Operations Lead London

Electronic circuit boards are at the core of current and future inventions: space travel, medical robotics, autonomous transportation, augmented reality, bio-engineering. Yet designing one today is an extremely manual, long and tedious process. At Circuit Mind, we’re on a mission to fix that and shape the future of hardware design. We’re a highly technical team building an entirely new software engine that generates, optimises and verifies circuit board designs. We’ve raised $33.5M from leading VCs and are a team of 32 across London and Zurich, with a San Francisco Bay Area office opening soon.

The Operations Lead owns how Circuit Mind runs: people, hiring, finance and accounting, sales and marketing operations, office, investor admin. You will set priorities with the founders, plan the work, and execute hands-on across these functions. You will bring your judgement and experience to the most complex and sensitive work. You will manage our Operations Manager and in-house Talent team: plan and delegate, coordinate their work, and support their growth.

Responsibilities

• People Ops: Employment across UK, US and Switzerland: contracts, offer letters, visas, benefits, option grants. Onboarding and offboarding, company travel, socials, the annual retreat. Security and compliance policies related to people ops.
• Talent: Managing the in-house talent team across sourcing and interview coordination for every open role. Understanding each role in depth with the founders. Conducting screening interviews as needed. Hiring targets, pipeline reviews and process quality.
• Finance and Accounting: Management accounts, payroll, PAYE, year-end and corporate accounts, US and UK tax, VAT, R&D tax credits, insurance, FX, expenses.
• Sales Ops: Work with the sales team on weekly sales target list building. HubSpot hygiene, BDR tracker, weekly sales scorecard. NDAs, POs, procurement questionnaire support. Invoicing and receivables.
• Marketing Ops: Work with the Head of Marketing on trade show logistics, email sequences, website CMS updates, webinars, social media scheduling.
• Investor Reporting: Investor reporting and updates. Board consents. Cap table, share certificates and valuation requests. Fundraising support.
• Office Management: Finding and setting up offices in the US and Zurich, including leases and lawyers. Office moves. Day-to-day office: supplies, cleaners, meeting rooms, swag.

You and our Operations Manager decide together how to split these areas and the work between you.

Improve how we work

We have processes in place in every area. You own them: keep what works, redefine what doesn’t, and make them run with less manual effort. The first ones to focus on:

• Employee handbook: bring it up to date and keep it consistent with our ongoing SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications.
• Onboarding and offboarding: revamp both so they run as smoothly as they used to.
• Hiring process: define how we track hiring metrics, and improve the candidate experience.
• Automation: use AI tools to automate repetitive operations work, working with our software engineers as needed.

About you

You have run operations at a startup or small company and you have managed people doing it. 6+ years in operations, people ops or finance ops, at least 2 in a startup or scale-up. 2+ years managing people. Hands-on experience in most of these areas:

• UK employment (US experience is a plus)
• Hiring and interviewing
• Financial reporting and accounts
• Share and option management
• Event organisation
• Sales operations
• Working with lawyers
• Security and compliance policies
• Employee benefits and handbooks

Organised: you prioritise, delegate, scale your effort to what each task needs, plan around deadlines, and follow through so nothing falls through the cracks. Clear communicator: you give the right amount of visibility and know when to ask for input. Hard-working: you take pride in your work, and no task is too small or too big for you. Sound judgement: you weigh risks and benefits, think through implications, consider every point of view, and anticipate issues. Quick to build knowledge and expertise in areas that are new to you. AI native: you use AI and automation to simplify workflows and create assets. You’re experienced with most of our stack (Slack, Google Workspace, Notion, Xero, HubSpot), strong in spreadsheets and quick to learn new tools.

Above-market salary and meaningful equity. A world-class team. A great office at London Bridge, in the heart of London. 25 days of holiday, plus 5 weeks a year working from anywhere. Extended parental leave. A yearly company retreat. Past editions were in Spain, Italy and Greece.

Interview Process

• Screening Interview: 30 min A high-level conversation about your experience in the areas this role covers.
• Practical Interview: 120 min Via Zoom You’ll work through tasks with us, taken from real work we’ve done at Circuit Mind. It’s collaborative: ask questions, talk us through your thinking, and work things out with us as you would on the job.
• Experience Interview: 120 min Via Zoom or in person We go through your past roles in depth: what you worked on, what you achieved, the initiatives you took, the environments you worked in, the feedback you received and what motivates you.
• Reference Checks: Two reference calls. Throughout the process, you’ll also get to interview us. You’ll meet several people from the team one-to-one, so you can see how we work and who your colleagues would be. If you have a health condition or specific needs that could affect you during our process, please tell us. We will make the adjustments you need. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds.