Department Lead (m/w/d)
To continue fueling Swappie’s profitable growth and advance our mission of making refurbished electronics mainstream, we are seeking a strategic leader ready to shape the future as
Department Lead (m/w/d) for our Leipzig Operations
In this pivotal role, you will own the daily operational performance across multiple departments and shifts, leading through Team Leads to drive efficiency, quality, and a high-performing culture.
If you’re ready to bridge strategy and execution, build strong teams, and contribute to environmental sustainability — this is your chance to leave your fingerprint on Swappie’s core operations. 🌏 💚
This is a permanent opportunity based at our site in Leipzig (Wahren).
Role Purpose: Operational Leadership & Departmental Ownership
As Department Lead, you will be responsible for leading and coordinating the daily operations of your assigned operational areas across shifts within a semi-automated warehouse environment. Acting as the critical link between strategic direction and operational execution, you will ensure safe, efficient, and high-quality delivery while developing your Team Leads, strengthening leadership capability, and serving as operational proxy for the Site Manager when required.
What You’ll Work On
Your role is to drive performance of the employees through your 5 Team Leads, ensure operational excellence across two shifts, and build long-term capability in your department of around 100 employees altogether.
Operational Performance & SLA Delivery: Own throughput, quality, and SLA targets across your departments. Monitor KPIs daily, address bottlenecks proactively, and ensure consistent execution across shifts and teams.
People Leadership & Team Development: Lead, coach and develop a team of Team Leads. Build leadership capability, strengthen accountability, and support relatively new leaders in their development journey while creating a culture of ownership and continuous improvement.Conduct regular performance evaluations, support onboarding, and build a culture of ownership, engagement, and continuous growth.
Planning, Scheduling & Capacity Management: Partner with the planning team to ensure weekly resources align with volume forecasts. Anticipate capacity constraints, flex staffing, and adjust plans to keep operations running smoothly.
Safety & Quality Standards: Champion a proactive safety culture across your departments. Ensure adherence to 6S, safety protocols, and quality standards — intervening swiftly when needed.
Cross-Functional Communication & Alignment: Serve as the operational voice for your departments. Provide timely, structured updates to stakeholders, ensure smooth shift handovers, and escalate risks before they create downstream impact.
Continuous Improvement & Root Cause Analysis: Drive and embed a CI culture across your teams. Initiate and lead improvement projects, apply root cause methodology, and ensure measurable, sustained performance gains.
We Would Love to Hear From You If You Have…
Leadership and operational experience: Proven experience in leading teams in a warehouse, logistics, or operations environment, ideally with experience managing other leaders or supervisors. Strong understanding of warehouse operations, capacity planning, and performance management in a high-volume, fast-paced setting.
People Development Skills: Demonstrated ability to coach, develop, and hold people accountable; creating an environment where Team Leads and their teams can thrive.
Vendor & facility communication: Experience managing site-related stakeholders and external partners. As operational owner of the Leipzig premises, you will support with coordination of local service providers, facility partners, authorities, maintenance providers and site-related projects. — requiring confident communication in German (min. B2 level).
Problem-solving & Decision-making: Ability to take ownership, make decisions independently, and resolve complex operational challenges in real time. This is crucial as you will proxy for the Site Manager during their leaves.
Flexibility with working hours: We work in two shifts at Swappie Leipzig between 7.45 and 23.45. It is important that you can provide leadership visibility and support across both shifts. We offer flexibility in how you structure your working hours, while ensuring both shifts feel equally supported and connected.
English skills: Our working language is English, thus we are looking for very good verbal and written communication skills in English.
Mindset & communication: A growth mindset combined with impact orientation — you focus on outcomes, engage your teams in finding solutions, and communicate with transparency and clarity.
Continuous Improvement experience: Familiarity with CI methodologies (e.g., Lean, 6S) or structured project management is a strong advantage.
What We Offer
Meaningful role: You will be a visible operational leader with responsibility for approximately 100 employees through Team Leads, directly shaping operational performance, leadership capability and the future development of the Leipzig site.
Supportive & low-hierarchy team where you can be your true self. Our strength as a company comes from the diverse group of people we’re proud to employ. Whoever you are – you’re welcome at Swappie!
A chance to make an impact on creating a more sustainable future by making refurbished mainstream — working at Swappie makes you part of the solution; not the pollution!
Work-life balance that actually works: Monday to Friday, no weekends, no public holidays. Full-time permanent contract with the flexibility to structure your shift presence autonomously. Stay locally based in Leipzig while working in a truly international environment. The best of both worlds for experienced logistics leaders!
A role as broad as it is deep: From operational performance and people leadership to facilities, CI projects, site development and stakeholder management… no two weeks look the same! Our Leipzig site is still growing, and Swapie is introducing new product categories and evolving constantly, which means there's always a new challenge to own. If variety and real ownership energise you, this role delivers 🚀
Practicalities
📍 Location: Leipzig, Germany (Wahren area).
📅 Start date: As soon as possible, negotiable.
🕑 Working hours: Monday to Friday, but we are happy to hear your suggestion on how to support early and late shifts equally.
📝 Contract: Full-time (40h/week), permanent.
💰 Salary: 52.000-58.000€ annual (start salary, defined individually, according to seniority)
🔎 Visa Requirements: Eligibility requires a valid, long-term German work visa for full-time employment, which will be verified during the hiring process.
⏰ Application deadline: Please submit your application by June 30th.
Does this sound like an exciting opportunity for you? If yes, we’d love to hear from you!
Questions? 🤔 Send them to below email address, and we will happily reply. Kindly note that we don’t accept job applications via email.
This is how the recruitment process will look like:
Intro with Talent Acquisition Partner (30 minute call): Let’s start exploring together if this role and Swappie as an employer could be a match for you.
Interview with the Hiring Manager and a senior future colleague (on site, 60 min): Dive deeper into the role and let us assess your skills and competencies for future success.
Culture & Leadership discussion + site visit: Impact orientation, inclusion, and growth mindset in a Leader role at Swappie — explore the key pillars of our culture with our HR Business Partner and Director of Production. And the icing on the cake? Get a Grand Tour of our site!
The process is designed to be a transparent, two-way assessment, ensuring we find the right match for our team. If you’re ready to join the mission, start by reviewing our guide on How we hire. We look forward to your application!