Car Operations Manager at Peach Cars KE

As the Car Operations Manager, you will lead and scale Peach Cars’ Inspection and Fleet operations, ensuring that every vehicle entering and moving within the Peach ecosystem is handled with accuracy, efficiency, and integrity.

This role is central to building trust in Peach’s marketplace. You will be accountable for strategy, systems, compliance, and people leadership across Car Operations, while remaining closely connected to day-to-day execution. Your leadership will ensure that Peach can grow in volumes, locations, and complexity without compromising quality, safety, or the customer experience.

Key Responsibilities

Specifically, the Car Operations Manager at Peach can expect to lead/own the following Car Operations elements, at a country level:

Inspection Strategy & Quality Assurance

• Design, implement, and continuously refine vehicle intake and full inspection frameworks to ensure inspections are accurate, consistent, defensible, and scalable across the Peach ecosystem.
• Define clear standards for inspection depth, condition grading, documentation quality, and turnaround times, ensuring inspection outputs are trusted by buyers, sellers, and internal teams.
• Lead the testing, adoption, and continuous improvement of inspection tools, technologies, and diagnostic systems that improve objectivity, repeatability, and accuracy.
• Establish quality assurance mechanisms to monitor inspection variance, rework, disputes, and feedback loops, and drive corrective actions where gaps are identified.
• Use inspection data and trends to proactively improve inspection standards, training, and operational decision-making.

Fleet Operations & Logistics

• Lead end-to-end fleet operations covering vehicle pickups, customer viewings, inter-branch transfers, yard movements, and final handovers, ensuring reliability and efficiency at scale.
• Define and optimize fleet operating models, routing, scheduling, and utilization to support increasing car volumes without compromising safety or customer experience.
• Establish clear ownership and accountability for vehicle custody and movement at every handover point to minimize losses, damage, and delays.
• Balance cost efficiency with service quality by continuously reviewing fleet performance, utilization, and vendor effectiveness.
• Ensure vehicles are handled, stored, and transported in a manner that preserves condition and supports faster sales conversion.

Compliance & Risk Management

• Ensure full adherence to internal SOPs, safety standards, and audit requirements across inspection and fleet operations.
• Interpret and operationalize applicable external regulatory and compliance requirements related to vehicle inspections, transportation, storage, and handling.
• Build and enforce preventive controls to minimize operational, safety, fraud, and regulatory risks.
• Partner with Legal, Compliance, and Risk teams to address gaps, respond to findings, and continuously strengthen governance.
• Promote a strong culture of compliance, discipline, and accountability across frontline and supervisory teams.

Team Leadership & Capability Building

• Lead, coach, and develop the Inspection and Fleet Managers, strengthening their ability to manage people, performance, and day-to-day execution.
• Clearly define roles, responsibilities, decision rights, and escalation paths across teams to support speed with accountability.
• Drive consistent performance management through regular check-ins, goal tracking, coaching, and structured feedback.
• Build succession depth by identifying, developing, and retaining high-potential team members.
• Foster a culture of ownership, safety, quality, and continuous improvement across all inspection and fleet teams.

Systems & Process Excellence

• Partner with Product, IT, and Other operational teams to define and implement systems for inspection tracking, fleet movements, asset custody, and performance reporting.
• Ensure operational systems are fit-for-scale, well-integrated, and reduce reliance on manual workarounds.
• Improve data accuracy, visibility, and real-time reporting to support operational decision-making and risk management.
• Continuously review and optimize workflows to eliminate inefficiencies, duplication, and bottlenecks across teams.

Operational Performance & Continuous Improvement

• Establish clear KPIs, dashboards, and review cadences to track performance across inspection quality, fleet efficiency, compliance, and cost.
• Lead regular performance reviews with managers to identify risks, bottlenecks, and improvement opportunities.
• Use data and root-cause analysis to drive targeted improvements in quality, turnaround times, utilization, and customer experience.
• Reduce operational firefighting by proactively identifying issues before they impact customers or revenue.

Scale Readiness & Standardization

• Build and maintain standardized playbooks, SOPs, and operating models that enable consistent execution across locations and teams.
• Ensure inspection and fleet operations are ready to scale with higher volumes, new branches, and evolving business models.
• Support the launch of new locations or operational changes by ensuring processes, systems, and teams are fully prepared.
• Balance speed of scale with trust, quality, and compliance as non-negotiable pillars of Peach’s marketplace.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

Must-Have Qualifications

• Relevant bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 7+ years’ experience in operations-heavy, compliance-driven environments (e.g. logistics, fleet management, inspections, mobility, manufacturing, or asset-intensive services).
• Proven experience leading frontline teams through supervisors or managers.
• Strong background in SOP development, operational controls, and execution discipline. 

Nice-to-Have Qualifications

• Exposure to automotive, mobility, or marketplace operations.
• Experience implementing operational systems or workflow tools.
• Experience scaling operations in high-growth or multi-location environments.