Senior Operations Leader (Head of Operations)

At Beam, you get to do work that really matters. We’re solving the world’s toughest social problems. And we’re growing fast 🚀

It’s not easy. Nothing worth doing ever is. But we take care of everyone who works here with everything from coaching to personal budgets and pay highly competitively. 

You’ll be joining a company that’s having a huge impact on people’s lives with a culture where you can be yourself, have fun and progress rapidly. 

About the Role

An unparalleled opportunity for strategic ownership and high impact in the UK’s pre-eminent social impact startup.

This role is either:

1. Head of Central Government Operations - leading the team responsible for delivering Central Government contracts, for example, raising the bar on how we support prison leavers through Ministry of Justice contracts
2. Head of Beam Jobs - leading our Beam Jobs team in our Local Government business, responsible for scaling the most innovative and effective employment service for disadvantaged people in history

Each role is a senior management role, leading significant areas of the business and a team of over 10 from day one, with a remit to grow your team and impact significantly in 2023 and beyond.

You’ll be

• Leading and coaching managers to develop, challenge and get great performance from their own teams
• Setting and meeting ambitious financial and non-financial targets for your team
• Designing and rolling out simple, scalable operational processes and approaching each day with a “fixer” attitude
• Running experiments with your managers to test new ideas and processes
  
• Interviewing people with an uncompromising focus on building an exceptional, diverse team while retaining superstars
• Acting as a key advisor to our product team, inputting into product priorities and design

You are

• Ambitious with a high-performance mindset - passionate about creating high-performing teams and enabling managers
• A courageous and motivating leader who thrives in an open and transparent culture, comfortable initiating any hard conversation with people in your team and skilful enough to navigate them
  
• Hands-on and a smart delegator - you have no ego when you need to be hands-on but know when to delegate
• First principles thinker - as well as optimise, you can boldly rethink systems from the ground up and thrive at the intersection of people and process
• Excited at the prospect of collaborating closely with Product and Engineering teams to build scalable, simple operational systems

You’ll need

• At least 5 years’ management and commercial or sales experience in a fast-paced, environment, preferably within a Series A-D stage tech startup
• Significant people management experience - you have experience leading teams of at least 15 people before
• Extremely high standards of yourself and others and exceptional attention to detail
• Data skills - we’re not expecting you to be a whizz on SQL (that’s a bonus), but we do need you to be highly proficient on GSheets and capable of making fast, data-driven decisions
• An excellent instinct for when data is unavailable with a track record of being right when working in ambiguous situations
• A proven track record of delivering impact in an operational role: you’ve helped scale a team before and are excited to do it again

About Beam

We’re a passionate and ambitious team of over 80 working from our beautiful coworking space in Shoreditch and from home.

We’ve picked up an armful of awards for our work (including one from our former Queen). We’re one of the 10 hottest startups in London, according to WIRED magazine and one of LinkedIn’s Top 15 UK Startups for 2022. We’re also proud to be rated a top company to work for Escape the City, Tempo and The Dots.

We’re committed to hiring diversely and inclusively. You don’t need a degree to work here and we love to hear from ethnic minority candidates and/or those who’ve experienced social disadvantage. 63% of people we support are from ethnic minority backgrounds and 17% have disabilities. We believe we serve these people best when we’re a diverse and inclusive team.

Our benefits

• Salary of £70-100k – highly competitive for tech for good and social impact
  EMI-qualifying share options
• Annual company retreat
• A laptop – choose between a MacBook Air or PC
• £500 personal development budget
• Monthly counselling budget
• 1:1 workplace coaching with More Happi
• Regular team talks from leading UK tech entrepreneurs
• Hundreds of perks, discounts and freebies from Perkbox
• Free subscription to Calm meditation app
• Discounted bike and accessories with Cyclescheme
• Unlimited holiday (we recommend ~25 days + Bank Holidays per year)
• Hybrid working from our Shoreditch office or at home (2 days in the office, 3 from home)
• Your own financial wellbeing coach, through Bippit

Application process

We have a four-stage interview process, giving you plenty of time to learn about Beam while we get to know you.

1. 60-minute people scenarios on Zoom
2. Presentation on ops scenario
3. Whiteboarding with direct reports
4. Three informal chats with people at Beam

Please note:

• We are accepting rolling applications for this role, with no fixed close date
• Unfortunately we are unable to provide visa sponsorship to candidates

Want to change people's lives each week? We’re excited to hear from you.
If you’d like to know more, get in touch by emailing [email removed - click apply for more details]