Business Operations Associate

Sarah Smith Fund; Greater London; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 85,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Salary £60K-£85K + equity

24 days holiday + bank holidays

£450 Monthly Office Dinner Allowance

2 weeks work-from-anywhere

Generous parental leave policy

Pension plan

Top-spec equipment and central London/

Team events and dinners

Work directly with the founders to**

Job summary

Kernel is seeking a Business Operations Associate to join the team in London. You will work at the intersection of finance, operations, and execution, driving critical projects and acting as a force multiplier for the Head of Finance & Operations.

The role blends strategic finance with hands-on operational delivery in a fast-paced environment. You’ll manage forecasting, budgeting, and KPI dashboards, plus cost economics for the product and vendor contracts.

Qualifications

• 2-4 years of experience in consulting, investment banking, or a high-performing startup environment
• Strong financial acumen - comfort with financial modeling, data analysis, and quantitative problem-solving
• Highly numerate and analytical; proficient in Excel/Google Sheets and comfortable learning new tools (Salesforce, Notion, data visualization platforms)
• Proven ability to manage ambiguous, cross-functional projects from start to finish
• Excellent written and verbal communication - you can distill complexity into clear, actionable insights
• Intellectually curious, self-directed, and comfortable working independently with minimal oversight
• You're sharp enough to take an unfamiliar problem and figure out how to solve it with AI - building workflows and agents where needed to get there - and while prior experience with tools like Claude Code, Codex and Cursor is a plus, it's not a requirement.

Responsibilities

• Act as a force multiplier for the Head of Finance & Operations, supporting key initiatives end-to-end
• Lead financial planning and analysis - including forecasting, budgeting, unit economics, KPI dashboards, and cross-functional planning cycles
• Own the economics of the product alongside Product and Engineering: agent and LLM spend, cost per customer, and gross margin
• Own back-office finance and operations: reviewing accounting, managing Carta, supporting SOC 2 compliance, vendor contracts, and the admin that comes with all of it
• Drive diverse operational projects - from compliance and office leases to compensation design and software contract optimization

Skills

2-4 years exp

Financial modeling

Data analysis

Excel/Google Sheets

Cross-functional projects

Written & verbal comms

AI workflows

Tools

Salesforce

Notion

Data viz tools

Job description

About Kernel

Agents are becoming part of how companies sell, buy and operate. But before an agent can close a deal, qualify an account, route a lead or assess risk, it needs to answer a basic question: which company is this?

Today, that answer is messy. Business identity lives across CRMs, ERPs and third-party datasets full of duplicates, missing parent companies, stale addresses and half-correct enrichment. Humans have worked around that mess for years. Agents cannot. They need a shared identity layer they can trust.

Kernel is building that layer: the business registry for agents. We create a permanent KERN ID for every business, plus the context an agent needs to act on it.

Ops, data and revenue teams at Gong, Legora, Mistral, Canva and Checkout already use Kernel on their own systems. Agents are next, and there will be far more of them.

We have raised $14M from top VCs and operators at Plaid, OpenAI, Slack and others, and we are growing 5x YoY.

The Role

We're looking for a Business Operations Associate who thrives at the intersection of finance, operations and execution. This is a high-impact, project-based role where you'll act as a force multiplier for our Head of Finance & Operations - tackling diverse challenges from financial planning and analyses and agent costs to running operational systems and key initiatives.

You'll be part chief of staff, part operator, part problem-solver. You'll drive critical finance and operations projects that shape how we grow.

This role is perfect for generalists who are intellectually curious, commercially minded, and energized by variety. You'll need to be comfortable with ambiguity, quick to learn new domains, and able to deliver results across finance and operations.

We're looking for A-star players with a get-it-done attitude - “you're a champion who is willing to take out the trash”.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Act as a force multiplier for the Head of Finance & Operations, supporting key initiatives end-to-end

• Lead financial planning and analysis - including forecasting, budgeting, unit economics, KPI dashboards, and cross-functional planning cycles

• Own the economics of the product alongside Product and Engineering: agent and LLM spend, cost per customer, and gross margin

• Own back-office finance and operations: reviewing accounting, managing Carta, supporting SOC 2 compliance, vendor contracts, and the admin that comes with all of it

• Drive diverse operational projects - from compliance and office leases to compensation design and software contract optimization

What You Bring

• 2-4 years of experience in consulting, investment banking, or a high-performing startup environment

• Strong financial acumen - comfort with financial modeling, data analysis, and quantitative problem-solving

• Highly numerate and analytical; proficient in Excel/Google Sheets and comfortable learning new tools (Salesforce, Notion, data visualization platforms)

• Proven ability to manage ambiguous, cross-functional projects from start to finish

• Excellent written and verbal communication - you can distill complexity into clear, actionable insights

• Intellectually curious, self-directed, and comfortable working independently with minimal oversight

• You're sharp enough to take an unfamiliar problem and figure out how to solve it with AI - building workflows and agents where needed to get there - and while prior experience with tools like Claude Code, Codex and Cursor is a plus, it's not a requirement.

It is a plus if you also have:

• Experience in GTM operations, sales operations, or revenue operations at a B2B SaaS company

• Exposure to early-stage or high-growth startups; comfort with rapid iteration and changing priorities

⚠️ This role may not be for you if you:

• Prefer deep specialization over breadth. This role means switching context constantly between finance, operations, and whatever is most urgent

• Prefer steady-state work over project-based sprints - priorities shift as the business evolves and new challenges emerge

• Only want "strategic" work - a portion of this role is unglamorous back-office admin (accounting reviews, Carta updates, compliance work)

❌ This role is definitely not for you if you:

• You need every task to be clearly scoped before starting - ambiguity and learning on the fly are constant

• Avoid operational grunt work - you'll be doing plenty of it alongside the strategic projects

• Want to protect a 9-to-6 or a mostly-remote setup. We're in the office together 4-5 days a week and the pace is high

What We Offer

We will do our best to offer you a ride of a lifetime. It will not be easy, but it will be thrilling.

• 💰 Salary: £60K - £85K + equity

• 🗓️ 24 days holiday per year + bank holidays

• 🥕 £450 Monthly Office Dinner Allowance

• ✈️ 2 weeks work-from-anywhere

• 🍼 Generous parental leave policy

• 💼 Pension plan

• 💻 Top-spec equipment and central London office

• 🎉 Team events and dinners

• 🚀 Work directly with the founders to scale the systems that power enterprise AI

• 🏆 High-autonomy, high-trust environment with a small team shipping at pace

❤️ Team

Arvin Ashrafi, Head of Finance & Operations

De-Vene Swanepoel, Talent Lead

Amin, BizOps Associate

🎫 Visas & Relocation

Not offered for this role.

Interview Process

• Stage 1: Screening - Intro call

• Stage 2: Technical - In-person case interview

• Final Stage: Values - Interview with founders for culture and values alignment

If there is mutual fit, we move to references and offer.