Operations and Strategy 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. We're assembling the most talent-dense team the logistics industry has ever seen. 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 consists of ~110 people, more than half in engineering, product, and data, with 45+ advanced degrees across computer science, mathematics, and operations research. Thousands of data points are captured, calculated, analysed, and predicted for every single parcel we handle, fostering an intellectually vibrant culture of first-principles thinking, tight feedback loops, and relentless experimentation.

About the role: We have 600+ pitstop partners across the UK, and that number is growing fast. Each one needs to be onboarded, kept performing, coordinated with our Middle Mile operation, and supported when things go wrong. This role is about changing that. You’ll own the systems side of our Pitstop operation: figuring out how things should work, designing the infrastructure to make them repeatable, and working with product and engineering to actually build it. You won’t just be analysing problems; you’ll be fixing them in a way that holds at 10x the current scale.

We’re looking for someone who thinks in systems, writes with clarity, and gets things built. Prior experience in a fast-moving ops or strategy role is important; so is the ability to hold your own in a room with engineers.

As the Operations and Strategy Senior Associate at Relay, you can expect to:

• Take messy, manual Pitstop workflows and turn them into something that actually scales, documenting how they work, where they break, and what it takes to make them run without constant intervention.
• Set clear standards for what good pitstop performance looks like, build the measurement frameworks around those standards, and make sure the right people have visibility when we’re off track.
• Build value extraction loops that turn operational data into genuine improvements over time, rather than reports that get read once and forgotten, with each iteration making the next one easier.
• Be the connective tissue between Pitstop operations and technical teams: writing specs, shaping roadmap priorities, and staying close to delivery until the thing is actually working.
• Own the performance of the systems you build, not just the design. The goal is to build things that compound, where each improvement makes the next one cheaper and faster to ship. If something isn’t working, you’re the one who figures out why and fixes it.
• Stay close enough to the operation to keep finding the next problem worth solving, and build the case for why it matters.

Example projects you’ll work on:

• Loss attribution agent: Design and deploy an agent that monitors scan events in real time, identifies the loss scenario, attributes responsibility automatically, and triggers the right response.
• Pitstop launch system: Design a scalable, instrumented go-live system where every step is documented, checked, and owned, so we can activate hundreds of pitstops a week without incidents.
• Pitstop performance gold standard: Define what a high-performing pitstop looks like across every input metric, build the measurement infrastructure, and create the feedback loop so every pitstop knows exactly where they stand and what to improve.
• Live support at scale: Define the gold standard for every support scenario, encode it into systems, and build the feedback loop that continuously improves resolution quality.

We are looking for candidates who have:

• 4–6 years in consulting, strategy, or product, ideally somewhere that was scaling fast and didn’t have all the answers yet.
• A natural instinct for systems thinking. You don’t patch problems; you figure out why they keep happening and change the underlying structure.
• Real comfort working with technical teams. You’ve written specs, pushed back on scope, and understand enough about how software gets built to have a credible opinion on it.
• Strong analytical skills and a habit of grounding your thinking in data. SQL experience is a plus but not necessary.
• Good written communication. At Relay, a well-structured doc or one-pager is often how you get things done.
• High standards and the willingness to push until the work actually meets them.

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.
• 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.

Relay is an equal-opportunity employer committed to diversity, inclusion, and fostering a workplace where everyone thrives.