Chief Operating Officer

About the job

About VAULTED

VAULTED AG is a Swiss deep-tech scale-up born out of research at ETH Zurich and the EMPA innovation ecosystem. We combine world-class engineering, computational design, digital fabrication, and advanced manufacturing to rethink how buildings are designed and delivered at a time when AI, automation, and data-driven design are transforming the industry.

After years of research and technology development, VAULTED is entering a major growth phase across Switzerland, Belgium, the UK, and the US. Our core technology is the Rippmann Floor System® (RFS), a lightweight, prefabricated structural floor system that can reduce concrete use by up to 70%, steel use by up to 90%, and embodied carbon by up to 75% compared with conventional concrete slabs.

What makes VAULTED special is also the team behind it: a highly international and interdisciplinary group with a strong collaborative culture, a high level of trust, and real individual ownership. Joining VAULTED means having a visible impact while helping build a scalable technology company and shape the future of one of the world’s largest industries.

The Role

We are hiring a Chief Operating Officer to build the operational engine that turns confirmed projects into reliable, profitable, and scalable delivery. This is a senior leadership role for someone who combines deep project and construction industry understanding with strong operational and commercial judgement, but also someone who is very hands-on and enjoys setting up the systems and processes behind our operations.

The COO takes ownership once a project is won and oversees project delivery, project management, supplier and prefabrication partnerships, operational contracting, and project economics. The role ensures that scope, timelines, quality, risks, resources, costs, and margins are transparent and actively managed, while giving project teams the structure and support they need to deliver.

A core mandate is to make VAULTED better with every project: translate project learnings into stronger processes, supplier setups, handovers, delivery standards, and feedback to engineering and R&D. The COO builds the operational capabilities required to scale across Switzerland, Belgium, the UK, and the US without adding unnecessary complexity. This is a 100% role.

Key Responsibilities

• Operational leadership & project delivery: Build and lead the operating model required to deliver VAULTED projects reliably and efficiently. Oversee the project management function, set clear execution standards, and support escalation and decision-making on active projects.
• Project economics & controlling: Establish disciplined project controlling across budgets, costs, forecasts, changes, and margins, ensuring deviations and commercial implications are visible early and actively addressed.
• Supplier, production & prefabrication ecosystem: Identify, evaluate, negotiate, and manage production partners, suppliers, and prefabricators across relevant markets, ensuring quality, capacity, cost competitiveness, and delivery reliability.
• Contracting, procurement & operational risk: Shape supplier and operational contracts, procurement approaches, and partnership models that improve delivery certainty, manage risk, protect margins, and maintain strategic flexibility.
• Cross-functional leadership & resources: Connect project management, engineering, design, R&D, commercial teams, and external partners. Create clarity on priorities, responsibilities, capacity, and trade-offs, and ensure smooth handovers from sales into execution.
• Continuous improvement & international scaling: Turn project learnings into better processes, standards, supplier setups, and execution methods, while building operational readiness for Switzerland, Belgium, the UK, the US, and future markets.

Requirements

• Typically 8+ years of relevant experience in project delivery, operations, construction, architecture, or prefabrication, preferably with an engineering background.
• Proven responsibility for complex, multi-stakeholder projects or project portfolios, with the ability to oversee execution while staying close enough to intervene when needed.
• Strong practical understanding of how construction or engineered products move from design and procurement through production, coordination, and delivery.
• Strong commercial and financial discipline, including project budgets, cost drivers, forecasting, margins, change management, and operational risk.
• Experience negotiating and managing suppliers, production partners, contracts, and long-term operational relationships.
• Strong leadership skills with high empathy and high standards: able to build trust, set clear expectations, challenge constructively, make decisions, and hold teams and partners to commitments.
• Strategic and hands-on working style: able to build scalable systems and processes while staying pragmatic, close to project realities, and comfortable solving difficult execution issues.
• Fluency in English is required; German is a strong advantage. Based in Zurich/Dübendorf, or willing to work primarily from Dübendorf, with occasional national and international travel to project, production, and construction sites.

Nice to Have

• Experience scaling prefabricated construction systems, structural products, construction technology, or other industrialised building solutions across markets.
• An existing network among prefabricators, suppliers, contractors, engineering firms, manufacturers, or other construction delivery partners in Switzerland or Europe.
• Experience in a high-growth start-up or scale-up where processes, teams, and operational structures still need to be built.
• Familiarity with circular construction, low-carbon materials, digital fabrication, design for disassembly, or other approaches relevant to VAULTED’s technology and delivery model.