Send It Direct
Operations Lead
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We're hiring: Operations Lead
Same day logistics has run the same way for decades. We're the Bristol born team rewriting it - with tech, reliability, real personality, and a brand that actually looks good. Two years in, we've doubled in size and landed a client base that spans blue chip names and major players across building merchants, plant hire, construction, law, pharma and film. And we're only getting started.
Now we need someone to take hold of how we actually deliver, and build it into something that can carry the next stage of growth. This job is a people job. You'll be on the phone all day - to customers who need reassuring, to drivers who need sorting, to branch managers who ring us because they like talking to us. Half our clients stay because the delivery landed on time. The other half stay because they enjoy the conversation. If you'd rather hide behind a dispatch screen, this isn't for you. This isn't a shift supervisor role either. You'll own the day to day, design the systems that replace the firefighting, and grow into leading the operations function as we scale nationally.
About Send It Direct
We deliver same day B2B courier and logistics services through a hybrid fleet of employed and branded drivers, backed up by trusted subcontractors, with 24/7 UK based phone support and a live booking portal. We specialise in the jobs other couriers don't want - high value, fragile, bulky, timed, white glove and genuinely urgent - with 45 minute collection, full insurance and carbon neutral operations, one tree planted per shipment. We've grown by winning trust branch by branch, relationship by relationship, in industries that value reliability and personality over flashy apps. We're now scaling that model nationally, investing in our own driver platform and technology, and actively exploring acquisitions to accelerate growth. It's an exciting time to join, you'll be building the operational engine for the next phase, not just keeping someone else's wheels turning.
The Role
As Operations Lead, you'll own day to day delivery performance and build the processes, data and team behind it. You'll work directly with the founders, the ops desk and the commercial team - close enough to the road to know every driver by name, and close enough to the plan to shape where we go next. You'll also be one of the main voices of Send It Direct. When a client calls, you're who they get - and we want them putting the phone down thinking that was easy, and good fun.
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What you'll be doing
- Owning daily operations - driver and fleet coordination, job allocation, live problem solving and on time performance.
- Building the operational backbone: SOPs, KPIs and processes that hold up when volume doubles.
- Recruiting, onboarding, developing and holding the bar for drivers and subcontractors.
- Being the voice on the other end of the phone when a driver hits a problem on the road - they should be glad it’s you who picks up.
- Talking to customers all day and enjoying it - booking jobs, chasing updates, smoothing the odd wobble, and building the kind of relationships where they ring you by name.
- Turning a bad day into a good phone call - when something goes wrong, how you handle it is what people remember.
- Driving efficiency, utilisation and cost control without ever trading away service quality.
- Handling escalations and incidents, then fixing the cause so they don’t come back.
- Working with our tech and commercial teams to sharpen routing, booking and tracking.
- Keeping us straight on compliance - health & safety, insurance, GDPR on secure documents.
- Capacity planning for peaks, and standing up new services as we win them.
- Organising vehicle maintenance and keeping the fleet road ready.
- Covering the phone line one weekend in four and one evening a week (out of hours volume is under 5% of the working day).
- As you prove yourself, taking on responsibility for building and leading the wider operations team.
Who You Are
- Proven operations experience in logistics, courier, last mile, transport or a similarly fast paced service environment.
- Calm and decisive under pressure - you make the call, and you make it quickly.
- Someone who actually likes people - you enjoy the phone, you’re good company on it, and you can hold a hard conversation with a driver and a reassuring one with a client on the same afternoon.
- Up for the banter - our clients are builders, plant hirers, lawyers and film crews, and the ones who stick with us do it because they like dealing with us. Personality is part of the product here.
- Comfortable with technology and data - you’d rather find the pattern than guess at it.
- Hands on and entrepreneurial - happy to roll your sleeves up in a growing SME rather than delegate from a distance.
- High standards on service, professionalism and detail, because our reputation is built on them.
- Ambitious - genuinely excited by building and eventually leading a team, not just running a rota.
- Based in or around Bristol. Forklift experience is a bonus, not a requirement.
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Why Join Send It Direct
- A genuine growth story - join the fastest growing same day courier in the UK and help take us to the next stage, with real visibility of the plan.
- Autonomy and trust - no micromanagement, no corporate bureaucracy, just clear standards and the support to hit them.
- A leadership track - this role is explicitly designed to grow into Head of Operations as we scale.
- Real influence - you’ll shape how the business runs, working shoulder to shoulder with the founding team.
- A people first culture built by founders who still answer the phone themselves - and a team that takes the work seriously without taking itself too seriously.
- A carbon neutral, tech enabled courier that is genuinely different from the rest of the market.
Package
- Competitive salary, dependent on experience, with a clear route to review as the role and the business grow.
- Pension scheme.
- Company events.
- Cycle to work scheme.
- Full tech kit - mobile and laptop.
- Real progression, with a documented route from Operations Lead to Head of Operations.
Your Growth Path
This role is built to grow. As you prove out the day to day and the numbers behind it, you'll take on responsibility for hiring and coaching the ops team, then move into a formal Head of Operations role owning the whole delivery function, its people and its performance, with the compensation to match. We're building the operations function properly for the first time, and we want the person who helps us build it to lead it.
How to Apply
Send your CV and a short note on why you're the right fit to ben@senditdirect.co.uk. Tell us about a problem you solved on the fly, or a customer who’d still take your call years later. We care far more about how you think and how you talk to people than about a polished CV.
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