People, Operations Manager

Bike Bubl is a London-based service business built around cargo bikes and operational field teams. Our remote operating team includes separate sales and customer-service functions, alongside cleaning leadership, software, repair/maintenance and specialist external partners.

Over the past two years (in our 10 year history!), Bike Bubl has developed a capable, well-trained team and made substantial progress documenting how the company operates. A recent unexpected leadership transition accelerated our succession plans. The operation is stable; our next task is to strengthen continuity, clarify ownership and ensure that knowledge and people systems do not depend on any one individual.

We are looking for someone who can understand what already works, strengthen it and build a more resilient system around it.

Your initial assignment

Listen to our staff

You will speak individually with team members, review existing handbooks and workflows, understand how work is actually performed and identify the important gaps, dependencies and risks.

You will then bring clear, prioritised findings to the founder: what should be protected, what should be improved, what can wait and what decisions are required. Once agreed, you will help implement the resulting systems.

What you will own

• Recruitment of support team members from role definition through to offer.
• Recruitment templates, candidate records and hiring analytics.
• Holiday, absence, staffing and peak-period coverage planning.
• Cleaner-recruitment support alongside relevant functional leads.
• Onboarding, engagement-appropriate initial review or employee probation, offboarding and role-transition processes.
• Performance tracking and associated administrative support.
• Cross-training, backup ownership and continuity planning.
• Audit and improvement of existing operating documentation.
• Clear SOPs, checklists and training material for critical processes.
• Concise weekly and monthly people-and-operations reporting.
• Early identification of risk, accompanied by practical options.
• Operating governance and continuity for critical external agencies and contractors, including scope, access, reporting, handover and replacement readiness.

What success looks like within six months

• Every critical function has a clearly identified owner, backup and emergency route.
• Holiday and peak coverage can be planned without last-minute founder intervention.
• Support recruitment follows a repeatable, measured process.
• Important documentation reflects how work genuinely happens and has been tested by its users.
• Operational risks, performance concerns and hiring needs become visible early.
• The founder receives short, decision-focused reports instead of investigating operations personally.
• The company is less vulnerable to the unexpected departure or absence of any one person.
• Critical external relationships are documented and can survive the loss of an agency contact or provider.

This is probably a strong fit if you

• Have built practical people or operating systems in a smaller, fast-moving organisation.
• Have personally owned recruitment and can explain what improved because of your work.
• Enjoy interviewing team members and turning tacit knowledge into repeatable processes.
• Can work with detail without losing sight of business priorities.
• Use data to make decisions but do not create reporting for its own sake.
• Communicate difficult information calmly and early.
• Are comfortable bringing recommendations to a founder who retains strategy and budget responsibility.
• Want a long-term role whose scope can grow after the core operation is secure.
• Speak and write advanced English.

This is probably not the right fit if you want

• A pure HR, recruitment or executive-assistant position.
• Immediate responsibility for strategy, sales growth or every department.
• A large corporate environment with fully defined procedures.
• To solve every problem personally rather than building reliable ownership around the team.

What we offer

• A long-term remote contractor engagement intended to be the person’s principal full-time commitment.
• GBP £1650.00 to £1850.00 (USD 2,200−2,500 net monthly service fee, with flexibility for exceptional evidence.
• Direct access to the founder and genuine influence over the operating system.
• An established, experienced team rather than a blank sheet or turnaround crisis.
• Existing documentation and processes upon which to build.
• An engagement designed around long-term trust and responsibility.
• Potential, once the core mandate works, to apply the system to related companies or new ventures.

Availability and planned unavailability

The work requires reliable availability during normal UK business hours for scheduled collaboration, timely decisions and live coordination. Much of the documentation, analysis and project work can be organised flexibly, provided agreed outputs, deadlines and service needs are met.

Before you start, please let me know by start date about any dates you already expect to be unavailable during your first three months. This is simply for onboarding and workload planning — not a final deadline for all future time off. Plans can change, and you can notify us of additional or unexpected unavailability later under our agreement.

You do not need to write a traditional cover letter. Please send your CV and answer the questions below in your application.

• Where are you currently based, what is your notice period and when could you begin?
• Can you provide reliable availability during normal UK business hours?
• Is the advertised service-fee range workable for you?
• How do you currently use spoken and written English professionally?
• In no more than 200 words, describe an operating process you inherited and substantially improved.
• In no more than 200 words, describe a recruitment or continuity problem you personally owned and the result.