Hybrid Fleet Operations Senior Manager chez Tower Cold Chain

About Tower Cold Chain

Tower Cold Chain, part of the Cold Chain Technologies group, is a global leader in robust, reliable and reusable temperature-controlled containers, supporting the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry.

The Role

As Senior Manager, Fleet Operations, you will lead the global planning, availability, and optimization of our temperature-controlled, reusable packaging fleet across our international network. This role plays a critical part in supporting Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP), onboarding new customer projects and trade lanes, and ensuring operational scalability aligned with business growth.

You will work cross-functionally with supply chain, logistics, demand planning, and commercial teams to ensure timely asset readiness, balancing utilisation, cost efficiency, and sustainability. This is a high-impact role requiring strategic thinking, strong executional leadership, and a data-driven approach to global fleet operations.

Operational KPI’s are all based off 4 areas – Service Delivery, Process Control, Continuous Improvement and Cost per revenue improvement. This role will have KPI’s / PI’s based on this framework.

Key Responsibilities

Fleet Management & Operations

• Oversee the global fleet of reusable temperature-controlled packaging units, ensuring optimal availability, condition, and performance across all nodes.
• Manage the full asset lifecycle including build schedules, deployments, returns, maintenance, and retirement.
• Support the planning and execution of fleet expansion initiatives based on business demand and network growth.

Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) Support

• Act as the operations lead within the S&OP process, ensuring accurate fleet supply forecasts in line with commercial, manufacturing, and project requirements.
• Align fleet readiness and availability with customer onboarding timelines, especially for new trade lanes or regions.

Supply Chain Collaboration

• Liaise closely with supply chain and manufacturing teams to ensure alignment of asset production schedules with fleet growth targets and customer needs.
• Coordinate with procurement and production planning to ensure timely delivery of new assets into the network.

Utilisation & Cost Optimisation

• Analyse fleet utilisation metrics to identify underperforming regions or inefficiencies.
• Develop strategies for return logistics, stock rebalancing, and consolidation of movements to reduce costs and improve turnaround times.
• Implement initiatives to improve fleet velocity and reduce idle inventory.

Customer & Project Support

• Collaborate with commercial, logistics, and implementation teams to ensure fleet readiness and operational support for key customer projects and pilot lanes.
• Provide out-of-network solutions when needed to support unique or urgent temperature-controlled shipment requirements.

Asset Management & Fleet Expansion

• Partner with the Logistics and Demand Planning Manager to integrate fleet forecasting into long-term operational planning.
• Use historical usage, booking trends, and commercial forecasts to recommend optimal fleet growth and deployment strategies.
• Ensure effective global management of TCC’s rental asset fleet, including containers, consumables, tools, and spares.
• Work with regional teams to implement asset maintenance, repair, and quarantine minimisation strategies.
• Use asset utilisation data to inform planning decisions and improve availability at service hubs.
• Provide visibility into asset KPIs including availability, usage, repair cycle time, and cost.
• KPI focus: Asset availability vs demand, utilisation rate, maintenance turnaround time.

Collaboration

• Foster a culture of performance, data accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Set clear objectives and support team development through coaching, training, and regular reviews.
• Actively participate in business-wide initiatives related to process control, service delivery, and operational excellence.

Job Requirements   

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain Management, Business Administration, Operations Management, or related field or experience level.

Experience

• 5+ years of experience in global logistics, supply chain, or fleet operations, preferably in a reusable packaging, temperature-controlled, or pharmaceutical logistics environment.
• Experience working in a service-based industry (e.g., healthcare, IT services, maintenance services) is highly desirable.
• Proven experience within cross-functional teams and multi-regional operations.

Skills

• Strong understanding of asset lifecycle management, reverse logistics, and multi-region fleet deployment.
• Experience supporting or leading S&OP processes and cross-functional planning activities.
• Demonstrated ability to optimize asset utilization and improve cost-to-serve through consolidation and logistics planning.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills; able to work effectively with global supply chain, logistics, commercial, and technical teams.
• Proficiency with fleet tracking, ERP, or planning tools (e.g., SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, Power BI, etc.).
• Analytical mindset and data-driven approach to decision-making.
• Strong leadership and project management skills, with cross-functional team experience.
• Comfortable managing competing priorities in a fast-paced, service-focused environment.

Please note that we are not able to sponsor employment visas at this time and therefore can only accept applications from people who have employment rights in the UK.

Tower Cold Chain is committed to Equal Opportunities in employment and service delivery.  The policies and practices of the Company aim to promote an environment that is free from all forms of unlawful and unfair discrimination and values the diversity of all people.

We offer £Competitive +Bonus and Benefits.