SKJ Capital is a Brisbane-based private investment group with a diversified portfolio spanning transport and logistics, hospitality venues, beverage production, childcare developments, commercial property, and community initiatives. We operate asset-heavy, performance-driven businesses. Standards, safety, discipline, and profitability are non-negotiable.
The Role
SKJ Capital is seeking a highly disciplined, hands-on Operations General Manager to take full ownership of execution, safety, and performance across the portfolio.
This is not a strategy-only role.
This is not a caretaker role.
This role exists to:
- Install and enforce operational discipline
- Eliminate inconsistency and informal practices
- Raise safety and compliance standards
- Drive measurable profitability improvements
- Hold leaders accountable to clear performance expectations
Reporting directly to ownership, you are responsible for turning direction into results and ensuring every operating business meets defined standards without exception.
You will walk sites, review numbers, challenge assumptions, and intervene when performance slips.
You are expected to make tough calls when required.
Operational Authority
The Operations General Manager has authority to:
- Enforce rosters, attendance, and labour standards
- Stand down employees or contractors for safety or performance breaches
- Stop operations or works where compliance or safety standards are not met
- Override site-level decisions where standards are compromised
- Escalate and recommend termination of underperforming managers
This role is backed fully by ownership in matters relating to safety, standards, and execution.
Core Responsibilities
1. Execution & Performance Control
- Translate ownership objectives into clear 30-60-90 day execution plans
- Establish non-negotiable operating standards across all entities
- Implement weekly operational reviews and monthly financial accountability
- Identify underperformance early and act decisively
- Remove bottlenecks, delays, and inefficiencies
2. Safety & Compliance Leadership
- Own safety outcomes across transport, construction, hospitality, and venue operations
- Enforce Chain of Responsibility and fatigue management requirements
- Conduct regular site audits and operational inspections
- Ensure compliance with WHS, licensing, building, and industry regulations
- Intervene immediately where standards are breached
Safety is treated as an operational discipline, not a marketing value.
3. Labour Discipline & Workforce Standards
- Enforce structured rostering and attendance requirements
- Eliminate unauthorised overtime and informal work practices
- Drive labour productivity and utilisation benchmarks
- Ensure performance issues are addressed promptly and documented
- Support structured performance management and, where necessary, exits
4. Financial & Commercial Discipline
- Own budgeting, forecasting, and variance control across the portfolio
- Improve unit economics and margin performance
- Identify and eliminate waste, cost leakage, and inefficiencies
- Standardise reporting and KPI dashboards with real-time visibility
- Drive EBITDA growth through operational control, not assumption
5. Systems & Infrastructure
- Build and enforce Standard Operating Procedures across all entities
- Replace informal processes with measurable systems
- Implement and optimise ERP, POS, and reporting platforms
- Establish structured reporting cadences and accountability frameworks
6. Leadership & Accountability
- Evaluate current leadership capability and upgrade where required
- Hold managers accountable to defined performance standards
- Develop succession pipelines for high performers
- Build a culture where standards are enforced consistently
This is a role for a builder and fixer, not a maintainer.
What Success Looks Like (First 12 Months)
Clear, enforced operating standards across all entities
- Measurable reduction in safety incidents and repeat compliance breaches
- Improved labour utilisation and reduced unauthorised overtime
- Margin improvement across key business units
- Underperforming assets stabilised or restructured
- Standardised systems and reporting cadence implemented
- Leadership team aligned and performance-driven
- Measurable EBITDA and cash flow growth
Leadership Profile
We are looking for someone who is:
- Highly structured and disciplined
- Direct, decisive, and comfortable with confrontation
- Experienced managing blue-collar and regulated environments
- Calm under pressure and firm under resistance
- Data-driven and commercially sharp
- Low tolerance for inconsistency or underperformance
- High ownership, low ego
- Respected for standards. Not hired to be liked.
Skills & Experience Required
- 10+ years in senior operational leadership in multi-unit or asset-heavy businesses
- Demonstrated experience turning around underperforming operations
- Direct P&L ownership and margin improvement track record
- Experience managing safety-critical environments
- Proven history of restructuring or upgrading leadership teams
- Experience across transport, construction, hospitality, manufacturing, or similar preferred
- Bachelor’s degree preferred but not required if operational track record is strong.
What We Offer
- Competitive salary based on experience
- Opportunity to lead a diversified and growing operating platform
- Direct access to ownership
- Long-term growth opportunity aligned with performance
Pre-employment checks required.
