Operations Associate

The Operations Associate sits at the heart of how Bourn runs day to day. It's a broad, hands-on role for a smart, analytical person who wants real responsibility early. You'll be a first point of contact for customers, dig into data to understand and resolve issues, help us map and improve how our operational processes work, and play an active part in building the AI-enabled tooling that drives efficiency and lets a small team operate at scale.

This is a role with wide exposure across the business. Customer operations, data analysis, product and automation all sit within it.

Key responsibilities

• Be a first point of contact for customer queries across channels, responding clearly and promptly and owning issues through to resolution.
• Investigate and resolve operational issues by analysing data across our platform and partner systems, getting to root causes rather than treating symptoms.
• Carry out business analysis: understanding, mapping and documenting how our processes and data actually flow, and spotting where they break or could work better.
• Contribute to the design and building of AI-enabled operational processes, helping turn manual, repetitive work into reliable automated workflows.
• Produce and maintain reporting and MI using our data tools so the team can monitor performance and catch problems early.
• Support daily operational routines, working to deadlines and maintaining accuracy in a regulated environment.
• Exercise judgement and attention to detail on the operational decisions that matter, including those that touch risk and compliance in a regulated firm.
• Work closely with product, engineering, risk and sales, feeding operational insight back into how the platform is built.
• Help build out the operational playbook as the business scales.
• Take ownership of discrete projects and improvements from start to finish.

Essential qualifications and experience

• 2-5 years' experience in financial services, fintech or a comparable analytical environment, for example a bank graduate programme, or an analyst or similar role.
• Strong analytical skills and genuine comfort working with data to answer questions and solve problems.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to explain things clearly to both customers and colleagues.
• A self-starter who wants real responsibility and is comfortable owning problems through to resolution.
• Genuinely interested in working in an early-stage start-up, with appetite for the ambiguity, breadth and pace that comes with it.

Desirable

• Experience in payments, embedded finance, lending or SME banking.
• Strong data analysis skills (Excel, ideally SQL) and hands-on experience using AI tools in everyday work, or a clear willingness to learn both.
• Familiarity with, or genuine curiosity about, AI tools and how they can be applied to drive operational efficiency.
• Exposure to customer support or success tooling (e.g. Intercom).
• Experience mapping or improving business processes.

Skills and personal attributes

• Analytical thinker who enjoys getting to the bottom of a problem and can make decisions with incomplete information.
• Highly organised and accurate, able to manage competing priorities to deadlines.
• Strong ownership mentality. You are happy to pick things up, see them through and raise a hand for more.
• Comfortable in a small, collaborative team where priorities can shift quickly.
• Curious and quick to learn new tools, systems and domains.
• High personal integrity and a consistent commitment to doing the right thing for customers.