Operations & Finance Lead

Fresh Ventures Studio; Rotterdam; On-site; EUR 52,000 - 76,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fair salary

Holiday and travel covered

Pension

Learning budget

Team days

Job summary

Fresh Ventures Studio is a mission-driven startup studio based in the Netherlands, building regenerative businesses in food systems and soil health. This role focuses on keeping the organisation running smoothly with robust finance, payroll, and governance, enabling ventures to grow with clarity and impact.

You will work to implement processes, systems and tools, coordinate projects, and maintain compliant HR and legal admin, while supporting a culture that values learning and responsible

Qualifications

• You have run the operational and financial engine of an organisation: the payments, the payroll, the cashflow, the reporting.
• Experience coordinating other people's work: kept projects on track, chased what was slipping, moved things around when needed.

Responsibilities

• Hold the operational and financial backbone of Fresh: ensure budgets, reporting and forecasts land on time.
• Maintain the office and digital environment so processes run smoothly and friction is minimised.
• Manage HR and legal admin to keep the company compliant and stable.
• Build and improve systems, processes and governance to support growth.

Skills

Operations management

Financial planning

Payroll

Project coordination

Tools

Accounting software

Job description

Fresh Ventures is a mission-driven startup studio based in the Netherlands. We co‑found regenerative businesses from scratch, together with experienced entrepreneurs, and stay close as they grow. What we build are companies that help regenerate the food system and nurture the health of our soils, our food and our people.

We work in food and farming, because it is where a great deal has gone wrong and a great deal can be put right: for the soil, for our food, and for the people who grow and eat it. We work at the intersection of three things:

• Regenerative, agroecological and nature‑inclusive food systems.
• Venture building and entrepreneurship.
• New forms of ownership, governance and finance.

We co‑found these companies with experienced professionals and entrepreneurs, to tackle deep, systemic issues in the food system and help them grow into businesses that are both impactful and investable. And we experiment with fairer ways to own and finance a company, so that the mission survives growth.

To do that well, our own house has to be in order. Fresh stands, and we want to take it further: our operations, our finances, our systems, the rhythm we work to. What we build for ourselves we pass on to our ventures, so they start on solid ground too.

That is where this role comes in. Operations at Fresh is not a side‑show to the mission. It is what carries the impact.

About the role

You hold the operational and financial backbone of Fresh. Rather than hand you a list of tasks, here is what we are actually after: six things that are true about Fresh when this job is being done well, and the work that gets us there.

A place that works, and that people want to work in.

The basics are in order: processes, systems, tools, suppliers. The office is a good place to be. The physical and digital environment both simply work, so nobody loses time to friction.

Finance under control and understood.

Budgets, reporting and forecasts land on time. Cashflow is planned rather than found out about. And the people who need a financial picture, our team, our board, our funders, have one they can act on.

An organisation that runs smoothly, and keeps running smoothly.

We organise forward rather than react. Rhythms are set, priorities are visible, projects have owners and deadlines, and resourcing matches what we have taken on. You see what could trip us up and head it off, and when we drift you notice early and step in.

HR and legal, watertight.

We meet our obligations as an employer and we stay compliant, so we can hire, sign and commit without something breaking behind us.

A way of working that keeps getting better.

Our systems do not just run, they improve, and they improve because you saw the chance rather than because someone asked. What you build gets used, because you bring people along with it. And it buys us room: room to give attention to the work where attention pays off, and to think something through instead of rushing it. That goes for all of us, and just as much for you.

Strong partners, and ventures with a running start.

Our accountant, legal partners and suppliers become relationships that work for both sides. And what you build for us clicks straight into the companies we start, so they do not have to invent what we have already solved.

In time we expect to bring in someone to support operations. What that role looks like, and in what capacity, is something we can figure out together.

What you bring

Two things drive you.

The first is the work itself. You want to stay in operations and get even better at it. Not as a stepping stone to something else, but as the craft you want to spend years deepening: how an organisation can be run and operated at its best, and how to bring that into practice. There is a quiet satisfaction in a place that runs well, and it runs deeper when what it is running is out to make a deep impact.

The second is why. You want that craft to add up to something: a systemic impact within food and farming. If that is already your world, all the better. But if you come from another corner of this work and the mission grabs you, we would like to hear from you. The drive is what we cannot develop for you. The domain you can pick up.

You have run this before.

You have looked after the operational and financial engine of an organisation yourself: the payments, the payroll, the cashflow, the reporting. You know the HR and legal admin that keeps a place sound. You have set up and improved how an organisation works, and made it better not only for efficiency but for clarity and for how people work together. And you have coordinated other people's work: kept projects on track, chased what was slipping, moved things around when needed.

You keep things moving.

You bring order and calm to a busy place, and you make things happen rather than only designing how they should work. That means being close to the work itself, not above it. You improve things because you spotted the chance, not because someone asked. And you speak up when something is running behind, including to us, rather than letting it quietly drift. Around here that is not a difficult conversation, it is just how we work.

Practical.

You are within reasonable travelling distance of Rotterdam, or willing to move. Dutch is a plus rather than a requirement: it helps to be able to read what the tax office sends you and to follow the local rules without a translator, but we are not going to turn away the right person over it.

Nice to have, genuinely optional.

Please apply even if none of these are you.

• Experience in a startup, scale‑up, studio, impact programme or accelerator.
• Being able to put AI and automation to work in how an organisation runs, or the appetite to learn.
• Financial modelling: finding the financial model that fits the business model.
• Funder reporting, and streamlining it.
• A background in food, farming or impact.
• An interest in how you develop and structure a regenerative organisation: other forms of ownership, governance and finance.

If you are reading this and think you can do most of it but not all: apply anyway. The drive and the instinct for this work are what we cannot develop for you. The rest we can build together.

32 to 40 hours a week. We would love you at our Rotterdam office at BlueCity at least two days a week, and three would be better still. We are a small team and being in the room together matters, so this is not a role to do mostly from home.

What we offer

• Fair salary, solid holiday, your travel covered, a pension, and both time and a budget to keep learning.
• Working in the middle of a community of impact‑driven founders and change workers at the frontiers.
• A team that cares about health and growth as much as output, and a team day every season.
• Flexibility in working hours, and we will work out a rhythm that suits you and us.

Becoming part of what we build. We are changing how Fresh is owned, moving towards steward‑ownership. Part of that is making room for the people who take ownership and leadership over this place to sit on the steward side of it: a say in the decisions, and a share in the economic upside if it works. As this role grows, it is one of the positions that would qualify.

How to apply

Send us your CV, and answer a few questions through the link provided. Then: a short call, an interview online, and a day with us in Rotterdam where we work through a real case together and you meet the team.

We accept applications on a rolling basis, and will reach out to qualified individuals who get their application in early.