Operations Coordinator

About Midstream

Midstream Lighting designs and manufactures high performance LED lighting for airports, ports, stadiums and major industrial sites worldwide. Our lighting keeps cargo moving through the night, supports aircraft operations in demanding conditions, and lets sport carry on long after sunset. We have been trading for 16 years and supply customers directly in more than 65 countries.

We own the whole process, from survey and design through manufacture, testing, delivery and aftercare. Our products go into extreme environments, high wind, salt air and severe heat, and we stand behind them for the long term. That last part is where this role sits.

The Role

When a project is won, someone has to make it happen: the order raised correctly, the components bought, the production slot held, the shipment cleared, the customer told what is going on. And when something needs putting right after installation, someone has to own that too, from the first email through to an outcome the customer is satisfied with.

That is this job. You will report to the Operations Manager and work alongside Sales, Production, Logistics, Quality and our overseas manufacturing and engineering colleagues.

You will need to hold a lot of detail in your head. We run several product families across aviation, maritime and sport, each with its own revisions, configurations and service history, sold on contract terms that vary from one customer to the next. The people who thrive here are the ones who know that detail well enough to answer a customer on the spot.

One part of the job deserves a straight description. When equipment has not performed as it should, you are the person the customer speaks to, often in another country and another time zone, and almost always by phone. This is not a role for someone who would rather type than call. Those calls need someone who stays calm, commits to a timescale and then holds to it, and would rather fix a problem than route it onward. Handled well, they are the reason customers come back to us. If that is the part you would find satisfying rather than draining, this is a good job for you.

What You Will Own

Warranty and after sales

• Own warranty claims end to end, from the customer's first enquiry through to a documented resolution.
• Assess claims against warranty terms and escalatethe commercially significant ones early with a clear recommendation.
• Coordinate replacements, repairs and returns, including the logistics and paperwork that go with them.
• Work with Quality and Engineering to get root cause on product failures, and keep the customer informed while that work is happening.
• Quote chargeable work, including spares, out of warranty repairs and replacement units, and follow those quotes through to a placed order.
• Keep warranty records accurate enough to be relied on commercially, and flag recurring failure patterns rather than processing them one by one.

Order and project delivery

• Process customer sales orders accurately in the ERP system and raise the supplier purchase orders behind them.
• Track each order from placement to shipment and hold the milestones in between.
• Work with the Logistics Lead on customer deliveries and international shipments. You supply the dates, requirements and documentation, they book and clear the consignment, and you own what the customer is told.
• Spot slippage early, tell the people who need to know, and come with an option rather than just a problem.
• Keep customers and internal stakeholders updated without being chased for it.

Operational support

• Maintain accurate data across ERP, CRM and project management systems.
• Produce regular reporting on order status, warranty performance and operational KPIs.
• Support stock availability and procurement where required.
• Improve the processes you work inside rather than working around them.

What You Will Need

Essential:

• 2 or more years coordinating orders, projects or after-sales activity in a manufacturing, engineering or technical products business.
• Hands-on experience across all 3 core business systems: an ERP for sales and purchase order processing, a CRM, and a project management platform. We also run on Microsoft 365, Teams and SharePoint.
• Experience generating customer quotations, with the numeracy and care to price accurately under time pressure.
• Experience owning customer issues through to resolution, including at least some exposure to warranty, returns, RMA or complaint handling.
• The judgement to look at a messy set of data and see what matters in it, whether that is a warranty trend, a slipping order or a supplier who is quietly getting worse.
• Strong communication in writing and on the phone: writing clear enough to go to a customer without being rewritten, and the instinct to pick up the phone when a call will settle in 5 minutes what email would drag out over 3 days.
• A track record of holding a complex product or account range in your head. We will ask for examples of being the person colleagues came to because you knew the detail without looking it up.
• The organisational discipline to run 20 or more live orders and claims at once without losing any of them.

Helpful, not required:

• Experience coordinating international shipments, incoterms and export documentation.
• Exposure to quality management processes and root cause investigation.
• HubSpot specifically, since that is the CRM you would be working in.
• Confident Excel, including lookups and pivot tables. If you are not there yet, we will put you through a course.
• A second language, particularly Italian or Arabic.

What We Offer

Midstream is an accredited Living Wage Employer.

• 25 days holiday plus bank holidays, and a full week off over Christmas, so you can properly switch off.
• Your birthday off, because no one should spend it in a meeting.
• Summer Fridays: we finish at 1 pm every Friday in June, July and August.

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