Country Operations Manager

Country Operations Manager, Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh City | Full time, on site | Reports to the co-founders
You run Timebeat in Vietnam, and you are the person the founders call.
Timebeat builds precision time synchronisation hardware and software for stock exchanges, telecoms operators, broadcasters and defence programmes. We give them a clock they can prove is correct. We are headquartered in London with offices in Ho Chi Minh City and Dallas.
This is three jobs in one, and that is the point.
Vietnam operations. Finance and accountant liaison, legal and compliance for the Vietnam entity, logistics, shipping and customs, stock accuracy, and honest oversight of whether local projects are on track. The office runs because you run it.
US operations support. The same remit extended to our Dallas office: bookkeeping liaison, shipping, stock and supplier administration, keeping two entities consistent so nothing is invented twice.
Founders' office. Taking the administration, chasing, document preparation and follow-up off the founders so they can do the things only they can do.
You will often be the only person who remembers something was promised.
Why it is worth having
There is no layer between you and the people who own the company. Your decisions are the company's decisions.
Country management, cross border operations and executive support are usually three people. Here the experience you build in two years would take five somewhere larger.
You work with London every week and with the US regularly. Three time zones, two legal systems, one small team that notices when you fix something.
A straight word on time zones
Vietnam is six hours ahead of London and twelve ahead of Dallas. You will need an overlap with London most afternoons, occasional early or late contact with the US, and when the founders are blocked on something you hold, that comes first. If that sounds fair you will do well here. If not, please do not apply, because we would both regret it.
What we are looking for
Several years running operations, office management or business administration, with real ownership rather than support of someone else's.
Strong written and spoken English, and fluent Vietnamese with the local knowledge to get things done with authorities, banks, landlords and suppliers.
Comfort with numbers and the care to notice when one is wrong.
Genuinely organised, with sound judgement about what to resolve and what to escalate.
Discretion. You will see commercial, financial and personal information routinely.
Based in Ho Chi Minh City
Useful but not required: experience inside a foreign owned company in Vietnam, exposure to customs or freight, a legal or contracts background, physical stock or fulfilment experience, or time spent supporting founders directly. Nobody arrives with all of these. If you have the essentials and two or three of the rest, apply.
To apply, tell us in a few lines about something you were the only person responsible for, and what happened. That is more useful to us than a covering letter.