Chief Operating Officer

Company: Confidential scale-up company
Location: Copenhagen area, Denmark
Reports to: CEO
Scope: Operations, production, supply chain, quality, leadership agenda and potentially R&D
Company stage: Scale-up, approx. 25 FTEs today with significant growth ahead

About the role

The company is entering a critical scale-up phase and is looking for a commercially minded COO to help professionalize and scale the business.

The company is building a new production facility, preparing for further fundraising and moving from a founder-led startup setup into a more mature operating organization.

The COO will act as the internal operating leader of the company, freeing up the CEO to focus on fundraising, sales and partnerships, while building the systems, structure and execution discipline needed to scale.

This is a broad COO role with operational depth — not a narrow manufacturing role.

Key responsibilities

The COO will:

• Lead and scale the company’s internal operating model.
• Drive operational discipline, execution rhythm and accountability.
• Support the new production facility setup and production scale-up.
• Strengthen operations, supply chain, quality and production planning.
• Connect R&D, technology and operations with commercial priorities.
• Build governance, KPIs, leadership cadence and decision structures.
• Act as a strategic sparring partner and experience anchor for the CEO.
• Free up CEO time by taking ownership of internal execution.
• Help prepare the company for further fundraising and growth.
• Build a high-performance culture with speed, clarity and high standards.

Ideal candidate

The ideal candidate has approx. 10–15 years of relevant experience from a scale-up, operations, supply chain, biotech, fermentation, foodtech, ingredients or technical production environment.

They are a strong generalist with operational depth, commercial understanding and the ability to create structure without slowing the company down.

Key requirements

The candidate should bring:

• Broad operational leadership experience.
• Experience from scale-up or fast-growing environments.
• Understanding of production, supply chain and commercial execution.
• Preferably exposure to biotech, fermentation, foodtech or technical production.
• Strong strategic and analytical capabilities.
• Ability to communicate clearly with CEO, board and investors.
• Hands-on mindset and high execution speed.
• Ability to challenge, support and complement a founder CEO.
• Ability to build slides, present clearly and translate strategy into action.

Personal profile

The successful candidate is:

• Fast, sharp and likeable.
• Commercially minded.
• Structured and execution-oriented.
• Hands-on but able to delegate.
• Comfortable in ambiguity.
• Strong in follow-up and accountability.
• Motivated by building a company, not just managing a function.

The right candidate will bring both drive and discipline and help the company move from startup mode to a scalable, professionally operated growth company.