🌍 About the Role
At Zinc, we're rapidly technologising how we serve candidates, recruiters, and customers, without eroding what makes our service genuinely good. This is a brand-new role at Zinc: part of a small, fast-moving team that exists to accelerate the customer function's ability to continuously improve how we serve customers, through better technology, process, and entirely new capabilities.
You'll report directly to the Chief Customer Officer, and partner closely with the Director of CS, Director of Retention + Expansion, and Head of Ops. Right now, the team's first big mandate is standing up a 24-hour, multi-region outsourced live-chat operation, but that's one project among many. This role exists to take on the big, cross-functional things that currently move too slowly (or don't start at all) because the people who'd need to run them are already fully occupied serving customers.
What's more, you will be a key strategic partner to our CCO Tom, helping to ensure the Customer function strategy is executed across the business.
🧩 The Complexity (why this role isn't for everyone)
- This is a new function with no fixed playbook and no large dedicated team to lean on; you'll build capability mostly through people who don't fully report to you.
- This is a brand new role with impact that sits across a complex cross-functional group of people and problems. Ambiguity about scope and shape isn't a bug here; it's most of the job in year one.
- A meaningful chunk of your time goes into managing the tension between colleagues' day-job commitments and the new work you need from them; this takes real influence and negotiation, not just a project plan.
- You'll operate at very different altitudes in the same week: deep in a specific vendor negotiation one day, shaping cross-functional prioritisation with the CCO the next.
We are open to diverse backgrounds that can bring transferable skills to this role, but expect the ideal candidate to come from one of the following backgrounds:
- Ex-strategy consultants turned operators
- Startup Operations + Strategy roles
- Customer Transformation Leaders
- People Ops/Experience Leaders
Key Responsibilities 🗝️
🚀 Own the Big Bets
Lead time-boxed, high-stakes transformation projects that neither the AM nor CS team can resource themselves, starting with outsourcing vendor selection and commercial set-up, with more to follow as the strategy demands it.
🧭 Decide What's Next
Act as the single point deciding which cross-functional, currently-unowned problem gets tackled next (e.g. the automation gap behind our fastest-growing support-ticket category). Nobody owns this today; you will.
🚀 Launch, Then Let Go
Stand new capability up, prove it works, then hand it to the relevant delivery team to run as business-as-usual. This team builds and transitions; it doesn't accumulate permanent ownership of everything it touches.
🎯 Direct, Don't Duplicate
Pull in Core Ops (via the Head of Ops) as additional project capacity (systems, data, analysis) for the "how," while this role owns the "what" and "why." With only a small team of your own, you'll get things done by mobilising others across the org.
🤝 Strategic Partner to CCO
Our CCO Tom - as well as his two Directors - will rely on you to challenge and build their strategic thinking, and then to enable Zinc to execute the Customer Function strategy as the business continues to rapidly scale. You will need a strategic brain, a transparent communication style + executional prowess to nail this part of the role.
🧑 🤝 🧑 Lead a Small, Mixed Team
Manage a service experience designer working full-time on new initiatives, plus another team member who will split their time between existing single-owner responsibility and new work for this team. Getting genuine new output from people who are also still running something else is a core part of the job. One team member initially stays managed by the Director of AM until you're in seat, then moves under you.
🛠️ Make Your First Hire
Once you're up to speed, you'll scope and hire the team's Maker role yourself, defining what capability the team actually needs rather than inheriting a pre-written job spec. We're deliberately not filling this ahead of you landing.
📈 Keep Pace With the Proposition
Make sure Zinc's customer experience keeps evolving as fast as customer expectations do (voice of customer, NPS, and customer education included) as much a building function as an improving one.
Skills, Knowledge and Expertise 🚀
🚀 Hard Skills
- Programme delivery: a track record of landing complex, cross-functional initiatives from scratch, not just running an existing process
- Operational and systems thinking: comfortable directing technical/ops resource (automation, data, dashboards) without owning it directly
- Commercial acumen: able to lead vendor/partner selection and negotiate commercial terms
- Prioritisation and portfolio management: able to weigh and sequence competing cross-functional demands with limited capacity
- Resourcefulness over headcount: genuinely comfortable delivering without a large dedicated team
- Structured problem-solving: able to take a messy, ambiguous problem, diagnose what's actually going on, and turn it into a clear plan of attack quickly
- Executive-ready communication: synthesises complexity into crisp written and verbal recommendations that senior stakeholders can act on
- Business case building: able to size and frame the case for a new investment or capability clearly enough that leadership backs it
💡 Soft Skills
- Trusted operator: the CCO and both function directors need to hand you real ownership quickly
- Comfortable with ambiguity: this role will be redefined as it proves itself
- Influence without full authority: most delivery happens through people who don't fully report to you
- Genuine comfort with letting go: building something up and then handing it off is a feature, not a loss
- Strategic and operational range: equally at home thinking about the function's readiness for further rapid scale, and running a specific project day to day
- Fast context-switcher: gets quickly up to speed in an unfamiliar problem area, then moves on once it's landed, without needing years to ramp up
- Bias to action under ambiguity: makes real progress with imperfect information rather than waiting for full certainty
- Builds credibility fast: earns trust and real authority with senior stakeholders quickly, rather than needing to grow into it over time
What we offer 🍉
- 24 days holiday + Bank Holidays + your birthday off 🎉
- £1200 annual benefits allowance (ThanksBen, from month 2)
- Early finish Fridays (16:00)
- Yearly company retreat abroad ✈️
- 30 days to Work from anywhere 🌍
- Enhanced Maternity, Paternity, and Adoption Leave (13 weeks full pay, 17 weeks half pay, then SMP for maternity, 1 month full pay for paternity/adoption) 🐣
- Statutory pension with NEST (3% employer, 5% employee)
- Zinc shares, issued through the EMI Scheme
- Unlimited access to Spill Therapy
- Company socials, quarterly team socials Free Monday lunches
- Nursery workplace benefit scheme (Yellownest)
- Option to lease an electric car through Electric Car Scheme
- Celebrated Zinc anniversaries 🥳
🧭 Chief of Staff - Customer in London employer: Zinc
Zinc is an exceptional employer that prioritises a vibrant work culture and employee growth, making it an ideal place for the VP of People role. With a commitment to scaling while preserving its unique environment, Zinc offers generous benefits such as 24 days holiday, early finish Fridays, and a yearly retreat abroad, alongside a strong focus on professional development and leadership collaboration. Join a dynamic team in London where your contributions will directly shape the future of the company and its people strategy.
