Head of Operations

About this role

Department: Operations
Reports to: Founder/CEO
Job title: Head of Operations
Employment Type: Full-time
Salary: £75,000 - £80,000
Location: Remote, UK-based, with monthly London meetups

About Gocertify
Gocertify is a bootstrapped UK tech start-up helping brands run smarter, more targeted reward campaigns.
We verify eligible audiences such as students, key workers and seniors, so brands can move away from broad discounting, protect brand value and offer the right rewards to the right customers.
We are trusted by 500+ brands, including Samsung, Sainsbury's and FARFETCH. We work with 2m+ shoppers a year, drive £125m+ in retail sales, and have grown profitably and bootstrapped since 2020.
We are a remote team of around 20 people, with monthly meetups in London. We have scaled by staying lean and highly productive, and we are intentional about protecting that agility as we grow. That means keeping our systems lightweight and our ownership clear, so the team can execute quickly, make good decisions and scale without unnecessary process.

Why this role exists
We’re a lean company and have grown profitably since 2020 with no outside investment, and we want to keep that edge as we scale. To do that, we need someone to run the operational side of the business properly, not just add headcount.
The foundations are strong: a good team, real momentum, and specialist support across finance, people, legal and infosec. What's missing is a senior operator who owns how the company runs day to day, ties these areas together, and keeps everything moving without adding weight.
You'll pick up a broad operational remit, get into the detail, and improve how things work. You'll use good tooling, automation and AI to do it: pulling insight from company meetings, building Airtable interfaces to manage contracts, using Claude to dig into client performance. We want someone who gets genuinely excited by that kind of leverage.
This is not a strategy-only, chief-of-staff or project-management role, and it's not about building automations. You need to have owned the core ops areas yourself, not managed them from a distance.

What's already in place
An operating rhythm: fortnightly all-hands, monthly co-working, quarterly reviews.
A People Lead who owns people strategy and delivery.
A Senior Ops Manager who leads data protection and infosec.
Fractional finance support: a CFO, Finance Manager and a Finance Analyst.
External legal support when we need it.
Two assistants, one within Ops, with room to add more where it makes sense.
You'll help these areas work together, improve what's there, and make sure each owner has the context and systems to follow through.
You won't be the specialist in every area. But you do need enough real experience across them to know what good looks like, ask the right questions, spot risks and make sensible trade-offs.

What the first phase looks like
To fix what's not working, you first have to see it. In your first few months you'll take on a broad, hands-on remit and get to know how Gocertify runs.
That's likely to include:
Finance: month-end reviews, oversight of invoicing and debtors, payroll changes, supplier management.
Legal, compliance and data protection: contracts, DPAs, GDPR, ISO 27001, insurance, vendor checks.
Shopper support: tooling and operational readiness.
Systems and tooling: automations, device management, access, documentation in Notion.
Company rhythm: SLT cadence, all-hands, quarterly planning and reviews.
Cross-functional and commercial work where ownership needs strengthening.
Some of this stays with you long term. Some you'll improve, automate or hand off. It covers a lot of ground, so you'll need to enjoy the breadth, focus on what matters most, and start improving things from day one.
Where the work is too much for one person, we'll hire or share it out. We won't expect you to carry everything forever.
This phase is about understanding how we run before you improve it.

Role and scope
Your job is to make the company easier to run as it grows.
You'll own the operating rhythm, lead cross-functional projects that need a clear owner, and improve the day-to-day workflows that keep the business moving.
You'll line manage the People Lead, the Senior Ops Manager and the Finance Manager, keeping both functions tied to company priorities and working as one joined-up system.
You'll work closely with the Founder, the leadership team and the specialist owners across finance, legal and revenue. The aim is simple: important work has a clear owner, the right amount of structure, and enough momentum to move on its own.

What you'll focus on
Strengthen the operational foundations
Get close to how things work now, find the pain points, and build better ways of doing them. Test, iterate, and keep going until they work in practice.
Tighten the operational backbone across finance, compliance, support and internal systems.
Improve tooling, documentation, access and new-starter setup where it's too manual or unclear.
Build lightweight systems that are fast to use and easy to maintain.
Keep complex, cross-team work moving
Take day-to-day operational follow-up off the Founder and leadership team.
Own and improve the SLT cadence, all-hands, and quarterly planning and reviews.
Lead operational projects that cut across teams and need a clear owner.
Turn messy problems into clear plans, owners and timelines. Unblock work that's stuck between teams.
Keep priorities visible and add just enough structure, without making the company feel heavy.
Lead the ops ecosystem around the business
Line manage the People Lead, Senior Ops Manager and Finance Manager, and use operational data to support better decisions.
Keep people, ops, compliance and finance support aligned to company priorities and working as one system.
Use operational data and context to support better business decisions across the business.
Requirements
What we need from you
Titles matter less than evidence. You might have been a Head of…