Business Operations Associate

Kernel

London (KY)

On-site

USD 81,000 - 115,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Salary: £60K - £85K + equity

24 days holiday + bank holidays

£450 Monthly Office Dinner Allowance

2 weeks work-from-anywhere

Parental leave policy

Pension plan

Top-spec equipment

Job summary

Kernel is building a business registry for agents, and this role acts as a bridge across finance, operations, and execution. The Business Operations Associate will support critical initiatives for the Head of Finance & Operations and help scale internal systems.

You’ll be a generalist, thriving on ambiguity, with a strong financial acumen and a get-it-done attitude. The position is based in London with high autonomy and a fast pace.

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 - 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.

Responsibilities

Act as a force multiplier for the Head of Finance & Operations, supporting key initiatives end-to-end.
Lead financial planning and analysis - 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

Financial modeling

Data analysis

Cross-functional projects

Communication

Independent work

AI workflows

Excel/Sheets

Tools

Salesforce

Notion

Carta

Data visualization

Job description

About Kernel

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

Today, that answer is messy, and no one answers it reliably. Business identity lives across CRMs, ERPs and third-party datasets full of duplicates, missing parent companies, stale addresses and incorrect enrichment. The cost shows up across the enterprise: sales teams miss revenue opportunities because they lack the right account context; operations teams take on avoidable exposure because risk signals are fragmented or wrong; and finance teams end up chasing, writing off, or defaulting on bad debt that should have been caught earlier.

Humans have worked around that mess for years. Agents cannot. They need a reliable business identity layer they can trust.

Kernel is building that layer: the business registry for agents. We issue 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.