Head of Health & Safety

About Flash Pack: When was the last time you made a new friend? The quality of your relationships is the single most important factor for your mental health. Travel has a unique ability to fast-forward the friendship-making process, which is why we’re on a mission to create one million meaningful friendships using the power of travel and technology as a platform for human connection. We create curated social adventures for solo travellers in their 30s, 40s and 50s. Since launching in 2014, we’ve seen impressive year-on-year growth and become the category leader in a thriving, rapidly expanding market with the majority of our business now in the US. We’re well-funded, we’ve shaken up an outdated industry, and we see ourselves as a friendship company far more than a travel company. Our culture is down-to-earth, hard-working and compassionate, built by exceptional people who care deeply about doing work we’re proud of.

The Role: In adventure travel, safety isn't the opposite of bold product; it's the licence to build it. The operators who lead this space aren't the ones running the tamest trips; they're the ones whose risk management is good enough to let them say yes with confidence. This is a full-time, standalone Head of Health & Safety role, dedicated entirely to the safety discipline: the risk framework, supplier assurance, incident learning loop and crisis response that let Flash Pack's product and marketing teams design bolder trips with confidence, not less oversight. You'll own Flash Pack's safety standard end to end: not a compliance function that defaults to 'no' and gets routed around, but a lean, high-leverage approach that sets the boundaries clearly enough that most decisions never need to expand, and steps in fast, personally, when they do.

In line with our salary framework, the salary for this role is £80,000- £86,000, depending on experience. You must be based in London, or close commutable distance, and be able to undertake some destination travel for supplier audits and incident response.

Travel & Working Pattern: This role is not desk-only: expect some travel to destinations for supplier audits, incident follow-up, and trip-leader training, alongside London-based/remote-flexible working for the rest of the time. This is also an on-call role. When a serious incident happens, you need to be reachable and able to respond immediately, any time of day, any day of the year, including evenings, weekends and public holidays. Standard working hours don't apply when a customer or Pack Leader is in danger.

Where you will spend your time:

• Setting the boundaries: decide how much risk Flash Pack is willing to take, and where, so the rest of the business can move fast and design boldly within limits you've set, instead of asking your permission case by case.
• Building safety in, not bolting it on: make sure safety is part of how new trips and experiences get designed from the start, so it speeds good ideas up rather than slowing them down.
• Owning who we work with in the field: set and hold the safety bar for every supplier and ground partner Flash Pack relies on, and decide who's good enough to work with us; in adventure travel, this is where most of the real risk sits.
• Leading when it matters most: be the person who makes the call on a live incident, coordinate everyone involved until it's resolved, and make sure the company is measurably better prepared after every incident and near-miss than it was before.
• Getting the field ready: make sure everyone delivering our trips has the training, judgement and support to handle a crisis without waiting for head office, and that Flash Pack can respond, day or night.
• Working cross-functionally: act as the connective layer across product, ops, CX and other teams, facilitating shared decisions on risk and bringing the right people together, rather than trying to hold all of it yourself.
• Using data and AI well: use data to see risk before it becomes a problem, not just to report on it afterwards, and make sure AI is used responsibly anywhere it touches customer safety, with a human always accountable for the final call.
• Making safety a reason to trust us: shape how Flash Pack talks about safety so it reads as confidence, not fine print, and represent our safety standards credibly to partners, insurers and, where needed, regulators.
• Owning the risk conversation at the top: give the CEO and board a clear, credible view of Flash Pack's risk position whenever they need one.

What we’d love to see from you:

• Real adventure-travel or high-risk-activity safety experience: you've owned safety and risk in group travel, expedition, outdoor-activity or a comparably regulated, high-consequence consumer environment, and you can talk through incidents you've actually handled, not just policies you've written.
• Judgement under pressure: you can make a fast, defensible call on a live incident without waiting for sign-off, and you know the difference between a decision that needs to be escalated and one that doesn't.
• A builder's mindset: you've matured a safety function, risk framework or supplier-assurance process before, and you enjoy shaping systems and processes, not just maintaining them.
• Commercial fluency: you can hold the tension between safety and product ambition without collapsing into either extreme: you look for the 'yes, if,' not the reflexive 'no,' and you understand that a bad safety function destroys revenue just as surely as a bad incident does.
• Comfort with data and AI as tools, not threats: you're not intimidated by using data and AI-assisted tools to extend what a small team can see and do, and you're equally clear-eyed about where AI output needs a human safety check before it reaches a customer.
• A genuine people-leader and facilitator: you can manage and develop the one direct report you'll have from day one, and you're just as effective leading and influencing people who don't report to you at all, across product, ops and CX.
• Executive presence: you can brief the CEO and board on serious incidents and risk appetite clearly and without drama, and represent Flash Pack credibly to insurers, partners and, where needed, regulators or media.

Nice-to-have: familiarity with recognised risk-management and travel-safety standards.

We’re after the right person and if you don’t quite hit all the criteria, we’d still encourage you to apply. We’d love to chat and see if you could be a great fit for Flash Pack.

Interview Process: Our interviews take place on Google Meet and usually consist of the following stages:

• Introductory chat with our talent team to see if there is a match (30-45 mins)
• An interview with the hiring manager to hear more about your background and experience and to give you a deep dive into the role (60 mins)
• A case study and presentation with the hiring manager and a key stakeholder to see how you’d solve a problem (60 mins)
• Meet with one of our founders for any final questions you or we have (45-60 mins)