Interim COO · Fractional COO Roles, UK

Fractional COO and interim COO roles, UK

Fractional Quest recruits fractional COO and interim COO operators for UK companies. This is the standing route into that work: one application, and you are matched against every mandate we take from here on rather than against one advert that closes in a month.

We are recruiting now. Some mandates are live and confidential, some are a fortnight away from signature. Applying takes about a minute and we come back to you either way.

What a fractional COO actually does

A fractional COO carries the operations seat one to three days a week for a company that needs the judgement of a chief operating officer but does not need — or cannot yet fund — a full-time one.

The work is usually one of four shapes:

• **Build the operating system.** The founder is still the bottleneck. Planning rhythm, targets, reporting, decision rights — the machinery a company needs to stop running on one person's memory.
• **Take the pressure off a scaling team.** Headcount has doubled, process has not. Someone senior has to hold delivery together while the permanent structure is built underneath.
• **Fix a specific function.** Supply chain, fulfilment, service delivery, manufacturing. A defined problem, a defined term.
• **Prepare for an event.** A funding round, a sale, a systems migration. Operational due diligence tends to expose what nobody had time to write down.

Interim COO — the same operator, a different shape

The distinction matters for how you plan your year, and very little else.

A fractional COO works part-time and usually holds two or three clients at once. An interim COO takes a full week for a defined term — covering a gap, running a programme, or holding the seat until a permanent hire lands.

Most of the operators we place do both, and most of them found us searching for one and took the other. If you are open to a full-week interim engagement as well as a part-week fractional one, say so when you apply — it roughly doubles what we can put in front of you.

Who we place

Not a checklist, and not every line has to be true of you.

• Chief operating officer, operations director or general manager experience, at a company where the operational problem was real rather than tidy.
• Comfortable being the most senior operational voice in the room, including with a board and including when the answer is no.
• Able to walk into a business, find the actual constraint within a fortnight, and say so plainly.
• A history of leaving something behind that works without you — the test of the fractional model, and the one that gets you re-hired.

Sector matters less than most people expect. What travels is the ability to read an operation quickly. What does not travel is a career spent inside one company's way of doing things.

Commitment, rates and IR35

Fractional engagements typically run one to three days a week on a rolling basis; interim mandates run a full week for a fixed term. Both are contract, and IR35 status is set per mandate by the client — we tell you the determination before you speak to anyone, not after.

Day rates vary by stage, sector and scope. The rate calculator and the fractional COO salary guide carry the current UK bands, every figure traced to a named source. We do not quote a rate on this page that we have not been given for a specific mandate.

How to apply

Send your LinkedIn profile. That is the whole ask — no CV, no registration form, no portal.

If a live mandate fits, we come back within a few days with the client, the brief and the rate. If nothing fits today, we will tell you that too, and you stay matched against everything we take on afterwards.

Related

Live roles: fractional COO jobs · interim COO jobs · part-time COO roles · all fractional jobs in the UK