People Lead

Location: London (Oval)

Type: Full-time, onsite

Salary: Competitive salary

👋 Hi I'm Ashni, I'm the Global VP of People across the UK, US, Canada and South Africa, and I'm looking for someone to partner with me and lead our UK team. 

Today, my People Team is a global function and you’ll be taking on a high impact role in supporting a UK team of 270+ people (and growing!) and a global team of over 600. You’ll work closely with our Co-Founders, Slava and Oren, our Senior Leadership Team and the wider People function to make sure we have the people, leadership, structure and processes needed for the next stage of growth

The simple version of the role is: Help us build an organisation where great people can do great work, managers genuinely manage, and our People practices scale as quickly as the business does.
This isn’t a role for someone who wants to sit on the sidelines advising from a distance. We’re looking for someone who can spot what needs to change, build the solution and make it happen.

🌍 What we’re building and why 

Schools in the UK and US spend over £12bn a year on agency staff, and £3.6bn of that goes straight into the pockets of recruitment agencies. That’s why we’ve built an alternative.

Zen is an all-in-one digital platform that gives schools full control over how they find, vet, and manage temporary educators. Think “tech startup,” but solving a painfully human, operational, and systemic issue in education staffing. Our platform is built to be scalable and intuitive, designed in close collaboration with schools and educators to fit seamlessly into existing school workflows. School leaders can search, book, and manage staff in real time, while gaining full visibility and control over their spend and compliance. We are incredibly proud that our approach to helping Schools and Educators has led to us becoming a Certified B Corporation™.

We’ve had tremendous success and are currently experiencing a period of exceptional growth. We’re looking for a seasoned operator to come in, roll-up their sleeves, and get their hands dirty working closely with senior leaders across the business.

🌱 What we're looking for

You’ll have a demonstrated record of driving exceptional results in People domains or subdomains. This likely will be in either a high-growth startup or other performance obsessed organisation.

Some of the traits that usually correlate with success in this role:

• Relentless drive to deliver tangible outcomes

• Endless curiosity

• Hold a wildly high performance standard for themselves and those around them

• Systems level thinker adept at driving clarity from ambiguity

• Boundless resilience for dealing with the tricky parts of the People tradecraft

What your first 6-12 months might look like

What's in it for you?

• Work that you want to talk about

• Competitive salary

• Ownership in the company

• 25+ days of holiday (increases with tenure)

• Life Insurance

• Health Insurance

• Electric Car Scheme 

• Cycle to Work Scheme 

Diversity and Inclusion

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.