What This Role Is:

Every year, hundreds of thousands of students across India decide they want to study abroad. They choose a destination, find a counselor or agent, start an application - and then enter a process that, for most of them, is opaque, slow, and full of friction. At Manifest Global, the student placements function is the engine that makes this work at scale. Across destinations - UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and beyond - thousands of student applications move through a system that has to be fast, accurate, and consistent, every intake cycle, without fail.

The Head of Operations is the operational authority for the student placements function across Manifest Global. You will own the full application lifecycle, the team that executes it, the metrics that measure it, and the processes that hold it together when volume is high and timelines are tight.

What Makes This Role Different:

Most operations leadership roles in student placements sit inside a single brand or a single corridor. This one does not. The student placements function at Manifest spans multiple brands and multiple destinations. The volume is real, the commercial stakes are direct - application velocity and conversion rates connect immediately to revenue - and the infrastructure is still being actively built.

What You Own:

- The full student application lifecycle: Own end-to-end business operations across all major study destinations, for all of the source markets across the globe.

- Group-level operating infrastructure: Design the central operations hub that serves all Manifest brands - shared workflows, shared systems, shared standards.

- Operational infrastructure and process design: Design and implement scalable, structured workflows that can absorb increasing application volumes without degrading quality or turnaround times.

- Metrics, data, and performance: Build dashboards and reporting that give the business a real-time view of pipeline movement and operational health.

- Team leadership: Lead and develop the student placement operations team - set clear roles, responsibilities, and performance expectations.

- University and partner coordination: Work closely with university partners, counsellors, and partner teams to ensure alignment on submission standards, timelines, and documentation requirements.

What You Bring:

- You have spent twelve to fifteen years in operations, and a meaningful part of that has been in student placements, international admissions, or study abroad.

- You have led teams in high-volume environments before.

- You are metrics-driven and use data to make decisions.

- You are comfortable with ambiguity and with building.