View Vacancy - DIT Latin America Regional Operations Manager.

This job is preferably based in São Paulo, Brazil, however applications from other candidates able to work from an Embassy or Consulate elsewhere in the Latin America Regional Network will be considered.

The Department for International Trade (formerly UKTI) is responsible for supporting UK companies to develop new markets for the export of their products. DIT in Latin America is promoting UK exports through High Value Campaigns in Defence and Security, Oil and Gas, Advanced Engineering (Marine and Automotive), Financial Services, Healthcare, Education, Infrastructure (Water, Rail and Aiports), Mining and Food and Drink. These Campaigns aim to double UK exports by 2020 by targeting key sectors and markets with high levels of demand for UK products and services.

Main purpose of job:

Background: This is a new role to support the Latin America Regional Director of DIT in developing and managing our regional network based in Embassies and Consulates in 20 markets around the region.

The successful candidate will work closely with Ambassadors and Directors of DIT in the 20 countries to facilitate effective planning, collaboration and sharing of resource across the region.

With the Regional Director, country level Directors and  High Value  Trade Campaign managers, you will develop a forum for monitoring performance and sharing best practice to ensure achievement of challenging export targets and to enable joint regional business planning.

Managing regional delivery: Drive a programme of integration across the region by designing and implementing governance structures that are configured to make prompt decisions about resources and priorities.

Create systems to allow timely monitoring of performance data and metrics to improve productivity. Provide a secretariat function for governance meetings and monitor delivery of agreed actions by members of the boards. Implement sub-regional working groups and shared services where this makes sense.

Implement a management structure for High Value Campaigns in the region as a forum to monitor performance with campaign leads, disseminate best practice and explore the potential for expanding and increasing the number and value of campaigns.

Work across DIT and FCO priorities and teams to ensure collaboration on Prosperity policy and programmes that open Latin American Markets for future business. Support the work of the Regional Marketing and Communications hub to promote the GREAT campaign across the region.

Business and Financial planning:  Engage with stakeholders in across the UK in order to deliver business and financial plans for Latin American Markets, identifying opportunities for and then delivering consolidated regional business and financial plans where possible.

Resilience: Develop a regional resilience network and manage deployments to meet short term increases in workloads or long term absences.

Roles and responsibilities:

• Building and managing senior level relationships with key stakeholders and partners within the UK Government network in Latin America and in the UK to support objectives.
• Management of all Latin America wide budgets, including forecasting, accounting for spend, keeping the Oracle based budget management system up to date.
• Leading a virtual network to ensure team members are motivated to achieve outcomes and have the right skills and capability. This will often involve engaging team members in remote locations and without direct line management responsibility. Contributing to wider corporate objectives, including proactive input to Ministerial/VIP visits and deliverables.

What we do:

The Department for International Trade works with UK based businesses to ensure their success in international markets through exports. We encourage and support overseas companies to look at the UK as the best place to set up or expand their business. Improving trade and investment links with Latin America is a UK Government priority.

We are using strategic campaigns which are designed to unlock individual business / investment opportunities for the UK; our focus is on high value opportunities. We also support individual UK businesses with market access issues and Government lobbying. Latin America has a lot of UK Ministerial/VIP attention and we host many incoming Ministers/VIPs. This new post reflects a decision by DIT to create more capacity within the management team, enabling greater strategic direction and focus on how to implement a regional approach to DIT’s work in Latin America

The job is a fantastic opportunity to make a real impact on the UK’s trade and investment links with Latin America. We will give you the freedom and space to develop your role and decide how to best to deliver, but we will support you too with opportunities to get the right learning and development and opportunities to travel across Latin America and occasionally to the UK. But you will also need to be collaborative and flexible to fit in with the network’s ethos; and, importantly, focussed on delivering results and contributing to the wider corporate efforts. To be successful:

• You will need to be strategically aware to identify opportunities for greater integration of our work as a region and to develop business and resource plans to support efficient delivery of ambitious targets.
• You will make best use of leadership and influencing skills to promote collaboration and teamwork between the diverse teams within the DIT Latin America network.
• You will have strong interpersonal skills and experience of developing productive relationships with senior decision makers in the UK and the region and with stakeholders and partners, and of using these to deliver your objectives.
• You will need to be collaborative, flexible and result driven able to manage yourself and the demands on you.
• You will need to be able to travel regularly in Latin America and occasionally to the UK.
• You will have good project management skills to create and deliver management tools for governance boards. You will be expected to produce written work in English to a high standard. Knowledge of Portuguese or Spanish would be a significant advantage.

Resources managed:

Budget: £100K in year one with scope to increase as more activities are regionalised.

Staff: The post holder will directly manage 1 person, but will need to engage and lead team members across the region to ensure delivery of targets. 

• Minimum of 5 years of relevant management experience.
• Strong problem solving skills and experience in designing and implementing new organisational structures and processes.
• Tried and tested project and budget management skills.
• Excellent interpersonal, team working and people management skills. You will need to show a solid track record of dealing with senior level decision makers.
• Highest level of fluency in both written and spoken English.