Head of Operational Integration

Where we are today:

• Strong triple-digit-million euro turnover run rate, the majority of it from repeat customers
• Seven European markets live, sourced from suppliers across Asia and beyond
• 80+ people across Berlin (HQ), London, and Shanghai
• $90M raised in equity and debt, including our $40M Series B, from Atomico, Project A, Target Global, and Inven Capital - with working capital facilities from UniCredit and KfW

The margin is in the bits. The moat is in the atoms. We are building the supplier of record for industrial materials - and redefining how global trade works in one of the largest and most essential industries on earth.

Acquisitions are our second growth path. We buy established industrial distribution businesses in the EUR 20-40M revenue range, owners and management stay on board, and we connect them to our platform, our procurement, our financing lines and our AI stack. Three deals are live, two are close to signature, and at run rate we intend to close around five per year out of a mapped universe of roughly 200 targets.

ROLE OVERVIEW

You own what happens after signing.

Origination, valuation and deal execution sit with the CEO and our senior M&A advisor. Your mandate starts the day a company becomes part of Andercore and it ends when that company runs better than it did before.

These are analog businesses. Fifteen years old, owner-led, hemdsärmelig, a well-run P&L and almost no technology underneath it. They are profitable, they are growing, and they are at their operational limit. Our hypothesis is that our platform, our purchasing power, our credit facilities and our automation take them past that limit. Your job is to find out on the ground whether that hypothesis holds, in which order, and at what pace - and then to make it happen with the management team, not to them.

We do not arrive as the saviour with the AI magic box. We say so explicitly to every seller, and you will hold that line.

WHAT YOU WILL OWN

HOLDING MANAGEMENT FROM DAY 1

• Access to accounting and financials from day one, monthly numbers on a fixed close, one reporting framework across all acquired entities.
• Set the baseline: revenue, margin, working capital, cash, customer and supplier concentration. No opinion without the number behind it.
• Pick up the commitments made during due diligence and turn them into the operating rhythm of the first 100 days.
• Run the portfolio as a financial participation first. Both companies are growing. Do not put anything into a skid.

ON-THE-GROUND DIAGNOSIS

• Spend real time inside the acquired businesses and find out where they actually stand, which is never where they say they stand.
• Map the connection points: procurement, pricing, inventory, sales productivity, logistics, financing, ERP, reporting.
• Test our integration theses against reality, quantify the ones that hold, kill the ones that do not, and bring the correction back to the CEO fast.

VALUE CREATION

• Sequence and land the levers with the management team: central procurement, our credit and working-capital facilities, pricing, sales productivity, customer intelligence, automation of manual back office.
• Decide with the CEO what gets centralized, what stays entrepreneurial, and what we take from them - the flow runs in both directions, several of these companies do things better than we do.
• Track every lever against the original investment case in euros.

OWNER AND MANAGEMENT RELATIONSHIP

• Be the peer of a Geschäftsführer who built a EUR 30M business himself. Credibility comes from having done operating work, not from a framework.
• Be the one who checks whether things are as good as they are described, and who says it out loud when they are not. The CEO stays the partner; you bring the uncomfortable version.
• Manage expectations in the other direction too: we are not a service provider that solves the acquired company's problems for it.

PLAYBOOK AND TEAM

• Codify integration into a repeatable capability: Day-1 checklist, reporting standard, diagnostic framework, lever library, 100-day plan.
• Make the fourth acquisition faster than the first, then build and lead the team that runs them in parallel.

SCOPE BOUNDARIES / WHAT THIS ROLE IS NOT

• Not M&A. No origination, no valuation, no LOI, no SPA. That sits with the CEO and our senior M&A advisor.
• Not a PMO. Nobody here sends a 400-line integration plan with traffic lights to an owner-manager. That gets you thrown out of the room, correctly.
• Not a consulting engagement. You are measured on the numbers of the acquired companies, not on the quality of the analysis.
• Not a corporate integration role. These are not hierarchical organizations that execute what the centre decides.
• Not a process you inherit. There is none yet. You build it.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

You are an operator out of a private equity value-creation or portfolio operations team, or a generalist from strategy and transformation with real time spent inside operating companies. Roughly eight to twelve years in.

You bring:

• At least one integration or post-close situation you personally carried, where you can name the specific knotty problem you solved and why it worked. We will ask for that story in the first interview.
• Operating substance: you have sat in procurement, pricing, supply chain, finance or sales of a real company, not only next to it.
• Geländegängigkeit. You are comfortable with an entrepreneur who is highly intelligent, rough around the edges, and holds two cars and a boat inside the company. Nothing about that scenario throws you.
• People work as roughly half the job. Influence without formal authority, because these managing directors did not sign up to be managed.
• A strong observer. You read a business and a person quickly and accurately.
• Fluent German and English. German is not optional; these conversations happen in German.
• Fluency with modern AI tooling and the instinct to automate your own work. You do not need to be an engineer.

You do not need five PMI programmes on your CV. We would rather you had none than that you learned to fill in lists instead of thinking.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

Within your first 12 months:

• Every acquired entity reports monthly on one framework, on a fixed close, with us having access to accounting.
• Each acquisition has its integration thesis validated or killed with numbers within 90 days of closing.
• The acquired businesses keep growing. No customer, supplier or key person lost to the transaction.
• The first value-creation levers are live and their P&L impact is measurable in euros.
• A documented playbook exists, and the next integration starts faster than the last.

Over time you own integration and value creation for the whole group at a pace of several acquisitions per year, and build the team that delivers it.

PACKAGE

• Fixed base plus a variable component tied directly to the success of each integration.
• Virtual equity in Andercore at the current strike, with meaningful upside if we build what we intend to build.
• Direct work with the Founder & CEO, the M&A advisor, the Board and our investors.

We are an equal-opportunity employer and welcome applicants from all backgrounds, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, or any other characteristic.

We are an equal-opportunity employer and welcome applicants from all backgrounds, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, or any other characteristic. We believe that diversity drives innovation, creativity, and collective strength.

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Source: Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis), table; dl-de/by-2-0; StarIn's calculation

Posted Nov 01, 2026

Posted Nov 01, 2026