Junior Automation Specialist

Traveltechessentialist; Birmingham; On-site; GBP 28,000 - 42,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity ownership

25 days annual leave

Private medical cover

Dental insurance

Pension plan

Life Insurance

Income protection

Cycle2Work

Work from Anywhere days

Sabbatical after 5 years

Job summary

Perk is seeking a Junior Automation Specialist to redesign Customer Care workflows around automation and AI. You will design and ship systems that reduce manual work, improve agent speed, and enhance the customer experience using Make.com, Airtable, Zendesk, Claude, and APIs.

You’ll own end-to-end delivery and measure adoption and impact. The role collaborates with Operational Excellence, Customer Care Leadership, and Operations, emphasizing fast delivery in a dynamic tech-enabled environment.

Qualifications

• Shipped production automations on Make.com, Zapier, Claude, or similar.
• Experience with Airtable as a core ops backbone.
• Built LLM-powered workflows with prompt craft, evals, and guardrails.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, test, and deploy solutions across Make.com, Airtable, Zendesk, Claude, APIs, and AI tooling.
• Wire up multi-system integrations that remove manual effort.
• Own projects from sketch to production and ongoing improvement.
• Set up testing environments to ensure reliable deployments.
• Turn business problems into technical designs and spot automation opportunities.
• Monitor adoption and iterate after launch.

Skills

Automation design

Make.com

Airtable

Zendesk

LLM workflows

Debugging production

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

Make.com

Zapier

Claude

Airtable

APIs

Job description

About Us
Perk (formerly TravelPerk) is the intelligent platform for travel and spend management. Built to tackle the time-consuming, manual work that gets in the way of real work, our tools automate everything from travel bookings to expenses, invoice processing, and more. By eliminating this shadow work that wastes hours, erodes morale, and saps innovation, we're on a mission to power real work, with real impact.
We're trusted by more than 12,000 companies worldwide, including On Running, Breitling, and Fabletics, and we're tackling the 7 hours of lost productivity per employee each week, a $1.7 trillion problem.
Founded in 2015, Perk has grown into a global company of more than 1,800 people across 12 offices globally, with headquarters in London and Boston. We combine innovation, control, and simplicity to transform how businesses work and how people feel at work.
At Perk, we're driven by our values, like being an owner, delivering a 7-star experience, and working as one team. We value curiosity, purpose, and mindset, not just knowledge, to unlock the power in your potential. Our talent team brings together leading minds from the travel, fintech, and SaaS industries, representing over 70 countries. If you're excited about having a real impact and shaping how millions of people experience work, we'd love you on the team.
Visit www.perk.com to learn more.

Junior Automation Specialist

About the Role

Customer Care at Perk is being rebuilt around automation and AI. This role is for someone who likes taking a messy operational problem and turning it into something that runs in production.

As an Automation Specialist, you'll design and ship the systems that cut manual work, make agents faster, and improve what customers actually experience. You'll work across Make.com, Airtable, Zendesk, Claude, APIs, and whatever else the problem needs. Some days that's a workflow. Some days it's an AI tool with evals, guardrails, and a kill switch. The through-line is the same: get it from idea to live, then keep it reliable.

You'll partner with Operational Excellence, Customer Care Leadership, and Operations. You'll own delivery end to end, and you'll be measured on whether the things you build actually stick.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, test, and deploy solutions across Make.com, Airtable, Zendesk, Claude, APIs, and AI tooling.

• Wire up multi-system integrations that remove real manual effort, not just move it around.

• Own projects from the first sketch through production and ongoing improvement.

• Stand up proper testing and validation environments so "it worked in my scenario" isn't the bar.

• Turn business problems into technical designs, and flag new automation opportunities as you go.

• Stay close after launch: watch adoption, fix what breaks, iterate on what underperforms

Build

• Write automations that are maintainable, documented, and safe for someone else to pick up.

• Monitor production systems, debug fast, and keep operational impact low when things go wrong.

• Know when Make/Zapier-class tools are enough, and when the problem needs a different approach.

• Keep an eye on new automation and AI capabilities, and bring the useful ones in deliberately.

Raise the bar

• Be the person others ask when they're stuck on architecture, platform limits, or how to ship AI safely.

• Review builds before they go live when that review actually reduces risk.

• Create reusable components, patterns, and standards so the next build is faster and cleaner.

Teamwork

• Sit with Opex and Operations until you understand the real problem, then design the right fix.

• Shape discovery and scoping so solutions stay practical and maintainable.

• Keep stakeholders clear on progress, risks, dependencies, and dates.

• Feed operational feedback back into the next version.

What We're Looking For

• Shipped production automations on Make.com, Zapier, Claude, or similar not just demos.

• Worked with Airtable or comparable systems as a real ops backbone, not a side spreadsheet.

• Built LLM-powered workflows with prompt craft, evaluation, and guardrails — and knows when the model shouldn't act alone.

• Strong at debugging production systems under time pressure.

• Can turn a fuzzy business request into something scalable and supportable.

• Comfortable working with both technical and operational partners.

• Prefers speed and ambiguity over perfect specs.

How We'll Know You're Winning

• Automations that meaningfully cut manual work in Customer Care.

• Multi-system builds that stay reliable once they're live.

• High reliability, performance, and adoption — not just "launched".

• Clear gains in operational efficiency, agent experience, and customer experience.

What we offer

• Receive competitive compensation and equity ownership in Perk

• Rest and recharge with 25 days of annual leave plus bank holidays

• Take control of your physical health with private medical cover and voluntary dental insurance from Bupa, and discounted gym memberships with GymFlex

• Plan for your future with our qualifying earnings company pension plan with Aviva

• Know that your loved ones are protected financially through your Life Insurance if the worst were to happen

• Rest assured that you’re covered by income protection in case you experience a long-term sickness or absence

• Leverage tax-efficient cycle and electric car schemes with Cycle2Work & Octopus

• Join our unforgettable Perk events, including our spectacular annual summer party

• Always feel supported with Spring Health, our market-leading wellbeing partner, providing fast, comprehensive access to 12x therapy and 12x coaching sessions for you and your loved ones

• Focus on your family with 12-16 weeks’ paid parental leave

• Contribute to your community with 16 paid hours per year to spend volunteering for your dearest charitable causes

• Broaden your horizons with up to 20 Work from Anywhere days per year

• Stay savvy with access to a wide variety of discounts and rewards

• Follow your passions and take a four-week, fully paid sabbatical once you reach 5 years

• Let us help you move to one of our hubs with relocation support

Interview Process

Talent Acquisition Interview - 30mins Virtual Hiring Manager interview - 30-45mins Virtual Assessment Interview - 30-60mins - In-person interview

AI at Perk

AI is embedded in how we work across every function. The tools you'll use day-to-day are AI-enabled, so you can move faster and spend more time on the work that matters. In practice, that means using AI to research and prioritise accounts, draft and refine outreach, handle customer interactions more effectively, synthesise information, and cut through shadow work - the invisible tasks that pull people away from the work only they can do - so you can focus on relationships and outcomes.

We don't expect you to be an AI expert, but we do expect you to be curious and intentional about it. The bar is judgment: knowing when AI makes your work better, when to verify what it produces, and when to rely on your own expertise instead.

We'll ask about how you use AI in your interviews, not to test tool knowledge, but to understand how you think about it. That reflects how we work every day.

How We Work

At Perk, we take an IRL-first approach to work, where our team works together in-person 3 days a week. As such, this role requires you to be based within commuting distance of our hubs. We fundamentally believe in the value of meeting in real life to improve connectivity, productivity, creativity and ultimately making us a great place to work.

For certain roles, we can help with relocation from anywhere in the world, English is the official language at the office. Please submit your resume in English if you choose to apply. Do not forget to submit an updated portfolio and/or resume.

Perk is a global company with a diverse customer base, and we want to make sure the people behind our product reflect that. We’re an equal opportunity employer, which means you’re welcome at Perk regardless of how you look, where you’re from, or anything else that makes you, well, you.

Protect Yourself from Recruitment Scams

All official communication from Perk will always come from email addresses ending in @perk.com or @externalperk.com, our verified social media channels, or recruiters listed on our official LinkedIn page. We will never ask you to pay for equipment, training, or fees, request sensitive personal information such as bank details early in the process, or communicate through unofficial apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal. If you receive a message claiming to be from Perk that seems suspicious, please do not respond. Forward it to security [at] perk .com, and we will confirm whether it is legitimate.