Product Operations Manager

London HQ (Oval)
Hybrid (3 days in office)
Full-time

Every child deserves a better start toward the best possible future. The right educator in the right classroom at the right time can change a child’s chances and, at scale, a nation’s trajectory. Yet too much of our education system’s time, money, and talent are lost to inefficiency.

At Zen Educate, we’re changing that through technology: helping schools save millions in tight times, helping educators find work that rewards their skills and fits their lives, and building a better-educated society that invests its best in every child.

I’m the Chief Product Officer here at Zen Educate. We’ve already helped schools save over £30 million so far. That feels great, but it just shows what’s possible when the system works better, and we have a long way to go.

Now we’re scaling fast in the UK and US, and the next chapter is about building the machine that keeps delivering that outcome at scale. With our Product & Technology team growing very rapidly around the world, we are squarely in the "messy middle." We are moving away from heavy, sprint-based processes toward a high-velocity, Mission-based operating model. We need a Product Operations Manager to be the architect of this system.

At Zen, “product ops” doesn’t mean creating bureaucracy or being a Jira administrator (especially as we don’t use Jira). It means building the system behind the system.

You won't be managing the product itself; you'll be product-managing how we build products. We focus on Missions over Sprints and Outcomes over Outputs. You’ll care more about reducing friction and driving commercial and human impact than about what shape the solution takes.

• Guardian of our Ways of Working: Own and refine our Mission-based deployment model. You'll ensure teams move from "Pitch" to "Launch" with maximum autonomy and minimum bloat.

• Manage the "Single Front Door": Run our weekly Triage sessions. You’ll be the gatekeeper for the business, ensuring all requests are framed as clear Missions with a business case before they reach our Investment Committee.

• Own the "Single Pane of Glass": Maintain our central dashboard of core metrics (our HUD). You’ll ensure Product Managers have self-serve access to the data they need to prove their Mission’s impact.

• Standardize Rituals: Refine our "Mission Control" and "Waypoints" so the team has a clear rhythm of progress without a calendar full of empty meetings.

• Operational Glue: Work closely with Design, Engineering, and Growth to ensure smooth product launches and total cross-functional alignment. You’ll deliver the "Weekly Pulse" to keep the wider company informed.

• Fix the "Papercuts": Coordinate with Customer Service to triage bugs and small improvements, ensuring our rotating "Bugs & Papercuts" engineering teams are focused on the highest-value fixes.

• The Systems Thinker: You get itchy when there’s too much inefficiency. When you see a problem solved twice, you build a repeatable habit so it never happens a third time.

• The Pragmatic Mediator: You can hold multiple perspectives, keep your head when things are moving fast, and help a team find alignment without fuss.

• The Outcome-Obsessed: You believe in "buying our commodities and building our differentiators." You want to spend time on what actually moves the needle for schools and teachers.

• 4+ years in Product Operations, Product Management, or Business Operations scaling systems with measurable impact.

• Scale-up Experience: You’ve navigated the "messy middle" of a fast-growing company (Series B/C/D).

• Data Literacy: You are comfortable working with BI systems and product analytics to turn raw data into a strategic narrative.

• Change Management: You have a track record of optimizing development lifecycles and managing a modern product tech stack.

• Communication: Evidence of making complex systems simple and usable for diverse teams.

• Work that directly improves children’s futures.

• Competitive salary and stock options.

• 25 days holiday plus bank holidays.

• A culture that values clarity, pace, and sustainability alongside human kindness.

We keep it simple:

1. Intro chat – a real conversation about your journey.

2. Product Ops deep dive – how you think and the systems you’ve built.

3. Task & Meet the Team – a practical look at how we’ll work together.

If you’re excited by the idea of building the operational machine that gets the right educator into the right classroom at the right time, let’s talk.