Head of Operations

Job Purpose
The Head of Operations owns the engine room of Bondsmith’s Cash Savings platform across the UK and Jersey. The role makes sure every pound placed with our partner banks is accounted for, every payment lands on time, and every product on the platform is built and priced correctly.
Operations is the backbone of Bondsmith: it runs some of our most critical regulatory controls, and every customer, bank and distributor feels its quality directly. The Head of Operations owns platform operations end to end — from bank and distributor onboarding through product management, order and payment processing, reconciliations, Cash ISA administration, customer support and reporting — and delivers against agreed service levels and regulatory and contractual requirements.
As volumes, partners and products grow, the role leads the Operations team, sets its controls and KPIs, plans capacity ahead of demand, and is the voice of Operations at leadership level, working closely with Product, Engineering, Risk and Compliance, and Finance.
Key Responsibilities
Reconciliations and Safeguarding

• Own bank deposit reconciliations across all banking and distribution partners.
• Run the daily safeguarding and client money reconciliation controls under the Electronic Money Regulations 2011, CASS 7 and CASS 15, including break triage, escalation and breach logging.
• Make sure discrepancies are identified and resolved promptly and drive the highest levels of automation in the reconciliations process.

Payments and Order Processing

• Make sure all payments between customers, distributors and banks — funding, withdrawals, settlement and maturities — are made and received accurately, on time and in line with agreed SLAs.
• Oversee order processing, bank instruction timings and the handling of exceptions.
• Maintain approval and clear audit trails on every manual payment and exception.

Product Control

• Make sure bank products are built accurately (rates, fees, terms and features), approved, and assigned to the right distributors.
• Action rate changes and product closures promptly, and reconcile platform rates against bank rates.

Bank and Distributor Operations

• Run onboarding and offboarding of partner banks and distributors.
• Deliver accurate, timely partner reporting to banks and distributors, including balance reconciliations, FSCS reporting and MI submissions.
• Own client support for distributors and first-line triage of customer, platform and bank queries.

Customer Service and Cash ISA Administration

• Make sure customer correspondence and complaints are handled and resolved promptly, in line with internal standards and regulatory expectations.
• Make sure all Cash ISA operations, including ISA transfers, are handled accurately and in line with HMRC rules and internal policy as transfer volumes grow.

Service Delivery, Risk and Resilience

• Maintain service delivery to clients in line with agreed service levels and contractual commitments across all banking and distribution partners.
• Partner with Risk and Compliance to keep a strong operational control environment, and support compliance monitoring and audits.
• Lead operational incident management, from detection through to client communication and root-cause follow-up.
• Escalate operational risks and service issues to senior management promptly, with clear recommendations for resolution.
• Coordinate with Risk on operational resilience for our important business services, including business continuity testing and scenario exercises.
• Oversee key third-party suppliers supporting operations, including our outsourced IT provider.

Team, Planning, Process and MI

• Lead, hire and develop the Operations team, making sure the right structure, skills and cover are in place every business day.
• Forecast workforce and resourcing needs using operational volume data and capacity models, so the team is staffed ahead of demand as the platform scales.
• Keep run books current for every core process.
• Be the voice of Operations in product and engineering roadmap decisions, and lead automation of manual work across operational tooling (e.g. Retool, Jira, Notion).
• Produce a monthly KPI and MI pack for the leadership team and Board, within a reporting and governance framework that evidences operational and service performance.

Essential Experience

• Significant operations experience within UK regulated financial services or fintech, including time leading an operations team.
• Hands-on depth in reconciliations — bank, cash and client money.
• Strong payments operations experience, ideally across UK payment schemes, settlement and payment exceptions.
• Product control experience: building, pricing and maintaining financial products accurately across systems.
• Experience designing and running operational controls, and supporting audits and compliance monitoring.
• Track record of managing service delivery against SLAs across multiple banking or distribution partners, including partner and regulatory reporting (e.g. FSCS, MI submissions).
• Experience of customer service or complaints handling within a regulated environment.
• Hiring, coaching and developing a team — including making the hard calls — and planning headcount ahead of demand.

Skills and Knowledge

• Working knowledge of safeguarding and client money rules (Electronic Money Regulations, CASS) and of how an e-money institution differs from a bank.
• Strong understanding of UK banking and savings products and the wider regulatory environment, including FCA requirements and ISA regulations.
• Proven ability to lead incidents calmly and communicate clearly with clients, partners and senior stakeholders.
• Comfort with data and tooling: advanced Excel, SQL, and internal tools such as Retool and Jira.
• A habit of turning manual processes into documented, automated, scalable ones.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, with high attention to detail and accuracy.
• Comfortable in a fast-paced, scaling fintech, balancing operational rigour with pace.

Desirable

• Experience in savings, cash deposits, deposit aggregation or platform businesses working with multiple partner banks.
• Experience of Cash ISA operations (including ISA transfers).
• Experience in an e-money institution or another FCA-authorised fintech at a growth stage.
• Exposure to API-led and file-based partner integrations and the operational models behind each.
• Operational resilience experience: important business services, impact tolerances and scenario testing.
• Experience operating across multiple jurisdictions (e.g. UK and Jersey).

Qualifications

• Desirable: a relevant professional qualification, such as an ICA, CISI or accountancy qualification.

Key Relationships

• Internal: COO and leadership team; Product, Engineering, Risk and Compliance, Finance and Customer Service; the Operations Manager and Operations Associates.
• External: Partner banks, distributors and platform clients, third-party suppliers including our outsourced IT provider, auditors and relevant regulatory bodies.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary and participation in the Bondsmith share option scheme.
• Private health insurance.
• Pension.
• Cycle to Work scheme.
• Hybrid working from our London office.
• A senior seat in a growing, FCA-regulated fintech, with real ownership of a critical function.