Team Manager – Customer Operations in Sydney

Smartways Logistics specialises in time-critical, complex logistics for the Australasian healthcare community. We move medical devices, life science, pharmaceutical and clinical trial shipments — from patient-on-table emergencies to scheduled, temperature-controlled global freight — and we're the first 100% carbon neutral healthcare logistics company in Australasia. Our people are driven by the impact they have: every shipment can change a patient outcome.

The role involves handling some of our most critical work: high-value, temperature-sensitive, regulated shipments where packaging integrity and cold chain performance can't fail. This is a small team, and this role is a new addition, genuinely hands-on. You'll be a player-coach: leading, coaching and growing the team while personally owning how life science jobs are monitored and managed, how packaging is sourced and stocked, and how temperature-controlled and dry-ice consignments ship safely, compliantly and cost-effectively. Early on, expect the balance to sit heavily on the 'doing' side. As the team and its capability grow, you'll shift progressively into recruiting, leading and setting direction rather than personally executing. Reporting to the Customer Experience Manager, you'll sit on the Leadership Team.

What you'll be doing:

• Leading, coaching and developing the team — one-on-ones, huddles, development goals, and building genuine team engagement.
• Owning end-to-end monitoring and management of life science jobs, intervening proactively before issues hit customers or product.
• Managing packaging stock, sourcing and qualifying new packaging solutions for temperature-controlled and dry-ice shipments.
• Ensuring dangerous goods and Good Distribution Practice (GDP) compliance, and that cold chain integrity holds throughout.
• Guiding the team through high-pressure and crisis situations, and driving root-cause fixes for critical service failures.
• Supporting new client onboarding — solution design, packaging, process and training.
• Using data to spot issues and opportunities across the Life Science team and wider Customer Operations.
• Building recruitment, onboarding and cross-skilling so specialist knowledge doesn't sit with one person.

What you'll bring:

• 3–4+ years leading customer-facing and operational teams, ideally somewhere fast-paced, time-critical or high-risk.
• Genuine comfort operating as a hands-on player-coach — doing the work while leading a small, growing team.
• Experience building or scaling a specialist function in a high-growth environment.
• Strong leadership, decision-making and solution design skills, with a data-driven, analytical mindset.
• Excellent stakeholder communication and the ability to influence across teams.
• Sharp organisational skills and the judgement to juggle multiple priorities under pressure.

Nice-to-haves: a degree in business, supply chain or life sciences; dangerous goods or GDP/cold chain certifications; experience in life science, pharma, clinical trials or healthcare logistics; hands-on cold chain, dry-ice or temperature-sensitive shipping experience; familiarity with IATA DGR.