Chief of Staff, Zen Educate
North America
$120-160k
+ Equity
Senior and Expert level
Los Angeles
4-5 days a week in office
Education recruitment platform
Be an early applicant
Education recruitment platform
201-500 employees
B2BMarketplaceEducationRecruitment
Be an early applicant
$120-160k
+ Equity
Senior and Expert level
Los Angeles
4-5 days a week in office
201-500 employees
B2BMarketplaceEducationRecruitment
Company mission
To make a positive impact and bring about meaningful change within the education recruitment sector.
Role
Who you are
- The right person will be able to operate at both altitude and ground level, shaping strategy, doing sharp analysis, and getting deep into frontline processes when that is what the business needs
- Someone who can move quickly, create clarity from ambiguity, and turn rapid growth into better systems, sharper decisions, and stronger execution
- We’re looking for someone with a demonstrated record of exceptional performance
- This is likely a fit for someone with 5 to 10 years of experience, including time in consulting, investing, high-growth startups, strategy, operations, revenue, marketplaces, or another demanding generalist environment
- We care less about the exact path you have taken than your slope, judgment, and evidence that you have operated well in demanding environments. You do not need to have been a Chief of Staff before, but you do need to have shown that you can take on hard problems, create clarity and momentum, and drive real outcomes
- Traits that usually correlate with success in this role:
- Relentless drive to deliver outcomes
- Endless curiosity
- Strong analytical judgment
- Clear, logical, compelling communication
- High ownership
- Low ego
- Comfort with ambiguity
- Ability to influence senior stakeholders
- Excitement to move between strategy and hands-on execution
- Genuine care for the mission, not just the title
- No one at Zen is above the work, and that is especially true for the Chief of Staff
- This is not a role for someone who wants a narrow lane. It is a role for someone who wants to be trusted with some of the most important problems in the business and help solve them
- And if you’re not sure you tick every box, but this sounds like the kind of work you’re built for, reach out anyway
What the job involves
- Reports to: Chris Berry, Managing Director, North America
- We’re now looking for a Chief of Staff, North America to work closely with our leadership team as we scale
- We’re scaling fast, and the work is outrunning the org chart
- You’ll work directly with the North American leadership team, owning the operating cadence, driving key cross-functional projects, and jumping on problems that do not yet have a clear owner
- It is a broad remit by design. The business needs someone who can move fast across functions, bring structure to ambiguity, and make important work happen
- You’ll report to Chris Berry, Managing Director, North America, who made a similar move from consulting into startup revenue and operations
- That means you’ll get close coaching from someone who understands the transition and will push you to grow quickly
- No two days will be the same. You might be working on things like:
- Partnering with leadership to refine strategy and priorities
- Driving projects across Growth, Operations, Customer Success, Finance, and People
- Supporting new market launches and commercial rollout plans
- Building the operating cadence, dashboards, and decision-making systems we need to scale
- Turning ambiguous problems into clear plans, owners, and outcomes
- Jumping into urgent business problems when there is no obvious owner yet
- The pace will be high. The work will be hands-on. The ownership will be real
- What you might like or dislike:
- We move quickly. Priorities can change. You’ll often be working with imperfect information, and the business will still need a decision
- We value ownership. You’ll be expected to notice what is broken, figure out what matters, bring people with you, and get things done
- For the right person, this will be fast, fun, and career-accelerating
- For the wrong person, it will feel too ambiguous, too broad, and too intense
- Growth and progression:
- Choose your own adventure, then earn it
- You’ll work across the organization and be well positioned to move into a senior role over time. That could be in operations, strategy, commercial, general management, or something else entirely
- But this is not a fixed ladder with a guaranteed next step. The combination of business need and your ability to step into it will determine what comes next
Our take
With UK schools under immense financial pressure, Zen Educate is providing a smarter approach to education staffing. Recruitment in schools often relies on inefficient and expensive practices. Zen Educate is focused on tackling the pain points in the industry and providing a way to ensure schools get the best teachers possible.
It provides an online platform as an alternative to recruitment agencies, which is the only online platform accredited by the UK's Department of Education, helping schools fill staffing needs quickly and cost-effectively. Schools using the platform have reportedly saved 20-30% on supply cover costs.
On top of this, the company has also raised significant funding to support acquisitions in the UK and the US, plus the expansion of its operations and offering.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Top investors
Company
Funding (last 2 of 7 rounds)
Aug 2025
$17.7m
SERIES B
May 2024
$37m
SERIES B
Total funding: $103.2m
Company benefits
- Macbook and tech equipment provided
- Regular "lunch 'n' learns" every month on a range of topics
- Investment in your professional development
- Regular socials
- Ownership in the company
- Pension scheme
- Health benefits (Zen pays 75% of premiums) including vision and dental
Company values
- Commit to the mission- We commit to our mission, our customers, and our teams. We work hard because we care more
- Choose greatness over comfort- Greatness and comfort rarely coexist. We seek greatness. We understand success takes grit & determination so we seek colleagues that possess it
- Act like an owner- We all take responsibility for driving the company forward and making it a success. If we see something that could be better, we fix it. We offer stock options to all employees
- Help each other be better- Every person at Zen is someone we can respect and learn from
- A culture of trust- We hire people who are great at their jobs and we let them get on with it while being there to lend a hand when needed
- Challenge the status quo- We take action when we can see opportunities for improvement. We are in it to make our customers' lives better and to fix a broken system
- Embrace learning over perfection- We make decisions quickly and we don't hesitate. We may disagree with a decision, but we support the team and the mission by committing to it. We embrace making unknowable mistakes and learning from them
Company HQ
HQ, London
Articles
Leadership
Slava Kremerman
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously a member of the Leadership Team at Nutmeg a FS startup, they also worked at Barclays and Aon.
Oren Cohen
(Co-Founder & Chief Customer Officer)Ran the UK office of Optimizely, a Silicon Valley tech company. Prior to this, they worked at G-STAT and Intel.
Salary benchmarks
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Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Zen Educate
- At Zen, we strive to build a culture of equity and inclusion, where everyone is respected, valued and appreciated for their unique traits, experiences and perspectives. We are committed to creating a safe, inclusive and equitable environment where our team can thrive, regardless of age, ethnicity, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, disability, religion or beliefs. We value our differences and believe that practices of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion help us create a fairer, more compassionate environment for all
- We welcome applicants with diverse backgrounds and different experiences and perspectives — just like the staff who teach through Zen and the children at the schools we work with. We believe in hiring the best people from the widest pool and creating an inclusive culture where people’s voices are heard and all our team can look forward to coming to work
- We are committed to building a team that reflects the diversity of our community and promoting an equitable and inclusive environment for all. We seek out diverse opinions, beliefs, and experiences because they collectively make us stronger; we’ve had former teachers, pilots, fundraisers, engineers, lawyers, marketers, social media experts and more join our team
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