Head of Operations

Role overview

Gocertify is looking for a senior operations leader to help the business run with greater clarity, coordination and efficiency as it continues to grow. This is a remote UK-based position with monthly meetups in London, reporting directly to the Founder/CEO. The salary range is £75,000 to £80,000, and the role is full-time.

Gocertify is a bootstrapped UK technology start-up that helps brands create more targeted reward campaigns. By verifying eligible audiences such as students, key workers and seniors, the company enables brands to reduce broad discounting, protect brand value and deliver the right offers to the right customers. The business works with 500+ brands, including Samsung, Sainsbury’s and FARFETCH, supports more than 2 million shoppers per year, and has driven £125 million+ in retail sales since launching profitably in 2020.

The team is intentionally lean, currently around 20 people, and uses lightweight systems, clear ownership and strong decision-making to stay highly productive. The Head of Operations role exists to improve operating leverage, connect the different pieces of the business, and build better internal systems without adding unnecessary process.

Why this role matters

Gocertify has moved beyond the stage where growth is driven mainly by hiring more people. The next step is to make the existing organisation work even better. The company already has strong support across Finance, People, Legal and InfoSec, and this role is designed to bring those functions together into a more connected operating system.

This position combines strategic oversight with hands-on execution. You will identify where friction exists, design practical fixes, and embed improvements into the day-to-day running of the business. A big part of the job is using modern tooling, automation and AI effectively to remove manual effort and create leverage.

In the early phase, you will personally take on a broad set of operational responsibilities so you can understand how the business really functions before improving, automating or redistributing work over time.

Current operating setup

This is not a blank-slate role. There is already an operating cadence and several specialist owners in place.

• Fortnightly all-hands meetings, monthly co-working sessions and quarterly reviews are already part of the company rhythm.
• A People Lead manages people strategy, delivery and craft.
• A Senior Ops Manager owns Data Protection and InfoSec.
• Finance is supported by a fractional CFO and a Finance Manager.
• Legal support is brought in externally when needed.
• Two assistants are already in place, including one within Ops, with room to expand assistant support if that becomes useful.

The Head of Operations will help these workstreams operate more cohesively, strengthen what already exists, and make sure each owner has the context, systems and follow-through required to deliver effectively.

Initial scope and immersion phase

During the first few months, you will get close to a wide range of operational work to understand the business in detail. Some of this work may stay within your long-term remit, while other parts may later be improved, automated or reassigned.

• Finance operations such as month-end routines, invoicing, debtor management, payroll updates and supplier handling.
• Legal, compliance and privacy work including contracts, DPAs, GDPR business-as-usual tasks, ISO 27001, insurance and vendor due diligence.
• Oversight of shopper support, including the tools and operational readiness needed to deliver it well.
• Systems, documentation and tooling work, including automations, device management, access setup and Notion.
• Company rhythm activities such as SLT cadence, all-hands, quarterly planning and review cycles.
• Cross-functional and commercial tasks where ownership or execution is currently weak.

The role suits someone who enjoys breadth, can quickly prioritise what matters most, and is excited to shape better systems from day one. Where the scope proves too wide for one person in the long term, the business intends to hire or redistribute support rather than overload this role indefinitely.

Core responsibilities

Your main purpose is to make Gocertify easier to run as it scales. You will own the operating rhythm of the business, lead cross-functional initiatives that need a clear operator, and improve the workflows that keep work moving.

• Improve the company’s operational foundations and increase overall efficiency.
• Study existing processes closely, identify where they break down, design stronger solutions, build and test them, then keep refining them until they work in practice.
• Strengthen the operational backbone across finance, compliance, support and internal systems.
• Improve tooling, documentation, access management and onboarding setup where the current approach is too manual or unclear.
• Create simple, lightweight workflows that are quick to use, easy to maintain and appropriate for a business at this stage.
• Lead cross-functional operational projects that need one accountable owner.
• Translate ambiguous issues into practical plans, clear owners, realistic timelines and decisions.
• Remove blockers where work is getting stuck between teams.
• Provide enough structure to keep key work moving without making the company feel bureaucratic or heavy.
• Own and refine SLT cadence, all-hands, quarterly planning and quarterly review cycles.
• Improve clarity around decisions and follow-through across the company.
• Keep priorities visible and reduce drift without creating unnecessary process overhead.
• Help the Founder and leadership team spend less time chasing operational follow-up.
• Line manage and support the People Lead, Senior Ops Manager and fractional Finance Manager.
• Keep people, operations, compliance, finance support and other core functions aligned with company priorities.
• Use operational data and business context to support better decision-making.
• Help the organisation stay lean, fast-moving and high-output while it grows.

What success looks like

Success in this role means bringing more coherence to the business without slowing it down. You should be able to make day-to-day work easier, create stronger operating discipline, and build systems that increase leverage over time. The right person will be comfortable jumping between strategic thinking and detailed execution, and will know when to simplify versus when to build something more robust.

Skills and experience required

The business is open to a range of titles and backgrounds. Relevant experience could come from a Head of Operations, Business Operations Lead, Chief of Staff, BizOps Lead, Strategy & Operations Lead, or a broad generalist role in a fast-moving small company. The label matters less than the evidence of impact.

• Strong ownership and reliable follow-through in uncertain or ambiguous settings.
• Good judgement and comfort making trade-offs with incomplete information.
• Broad operational experience across multiple areas rather than a narrow specialist profile.
• Systems thinking, with evidence of building workflows that people actually adopt.
• A practical, hands-on style for improving existing processes so they become clearer, faster and more dependable.
• Commercial awareness and comfort working with business numbers.
• Credibility across teams and the ability to move work through other people.
• Speed, pragmatism and sound judgement about what deserves a proper build versus a simpler fix.
• The ability to think strategically about functional work: whether it should exist, how it can be systemised, and what better execution enables.
• Comfort using tools such as Airtable, Make, OpenAI, Claude or similar platforms to create operational improvements.

Who will thrive here

This opportunity will suit a senior generalist who wants to help a lean, high-output business operate more effectively as it scales. You will thrive if you enjoy keeping important work moving while also building the systems and routines that create more leverage over time.

• Execution-led but strategically grounded: you enjoy removing friction and making a company easier to run, and you are happy to move between alignment with the Founder and detailed process fixes.
• High trust and strong prioritisation: you work well in environments where good judgement and clear ownership matter more than rigid policy, and you can make sensible trade-offs when immediate operational needs compete with longer-term improvements.

Working style, tools and environment

The role is fully remote for UK-based candidates, with monthly in-person meetings in London. Core working hours are 10am to 4pm UK time, with flexibility outside those hours.

The company uses a modern tool stack that includes Airtable, Notion, Slack, Front for shared email, Linear for projects and issues, Make for automation and Google Workspace. Across the wider business, HubSpot, accounting and payments platforms, contract software and password management tools are also used. AI tools such as Claude, Claude Code, Claude Cowork and Lovable are used heavily to create operating leverage. Deep experience with every tool is not required, but you should be comfortable learning quickly and working directly in systems.

Benefits and compensation

• Annual salary of £75,000 to £80,000.
• Meaningful EMI share options.
• 25 days of annual leave plus UK bank holidays.
• Private health insurance with AVIVA, including optical and dental cashback, with the option to self-fund coverage for partners or dependents.
• Enhanced sick pay.
• Work-from-home budget.
• MacBook or equivalent laptop.
• Flexible remote working in many countries around core UK hours of 10am to 4pm.
• Unlimited coworking access in 48+ countries through Hubble.
• Access to Gocertify offers.

Additional information

Department: Operations. Reporting line: Founder/CEO. The role is designed for someone who can bring clarity, structure and momentum to the internal workings of the business while helping preserve the company’s lean, agile way of operating.