Director, Sales Operations - EMEA and APJ

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. By delivering hardened, secure, and production-ready builds of all the open source software engineers and AI agents rely on, Chainguard helps organizations build faster, stay compliant, and eliminate risk. Our customers include Fortune 500 enterprises and global industry leaders, including Anduril, Canva, Fortinet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, OpenAI, Snap Inc., and Snowflake. Chainguard is venture-backed by leading investors, including Amplify, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mantis VC, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Spark Capital.

This role, in a nutshell

Chainguard's international business is past the proving stage — the teams, the motion, and the early wins are in place across both EMEA and APAC. We're looking for a Director, Sales Operations to run the operational engine behind it. You'll lead our existing sales operations team and own the planning, forecasting, territory design, reporting, and process rigor that keep a multi-country, multi-segment, multi-timezone business running at speed. You'll act as the direct revenue operations partner to our GVP, EMEA, our RVP, APAC, and their VPs, reporting into our global Revenue Operations leader — inheriting global standards and systems and adapting them for the realities of selling across UK&I, DACH, the Nordics, France, Benelux, Southern Europe, the Middle East, ANZ, Japan, India, and ASEAN. This is a role for someone who wants to own two regions end-to-end while staying tightly connected to a global function.

What you’ll do

• Lead, coach, and develop the existing Sales Operations team supporting EMEA and APAC — set priorities, raise the bar on quality, and grow the team as both regions scale
• Serve as the direct revenue operations partner to the GVP, EMEA, and the RVP, APAC, and their leadership teams — the single point of accountability for planning, forecasting, reporting, and operational decision support across both regions
• Sit in both the EMEA and APAC leadership rhythms: attend and shape leadership meetings, staff meetings, and QBRs, and bring the data and recommendations that let the GVP, the RVP, and their leaders make calls quickly and confidently
• Extend that partnership down the org to regional VPs and front-line managers, while acting as the EMEA and APAC voice inside the global GTM Operations function
• Own annual and in‑year territory design across both regions — carve equitable, data-backed territories spanning UK&I, DACH, Nordics, France, Benelux, Southern Europe, the Middle East, ANZ, Japan, India and ASEAN, accounting for language, entity, segment, and account‑potential differences
• Run capacity and coverage modeling for EMEA and APAC: headcount plans, ramp assumptions, quota allocation, and productivity targets tied to the company financial plan — including how a maturing EMEA business and an earlier‑stage APAC business warrant different assumptions
• Own the forecast cadence for both regions — weekly pipeline inspection, forecast calls, roll‑up accuracy, and the narrative that goes to global sales and finance leadership
• Deliver the operating reporting rhythm for both regions: weekly performance, monthly business reviews, QBRs, and EMEA and APAC inputs to Board materials — surfacing the trends that materially affect the growth trajectory
• Own pipeline health and funnel analytics end‑to‑end: conversion rates by stage, segment, region, and country; source and campaign contribution; win/loss patterns; and the levers behind each
• Drive data integrity and hygiene standards in Salesforce and the broader GTM stack across both regions — account ownership, hierarchy, segmentation, and reporting fields that hold up under scrutiny
• Partner with global GTM Operations on system and process changes, ensuring EMEA and APAC requirements are represented and that regional adaptations don't fragment the global architecture
• Support sales compensation execution for both regions in partnership with global Sales Ops and Finance — plan rollout, quota letters, and accurate, on‑time attainment reporting
• Partner cross‑functionally with Marketing, BDR, Customer Success, Finance, and Legal to remove friction from the EMEA and APAC GTM process
• Maintain governance and rules of engagement across EMEA and APAC teams and segments, and arbitrate cleanly when coverage or credit questions arise
• Bring region‑specific operational requirements — data residency, GDPR and APAC privacy regimes, and local entity and currency considerations — into process and reporting design in partnership with Legal and Finance

What we’re looking for

• Deep Sales, Revenue, or GTM Operations experience, including significant time in high‑growth Enterprise B2B SaaS, is a must
• Proven experience managing and developing a sales operations team is a must
• Demonstrated ownership of multi‑country international territory design, quota allocation, and capacity planning is a must — EMEA experience is essential, APAC exposure is a strong plus
• Hands‑on, expert‑level Salesforce fluency — reporting, data models, process design, and the judgment to know what belongs in the CRM and what doesn’t — is a must
• A track record of running a forecast cadence that sales leadership trusts, with measurable improvement in forecast accuracy, is a must
• Strong analytical foundation: able to break ambiguous problems into concrete components and land on a defensible recommendation
• Excellent communicator who can move between a front‑line manager’s pipeline question and an executive‑level narrative without changing the underlying facts
• Demonstrated success as the trusted operations partner to senior revenue leaders (GVP/VP/GM level) — able to earn a seat in the leadership rhythm, tell them what they need to hear, and be relied on for the numbers
• Proven ability to support multiple regional leaders at once with different levels of business maturity, without defaulting to whichever one is loudest
• Experience operating as a regional leader inside a globally managed function — comfortable inheriting standards, pushing back where they don’t fit, and not fragmenting the system
• Working knowledge of the modern GTM stack (Salesforce, Outreach, Gong, HubSpot, CPQ, Sigma/Tableau/Looker) and a strong aptitude for picking up new tools
• Comfort with international operating complexity: multiple currencies, legal entities, languages, data privacy regimes, and a working day that spans EMEA and APAC timezones
• Self‑starter who flourishes in a fast‑paced, high‑growth environment and can hold multiple priorities without dropping any
• Willingness to travel across EMEA and APAC and to the US for QBRs and planning cycles (~25%)
• Public sector or regulated‑industry GTM operations experience is a plus but not required
• Experience with SQL or building data models directly is a plus but not required

Base Salary Range: £165,000 — £210,000 GBP

About Us

We live and breathe our company values:

• We are customer obsessed — We focus on delivering solutions to our customers that create value and make their lives better.
• We have a bias for intentional action — We prioritize, plan, try things, and fail fast.
• We don’t take ourselves too seriously (but we do serious work) — We are solving an important problem which takes focus, but we also like to enjoy the journey.
• We trust each other and assume good intentions — We’re transparent with decisions to empower team members to make well informed decisions.

A few of the benefits we offer

• Flexible & Remote‑First Culture: Work remotely with team meetup opportunities, bi‑annual destination summits, and a monthly stipend for coworking spaces, phone and internet costs.
• Our Approach to Equity: Receive stock options upon hire and promotion. Plus, you can participate in secondary offerings and have 10 years to exercise your options (yes, you read that correctly: 10 years!).
• 100% Covered Health Insurance: We cover 100% of your health, vision and dental insurance premiums for you and your dependents. Nothing comes out of your paycheck.
• ∞ Flexible Time Off: Take the time you need – to do our best work, we need to recharge and reset.
• 18 Weeks Paid Parental Leave: We offer 18 weeks for birthing parents and 12 weeks for non‑birthing parents, with the option to use it all at once or throughout your child’s first year.

Chainguard is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health decisions, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, political views or activity, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.

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