Head of Operational Excellence, Process Improvement and Automation in London

About Equals

Equals is the next-generation global money movement platform built for exceptional businesses operating across borders. We bring international payments, embedded finance, and more together into a single connection that simplifies operations and strengthens financial control. With deep expertise and integrated infrastructure, Equals turns financial complexity into reliable solutions. With our headquarters in London and teams around the UK and Europe, you will join a very close-knit, talented and supportive team from various backgrounds who believe that bringing different perspectives together helps us understand our customers' needs. United, by one thing, making money management straightforward and cost-effective for our customers.

About the Role

The Head of Operational Excellence, Process Improvement and Automation is a cross-functional role spanning Operations and Commercial. You will act as a trusted operator for the senior team — someone who can jump into any situation across the business, assess the problem accurately, triage it, and either resolve it directly or drive it to resolution with a clear recommendation.

Alongside the triage mandate, you own the automation and process-improvement agenda across the operational funnel, supporting the business target of ~20% efficiency gain by year-end. That means identifying where manual effort is concentrated, building the documentation foundations automation depends on, and driving initiatives from idea through to embedded change. This is a permanent role designed to grow. As the operational agenda matures, the scope will extend organically into commercial work — transformation is the entry point, not the ceiling.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Act as first point of escalation for cross-team issues spanning operations and commercial; investigate, triage and resolve directly, or route with a recommended solution
• Own and drive the automation initiative portfolio tied to the ~20% efficiency goal — current priorities include payments administration (beneficiary adds, callbacks), complaints handling, and onboarding straight-through processing
• Lead the documentation programme: get process knowledge out of people's heads and into SOPs across operations and commercial, creating the foundation for AI and automation tooling
• Progress the "one front door" customer contact model — a single triage point routing customers to the right team — including enabling the CCI team on payments queries post-Connect migration
• Support the de-risking of scheme and bank relationships: help distribute relationship ownership across leads and establish a regular QBR/MBR cadence with banking partners
• Manage and develop one direct report (analyst)
• Work day-to-day with operations, commercial, product and fin crime leadership to keep improvement work aligned with business priorities
• Track and report progress on automation and efficiency initiatives to the senior team

Who You Are

• A trusted pair of hands: you assess messy, ambiguous situations quickly and land on a workable recommendation
• Deeply contextual: you know how the organisation fits together and hold strong existing relationships across commercial, product and operations
• Comfortable operating without a playbook — and disciplined about writing the playbook (SOPs, processes) as you go
• A natural bridge between teams: you translate between operational detail and commercial priorities
• Curious about automation and AI tooling, and pragmatic about where it genuinely removes work
• Resilient and diplomatic — able to operate through periods of organisational change

Experience & Qualifications

• Solid experience in payments / fintech operations, with hands-on knowledge of support, onboarding, fraud/disputes and payments processes
• Demonstrated track record of process improvement or automation delivery — from identifying the opportunity through to embedded change
• Experience managing or coaching others
• Strong stakeholder management up to exec level; confident presenting recommendations and MI
• Familiarity with support and workflow tooling (e.g. Freshdesk, Amazon Connect) and an understanding of how AI/automation applies to operational work

Diversity & inclusion

Equals is committed to building a workplace where everyone can be themselves. We actively welcome different perspectives, backgrounds and experiences, and we'll work with you to understand what you need to do your best work. We're an equal opportunities employer and proud of it.

We offer hybrid working across our teams, balancing time in the office — for collaboration, events and the relationships that make work rewarding — with the flexibility to work remotely where roles allow.