Lean Operations Manager

Job description

A growth opportunity — early-career talent ready to step into a mature operations role is strongly encouraged to apply. The Bike Club, we're on a mission to make sustainable, high-quality cycling accessible to every family. Our subscription model lets kids always ride the right-sized bike — and when they grow, we swap it out, refurbish it, and pass it on. With 80,000+ bikes on the road, $50M+ in funding, and rapid expansion across Europe, we're just getting started. We're looking for a Lean Operations Manager to drive continuous improvement across our warehouse, refurbishment, and fulfilment operations in Rainham, London. This is a hands-on, gemba-first role for someone who thrives on the warehouse floor, loves solving operational puzzles, and turns observation and data into measurable change. We've intentionally designed this as a single, broad role with real scope — and we're open to candidates at very different career stages. If you're early in your career but ambitious, structured, and hungry to step up, this is a rare chance to grow into a senior-style operations. If you're more experienced, you'll find plenty of room to take ownership from day one. You'll partner closely with our warehouse leads, mechanics, customer service, and last-mile partners to remove waste, increase throughput, and make every refurbished bike move faster and more reliably from intake to family. Your work will directly shape how we scale a circular operation across Europe. Tasks Drive the continuous improvement roadmap across intake, refurbishment, dispatch, and returns — set priorities, run the program, and report progress to leadership Map value streams end-to-end (bike intake → refurb → QC → outbound → courier → customer → return) and identify the bottlenecks, waste, and rework slowing us down Run kaizen workshops, A3 problem-solving sessions, and structured root-cause analyses with mechanics, warehouse operators, and team leads Define, track, and improve operational KPIs (cycle time, refurb throughput, first-time-right rate, on-time dispatch, returns turnaround, OEE on key stations) Roll out standard work, 5S, visual management, and pull-based flow across the warehouse and refurb workshop Spend significant time on the floor — observing, coaching, and validating that improvements stick after rollout Lead capacity and layout planning as we scale: workstation design, station ba…