Sortation Marketplace Operations Manager in London

Relay is fundamentally reshaping how goods move in an online era. Backed by Europe’s largest-ever logistics Series A ($35M), Relay is scaling faster than 99.98% of venture-backed startups. Relay’s Mission is to free commerce from friction. Today, high delivery costs act as a hidden tax on e-commerce, quietly shaping what can be sold online and limiting who can participate. We envision a world where more goods move more freely between more people, making the online shopping experience seamless and accessible to everyone.

THE TEAM

• ~110 people, more than half in engineering, product and data
• 45+ advanced degrees across computer science, mathematics and operations research
• Thousands of data points captured, calculated, analysed and predicted for every single parcel we handle
• An intellectually vibrant culture of first‑principles thinking, tight feedback loops and relentless experimentation

The Opportunity

Relay is hiring a Sortation Marketplace Lead, a senior systems builder sitting inside the Sortation Squad and reporting to our Director of Sort, Mobeen Warraich. The role owns the marketplace layer behind our sort network: the systems that make sure every shift at every sort site is staffed with the right Warehouse Operatives, and the wider sort-site labour around the right time, every night. This is not a floor role. Site managers and shift leads own on-the-day execution. Your job is to design and ship the marketplace systems that make their job progressively easier: from forecasting what each site needs, through sourcing and committing the supply, through to the recovery loops that kick in when the first plan fails. Engineering ships the code. The data analyst owns the analysis. You own the outcome — setting direction, sharpening the problem, and proving the system is actually working on the floor.

You will work alongside the squad's engineering team, led by Dragos Popa, and an embedded data analyst, as your closest day-to-day partners. As our sort footprint grows, so does the leverage of this role.

As Sortation Marketplace Lead at Relay, you'll:

• Own the Warehouse Operative supply system end-to-end. You are accountable for the system that fills every shift, at every site, on time - not the shift floor itself.
• Own the full supply funnel as a system: demand forecasting > sourcing and pipeline > shift offering and pricing > commitment and confirmation > show-up > day-of recovery > post-shift feedback and retention. Every stage has a model, a metric, and a loop - and you are accountable for the design of all of them.
• Be the operator at the centre of a three-way build - you, the squad's engineering team, and the squad's data analyst. Engineering ships the code. The analyst owns the analysis and the models. You own the outcome: sharpening the problem, setting the bar for what 'good' looks like, pressure-testing designs in review, and owning the operational proof on the other side. Your output is measured in systems that run the network - not decks that describe them.
• Work shoulder-to-shoulder with the squad's data analyst to turn forecasts into operational demand. You bring the operational direction - what the floor actually needs, at which site, in which window, and why - they bring the analytical rigour; together that translation becomes a system instead of a weekly meeting.
• Design the recovery loops. When an operative no-shows, when a site runs hot, when supply collapses overnight - the system should react faster and better than a human on the phone. Own the allocation, re-offer, surge, and backup logic that turns a bad night into a rounding error.
• Build the instrumentation. Define the first-principles metrics for workforce supply health - fill rate, show-up rate, time-to-fill, attrition, cost-to-serve - and make them legible end-to-end, from exec to site manager.
• Make the system scale with the network. As we open new sort sites, your systems should be what make standing them up routine rather than heroic - the playbook, the dashboards, and the live marketplace all work from day one.
• Be the operational conscience of the roadmap. Sit close enough to the floor to see what's actually breaking, and translate that into the highest-leverage systems work for the squad. When a manual workaround exists, your job is to retire it in code.

Work Alongside Industry Leaders:

• Mobeen Warraich — Director of Operations, First Mile & Sortation
• Diego Protas — Sortation Squad Lead
• Dragos Popa — Engineering Manager
• Karthik Harith — VP Operations

What Success Looks Like:

• A clearly instrumented view of the workforce supply funnel, adopted by the Sortation Squad and legible to the exec team
• Forecast-to-demand translation runs as a system with the squad's data analyst — not as a weekly manual exercise
• Multiple shipped systems - that you iterate on relentlessly that measurably lifts show-up rate or cuts cost-to-serve
• Manual workarounds the squad relies on today are identified, ranked by leverage, and being retired in code on a predictable cadence
• Mobeen, Diego and Dragos consistently reach for you as the operator they want in the room on the hardest system-design calls

This Role Is For You If:

• You've operated in fast-moving, operationally complex businesses and owned initiatives with real, measured impact.
• You think in systems. Your instinct when you see a recurring manual task is not to do it faster — it's to ask what needs to be true for it to not exist.
• You are technically credible enough to be a peer, not a stakeholder. You write SQL fluently enough to interrogate an analyst's work and ask the right next question.
• You are high-agency to a fault. If something is broken and no one owns it, you own it by default.
• You are unusually clear in writing, and can make judgment calls under uncertainty.
• You are as comfortable in an engineering design review as you are on a warehouse floor.

Ideal Background:

• Consulting (MBB / tier-one boutique) or banking background, ideally with a move into an operating seat
• BizOps, Chief of Staff, S&P, or operations leadership at a high-growth logistics, marketplace, or on-demand startup
• Track record of partnering closely with engineering and data teams, owning the problem, the rollout, and the operational ground truth behind systems that shipped, not just the deck that proposed them
• STEM / engineering degree or equivalent practical fluency in technical environments
• Exposure to workforce marketplaces, dispatch, allocation, forecasting, or pricing systems is a strong plus

Fast and Focused Hiring Process:

• Talent Acquisition Interview — 30–45 min
• Hiring Manager Interview — 30–45 min
• Case Study + VP Interview same day — 60–75 min

Who Thrives at Relay?

• Aim with Precision: You define problems clearly and measure your impact meticulously.
• Play to Win: You chase bold bets, tackle the hard stuff, and view constraints as fuel, not friction.
• 1% Better Every Day: You believe that small, consistent improvements lead to exponential growth.
• All In, All the Time: You show up and step up. You take ownership from start to finish and do what it takes to deliver when it counts.
• People-Powered Greatness: You invest in your teammates. You give and receive feedback with care and candour.
• Grow the Whole Pie: You seek out win-win solutions for merchants, couriers, and our customers, because when they thrive, so do we.

If these resonate, and you combine strong technical fundamentals with entrepreneurial drive, let’s connect. Relay is an equal-opportunity employer committed to diversity, inclusion, and fostering a workplace where everyone thrives.