Manager – School Operations (MSO) – GEMS Education

GEMS World Academy in Abu Dhabi is hiring a Manager – School Operations (MSO), a role fully responsible for the non-education side of running the school — everything that has to work well so that teaching and learning can happen without disruption. This is explicitly not an academic or teaching role; it’s the operational backbone that supports the Principal or CEO in running the school as a functioning institution.

Day to day, the role covers the operational functions that keep a school running: facilities, administration, procurement, health and safety compliance, vendor management, and the kind of day-to-day problem-solving that comes up constantly in an institution serving hundreds of students and staff. The role is also explicitly customer-service oriented, expected to meet and exceed both internal (staff) and external (parent, student) expectations, all while embracing GEMS’ core values as an organisation.

This suits an experienced operations or facilities manager, ideally with prior experience in a school or similarly service-oriented institutional environment, who is comfortable being the person who makes sure the physical and administrative machinery behind education runs smoothly, largely without recognition when it goes well.

Because the role reports closely to the Principal or CEO, it also requires genuine trust and independent judgment — this is someone empowered to run operations, not simply execute instructions.

A school's academic mission depends entirely on operational reliability that mostly goes unnoticed when it's working — a facilities issue, a safety lapse, or an administrative breakdown pulls attention and resources away from teaching and learning immediately and disproportionately. For a large institution like GEMS World Academy, serving many students and families simultaneously, the Manager - School Operations role is what prevents operational problems from becoming academic or reputational ones. Parents and students judge a school's quality partly on visible academic outcomes, but they also judge it, often unconsciously, on whether the physical environment feels safe, well-run, and professional — all of which sits squarely within this role's remit. Strong execution here protects the school's reputation and frees the Principal and academic leadership to focus on the school's core educational mission rather than firefighting operational issues. It also reduces risk exposure for the school more broadly, since unresolved facilities or safety issues can escalate into regulatory or insurance concerns if left unaddressed.

School operations management is a distinct and valuable specialization within the broader operations and facilities management field — someone who builds a strong track record running a school the size of GEMS World Academy develops credibility that transfers directly to larger, more senior operations roles within education, whether at GEMS' other campuses or at other institutions. The role's direct reporting relationship with the Principal or CEO also builds genuine executive-facing experience and exposure to how a school is run at the leadership level, not just the operational level. Because the role touches facilities, procurement, health and safety, administration, and vendor management all at once, it builds a genuinely broad operations skill set that's transferable well beyond education — into corporate facilities management, hospitality operations, or general institutional management. For someone who has run operations in another service-oriented environment and wants to move into the education sector specifically, this is a substantial, senior entry point rather than a junior operational role, with clear potential to grow into regional operations leadership across GEMS' wider school network. It also builds a track record of being trusted with significant independent authority, which is exactly the kind of experience senior hiring panels look for when evaluating candidates for larger, multi-campus operations roles.

• Significant experience in operations, facilities, or administrative management, ideally within a school or similarly service-oriented institution
• Strong understanding of health and safety compliance requirements for institutional settings
• Experience managing vendors, procurement, and day-to-day facilities operations
• Strong customer-service orientation toward both staff and parents/students
• Ability to work closely with and be trusted by school leadership (Principal/CEO)
• Bachelor’s degree required; relevant operations or facilities management certifications are an advantage