Operations Manager, Operative Acquisition

Relay; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous equity

Health & dental coverage

25 days holidays

Enhanced parental leave

Hardware provided

Gym subsidies

Cycle-to-work

Friday office lunch

Uber home and dinner for late nights

Hybrid work in Shoreditch

Job summary

Relay is seeking an Operations Manager, Operative Acquisition, to own the end-to-end funnel for onboarding and supplying operatives across sortation sites. You will write SQL, build automation, and collaborate with Live Operations, Site Teams, Product and Engineering to keep supply ahead of demand as volumes grow.

You will forecast capacity, optimize training and qualification processes, and drive faster activation while minimizing cancellations.

Qualifications

• Experience running a high-volume hiring or onboarding funnel, ideally for frontline workforce.
• Comfortable with paid acquisition, Google Ads or similar, to brief changes when a site runs short.
• Hands-on with automation, setting up triggers for invitations, comms and alerts.
• Clear writing; able to produce processes, requirements and communications relied on by other teams.
• Understanding of Right to Work checks and re-checks affecting funnel and status.

Responsibilities

• Own the operative funnel end to end from applicant attraction through qualification, training, activation and retention.
• Keep applicant supply ahead of site demand; forecast training places and sessions and direct spend.
• Improve qualification and compliance; collaborate with Product and Engineering to reduce drop-off.
• Optimize training capacity and waitlists and ensure sessions are filled.
• Get new starters onto shift quickly, supporting activation and communications.
• Reduce cancellations, no-shows, and inactivity by addressing root causes and refining processes.
• Own communications and compliance processes including waitlists, suspensions, and shift-booking.
• Build funnel reporting and alerts tracking volumes, conversion, time-to-hire and site-level drop-off.

Skills

SQL

High-volume hiring

Automation

Paid acquisition

Right to Work checks

Data reporting

Tools

BigQuery

Job description

Relay is fundamentally reshaping how goods move in an online era. Backed by Europe’s largest-ever logistics Series A ($35M) led by deep-tech investors Plural, and a recently closed Series B ($95M), Relay is scaling faster than 99% of venture-backed startups. We're assembling the most talent-dense team the logistics industry has ever seen

Relay’s Mission is to free commerce from friction. Today, high delivery costs act as a hidden tax on e-commerce, quietly shaping what can be sold online and limiting who can participate. We envision a world where more goods move more freely between more people, making the online shopping experience seamless and accessible to everyone.

THE TEAM
• ~160 people, around half in engineering, product and data
• 45+ advanced degrees across computer science, mathematics and operations research
• Thousands of data points captured, calculated, analysed and predicted for every single parcel we handle
• An intellectually vibrant culture of first‑principles thinking, tight feedback loops and relentless experimentation

The role

Every parcel through our sort centres is handled by an operative. At peak, we need to hire up to 600 of them a week.

As Operations Manager, Operative Acquisition you'll own operative supply across our sortation sites: enough suitable, trained, compliant and active operatives to fill every shift. You'll build the funnel, reporting and automation that make supply repeatable rather than manual, and keep it ahead of demand as volume rises.

Volumes rise sharply into November and December. Supply, not demand, will be the constraint. This role exists to make sure it isn't.

You'll be the single owner of the operative funnel, working across acquisition (including paid channels), Live Operations, our site teams, and Product and Engineering, who build the integrations the funnel runs on. You'll write SQL, ship automation, and spend time at our sort centres seeing how new starters actually land.

What you'll do

• Own the operative funnel end to end, from applicant attraction through qualification, training, activation and retention

• Keep applicant supply ahead of site demand, forecasting how many applicants, training places and sessions are needed and directing spend where gaps exist

• Improve qualification and compliance, owning Right to Work/KYC and working with Product and Engineering to reduce drop-off and speed up the process

• Optimise training capacity and waitlists, making sure sessions are filled and candidates stay engaged

• Get new starters onto shift quickly, supporting activation, shift fill, communications and low-fill processes

• Reduce cancellations, no-shows and inactivity, using the root causes to improve communications, processes and policies

• Own operative communications and compliance processes, including waitlist messaging, suspensions, strikes and shift-booking comms

• Build clear funnel reporting and alerts, tracking volumes, conversion, time to hire and drop-off by site to identify issues early

Who Will Thrive in this role?

• A growth or operations background. You treat supply as a daily number and act the same day it slips

• Confident in SQL (BigQuery or similar). You build dashboards from raw data, not static trackers

• Experience running a high-volume hiring or onboarding funnel, ideally for a frontline workforce

• Comfortable with paid acquisition, Google Ads or similar, enough to read performance and brief changes when a site runs short

• Hands-on with automation, setting up triggers for invitations, comms and alerts, and quick to get confident in a new ATS or scheduling system

• A working understanding of Right to Work checks, enough to see how checks and re-checks affect the funnel and operative status. Legal owns the detail, but this can't be a blank

• Clear writing. You can write processes, requirements and comms that other teams rely on

Desirable

• Experience onboarding couriers or drivers at a carrier or delivery platform

• Experience working with Product and Engineering on integrations or APIs

• Experience with predictive or candidate-quality modelling

• Experience planning for peak or seasonal demand

Compensation, Benefits & Workplace

• Generous equity, richer than 99% of European startups, with annual top-ups to share Relay's success

• Private health & dental coverage, so comprehensive you'd need to be a partner at a Magic Circle law firm to match it

• 25 days of holidays

• Enhanced parental leave

• Hardware of your choice

• Extensive perks (gym subsidies, cycle-to-work, Friday office lunch, covered Uber home and dinner for late nights, and more)

• Located in Shoreditch, our office set-up enables the kind of in-person interactions that drive impact. We work 4 days on-site, with 1 day remote.

Who Thrives at Relay?

• Aim with Precision: You define problems clearly and measure your impact meticulously.

• Play to Win: You chase bold bets, tackle the hard stuff, and view constraints as fuel, not friction.

• 1% Better Every Day: You believe that small, consistent improvements lead to exponential growth. You move quickly, deliver results, and learn from every experience.

• All In, All the Time: You show up and step up. You take ownership from start to finish and do what it takes to deliver when it counts.

• People-Powered Greatness: You invest in your teammates. You give and receive feedback with care and candour. You build trust through high standards and shared success.

• Grow the Whole Pie: You seek out win-win solutions for merchants, couriers, and our customers, because when they thrive, so do we.
  
  If these resonate, and you combine strong technical fundamentals with entrepreneurial drive, let’s connect.

Relay is an equal-opportunity employer committed to diversity, inclusion, and fostering a workplace where everyone thrives.