – strategic thinking and future planning
  • Supporting Colleagues – developing and enabling people
  • Working Collaboratively – building strong relationships across all divisions and global offices

• Foster an equitable, inclusive, diverse workplace that values different perspectives and experiences.
• Ensure compliance with occupational health and safety, wellbeing, and information security requirements.
• Work in accordance with ACER’s policies, values and governance framework.

Qualifications

Essential:

• Tertiary qualifications in Business, Accounting or a related field.
• Extensive executive-level experience leading enterprise transformation in a complex organisation.

 

Desirable:

• Postgraduate qualifications in Accounting, IT or Management.
• Experience in education, not-for-profit, consulting or global multi-jurisdiction organisations.

Skills, knowledge and experience

Essential

• Extensive senior leadership experience operating at scale in organisations of comparable size and complexity (e.g., >$100m revenue, >450 staff).
• Proven leadership across commercial, research and government‑funded environments, with experience overseeing both corporate services and revenue‑generating divisions.
• Enterprise‑wide transformation expertise, including operating‑model redesign and major digital modernisation programs.
• Experience working in an environment focused on modernising legacy systems into secure, cloud‑based, automated environments, with strong commercial capability and understanding of the ecosystem of partners required to deliver, including third party providers.
• Global leadership capability, including integration of multi‑country operations and international P&L oversight.
• Demonstrated success driving measurable culture uplift and capability development across multi‑disciplinary teams.
• Strong commercial acumen, with a track record of disciplined execution and translating strategy into measurable outcomes.
• Exceptional leadership, communication and stakeholder engagement skills, including experience influencing at Executive and Board levels and chairing governance committees.

 

Desirable

• Experience in financial and transformation governance frameworks, benefits tracking, and enterprise program management.
• Experience leading business strategies within a global or multi-site organisation.
• Experience navigating complex government compliance frameworks, including data sovereignty and security accreditation.
• Experience working leading distributed workforces, including hybrid and flexible work models.
• Experience operating in matrixed or federated organisational models, balancing global consistency with local autonomy.
• Exposure to international markets.

Our commitment to equity, diversity, access and inclusion

ACER is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to actively fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment. We are dedicated to attracting, retaining and developing our people regardless of gender identity, cultural and faith background, sexual orientation, disability and/or age. ACER welcomes applications from all sectors of the community.

ACER encourages applications from the Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander community.

ACER is committed to supporting candidates with disability through provision of  adjustments during the recruitment and selection process and throughout employment. To request or discuss adjustment requirements, please contact: p&c@acer.org