Head of Operations

Time commitment: Full-time

Location: Hybrid working from the London office 3 days per week, with flexibility for individual needs.

Reporting to: Aoife Barron, VP Product & Operations

About Paloma

Our mission is to make NHS autism and ADHD care accessible within 4 weeks and, in turn, help every child achieve their potential.

In 2024, our founders, Mark and Darshak, were shocked to find that children needing an NHS autism or ADHD assessment were waiting 4-10 years. Delays result in children being more likely to develop mental health conditions and fall behind in education. Furthermore, the much-needed pre/post-assessment support (outside of ADHD medications) is typically not funded by the NHS.

These long waits have built up because of increased recognition and understanding of neurodevelopmental conditions, and a lack of investment and innovation within the NHS to meet growing demand.

Mark and Darshak, with their 25 years of combined NHS experience, including building services that have treated over 1,000,000 patients in obesity & ophthalmology, founded Paloma to change this.

We have successfully reduced waits to less than 3 months by;

Taking a product-first approach to redesign the care pathway to give families a more consumer-like experience of care
Our in-house product, engineering and AI team have built our own autism- and ADHD specific electronic health record and AI support tool to free clinicians from documentation to refocus on supporting families
Investing in up- and cross-skilling our clinicians

We are proud that Paloma is:

Loved by families, with 4.9 out of 5 on Google and 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot
Care Quality Commission (CQC) registered and quality-focused
Clinically led, with over 100 clinicians who support families through their care journey.
A community of passionate, mission-driven and innovative team members who challenge the status quo and test and learn from new ideas and approaches.
In control of our own destiny, as we are profitable and backed by leading healthcare investors Triple Point and Heal Capital
Growing fast, hiring over 100 more roles in the next 12 months.

What’s next?

Whilst we have reduced wait times, it is estimated that up to 500,000 children are still waiting for an NHS autism or ADHD assessment, and potentially millions more are waiting for post-assessment care. We won’t rest until this comes down.
We will build new services to support families and children diagnosed with autism or

The Opportunity

We are looking for a Head of Operations to lead and scale our operations function.

This is a high-impact role where you will lead a rapidly scaling operations function of 100+ people, including our Care Delivery team (Team Managers, Clinicians, Care Coordination administration team) and our Scheduling and Governance (including safeguarding) teams.

Your mission is to ensure that as we scale to help thousands of families, our service remains high-quality, safe, efficient, and financially sustainable. Your will orchestrate this complex function, ensuring every step of our care pathway—from the NHS referral to exit—works in perfect sync.

As Paloma scales, there will be opportunities for further responsibility and progression in this role.

About you

Leader of leaders: You have a proven track record of managing large, multi-tiered teams. You know how to motivate and develop managers who, in turn, manage our Delivery Team, Care Coordinators, Scheduling, and Governance Teams
Thrive at scale: Managing a rapidly growing team of over 100 people doesn't intimidate you; you have the organisational skills to keep a large workforce aligned and productive, and are excited to grow the team significantly more.
Systems thinker: You see how a change in scheduling impacts care delivery, how a governance update affects the Care Coordination Team, and how changes in our technology impact clinician throughput. You manage the "ripple effects."
Operationally & financially rigorous: You thrive on metrics, KPIs, and unit economics. You use data to identify key opportunities or risks such as capacity bottlenecks, cost inefficiencies, or potential safeguarding risks before they become issues.