Head of Workplace Operations and Facilities

Linklaters is a global law firm, providing legal services in 20 countries and through 30 offices.

Linklaters is a people business. Being best in class in the eyes of our clients means that our people must be exceptional.

We look not only for brilliant minds, but for people who will thrive in our environment: people who love working collaboratively and demonstrate the innovative, efficient, agile, entrepreneurial, and responsible mind-set we aim to bring to every interaction.

Ours is an environment of outperformance. We achieve this not with targets and incentives, but by fostering a positive, supportive, fair, and open atmosphere.

We respect and value difference but insist on inclusivity. We celebrate all aspects of diversity and challenge any form of bias. This is vital to our ability to work as one team, with a common goal.

The Role:

We're looking for a senior Facilities and Workplace Operations leader to oversee our UK workplace portfolio, ensuring the delivery of an exceptional environment for our people, clients and visitors.

This is a highly visible leadership role with responsibility for the strategic and operational management of facilities, workplace services and vendor performance across our UK offices. You'll be responsible for driving operational excellence, continuous improvement and service innovation, ensuring our workplaces remain efficient, high-performing and aligned to the evolving needs of the business.

Working in partnership with senior stakeholders, you will balance long-term strategic planning with a strong understanding of operational delivery, creating workplaces that enhance productivity, employee experience and client service.

• Lead the strategic and operational management of facilities and workplace services across the UK platform.
• Drive operational excellence across all facilities functions, embedding a culture of continuous improvement and service enhancement.
• Oversee a complex supplier and outsourced service model, ensuring partners deliver against agreed performance, quality and commercial objectives.
• Use workplace data and operational insight to improve service delivery, occupancy, utilisation and user experience.
• Ensure the firm's workplaces provide an outstanding experience for employees, clients and visitors.
• Lead financial planning, budgeting and cost optimisation across facilities and workplace operations.
• Develop and implement workplace strategies that support business objectives and future ways of working.
• Lead and develop a high-performing facilities and workplace operations team.

What we're looking for:

• Significant senior leadership experience within Facilities Management, Workplace Services, Corporate Real Estate or a related built-environment function.
• Proven experience managing large-scale, complex and high-profile corporate office environments.
• A strong track record of delivering operational excellence and continuous improvement across facilities and workplace services.
• Experience leading outsourced service provider and supplier relationships, driving accountability, performance and value.
• Strong commercial and financial management skills, including budget ownership and business planning.
• Experience using operational data, workplace analytics and performance metrics to improve service outcomes and workplace experience.
• The ability to balance strategic planning with a hands-on understanding of facilities operations and service delivery.
• Exceptional stakeholder management and influencing skills, with credibility at senior leadership level.
• A passion for creating workplace environments that enhance both employee and client experience.

What's on offer:

Joining Team Linklaters will see you qualify for a range of benefits designed to reward the vital contribution you'll be making to our success. These include:

Health & Wellbeing

• Private Medical Insurance

• Free in-house fitness centre and subsidised health club memberships

• Free onsite GP service and periodic health assessments

Finance

• Pension and flexible savings options

• Income protection and life assurance

• Mortgage advice and will-writing services

Family & Lifestyle

• Electric car and cycle to work schemes

• Emergency family care

• Additional holiday/birthday leave

• Maternity/paternity/shared parental leave

• Travel insurance and season ticket loan

• Option to join sports and social clubs, as well as our employee networks groups (such as our Gender Equality, With Pride, or Social Mobility Networks)

If you think this role would suit you, please click apply below. We look forward to hearing from you!

Technical Skills

Budget Management, Change Management, Contract Management, Facility Management, Lease Management, Project Management, Security Management, Strategic Sourcing, Sustainability Strategy, Vendor Management

This list of duties and responsibilities above is not exhaustive.  It is intended to describe the general content of, and requirements for, the performance of this job. As such, the role may also include the undertaking of additional tasks as required.

Application Policy

Applications and CVs (direct or via agency) are only accepted online via the portal. Queries related to our roles must be directed to the relevant recruitment team and not the partners, practices or stakeholders (lateralrecruitment@linklaters.com for legal roles or ukbtrecruitment@linklaters.com for business team roles).