Product Operations Manager, Zen Educate
Salary not provided
Plus stock options
Mid and Senior level
London
3 days a week in office (Oval, London)
Education recruitment platform
Posted today
Education recruitment platform
201-500 employees
B2BMarketplaceEducationRecruitment
Posted today
Salary not provided
Plus stock options
Mid and Senior level
London
3 days a week in office (Oval, London)
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 Systems Thinker: You get itchy when there’s too much inefficiency. When you see a problem solved twice, you build a repeatable habit so it never happens a third time
- The Pragmatic Mediator: You can hold multiple perspectives, keep your head when things are moving fast, and help a team find alignment without fuss
- The Outcome-Obsessed: You believe in "buying our commodities and building our differentiators." You want to spend time on what actually moves the needle for schools and teachers
- 4+ years in Product Operations, Product Management, or Business Operations scaling systems with measurable impact
- Scale-up Experience: You’ve navigated the "messy middle" of a fast-growing company (Series B/C/D)
- Data Literacy: You are comfortable working with BI systems and product analytics to turn raw data into a strategic narrative
- Change Management: You have a track record of optimizing development lifecycles and managing a modern product tech stack
- Communication: Evidence of making complex systems simple and usable for diverse teams
What the job involves
- At Zen, “product ops” doesn’t mean creating bureaucracy or being a Jira administrator (especially as we don’t use Jira). It means building the system behind the system
- You won't be managing the product itself; you'll be product-managing how we build products. We focus on Missions over Sprints and Outcomes over Outputs
- You’ll care more about reducing friction and driving commercial and human impact than about what shape the solution takes
- Guardian of our Ways of Working: Own and refine our Mission-based deployment model. You'll ensure teams move from "Pitch" to "Launch" with maximum autonomy and minimum bloat
- Manage the "Single Front Door": Run our weekly Triage sessions. You’ll be the gatekeeper for the business, ensuring all requests are framed as clear Missions with a business case before they reach our Investment Committee
- Own the "Single Pane of Glass": Maintain our central dashboard of core metrics (our HUD). You’ll ensure Product Managers have self-serve access to the data they need to prove their Mission’s impact
- Standardize Rituals: Refine our "Mission Control" and "Waypoints" so the team has a clear rhythm of progress without a calendar full of empty meetings
- Operational Glue: Work closely with Design, Engineering, and Growth to ensure smooth product launches and total cross-functional alignment. You’ll deliver the "Weekly Pulse" to keep the wider company informed
- Fix the "Papercuts": Coordinate with Customer Service to triage bugs and small improvements, ensuring our rotating "Bugs & Papercuts" engineering teams are focused on the highest-value fixes
Application process
- Intro chat – a real conversation about your journey
- Product Ops deep dive – how you think and the systems you’ve built
- Task & Meet the Team – a practical look at how we’ll work together
- If you’re excited by the idea of building the operational machine that gets the right educator into the right classroom at the right time, let’s talk
Salary benchmarks
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: $103m
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
- 25 days of holidays + all UK public holidays off
- Central London dog-friendly office with perks like fresh fruit, bike parking, showers, and an on-site gym and café
- Life insurance
- Vitality health insurance and benefits
- Cycle to Work Scheme
- Electric Car Scheme
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.
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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