Head of Client Performance

Job description

**Relay is fundamentally reshaping how goods move in an online era.** Backed by Europe’s largest-ever logistics Series A ($35M) led by deep-tech investors Plural, and a recently closed Series B ($60M), Relay is scaling faster than 99% of venture-backed startups. We're assembling the most talent-dense team the logistics industry has ever seen **Relay’s Mission is** to **free commerce from friction**. Today, high delivery costs act as a hidden tax on e-commerce, quietly shaping what can be sold online and limiting who can participate. We envision a world where **more goods move more freely between more people**, making the online shopping experience seamless and accessible to everyone. **THE TEAM**• **~160 people**, around half in engineering, product and data • **45+ advanced degrees** across computer science, mathematics and operations research • **Thousands** of data points captured, calculated, analysed and predicted for every single parcel we handle • An intellectually vibrant culture of **first‑principles thinking**, tight feedback loops and relentless experimentation ## **The Opportunity** **Nobody has solved quality in delivery.** The industry treats lost and undelivered parcels the way it treats weather: absorbed, apologised for, credited back. Retailers have learned to expect it. Carriers report on-time rates and go quiet on everything else, because when a parcel goes missing between a van and a sorting centre, nobody can say exactly where it happened or who should fix it. We've spent the last year building the systems and infrastructure to make that answerable: capturing what actually happens at every handover and attributing loss to a specific point in the journey, with one team accountable for it. Thousands of data points per parcel give us a foundation most of this industry simply doesn't have. That turns delivery quality from a reporting exercise into a modelling problem, and creates a rare **applied AI** opportunity in a huge physical industry. We treat every failed delivery as another signal: something to understand, model and feed back into a learning loop. We run ML and LLM inference daily, with the data density and engineering depth to go after the problem properly. **This role is where those models meet the customer, and where insight becomes action.** Get this right and the relationship changes. Instead of explaining a miss after the fact, you're showing a client where their parcels are being lost, what we're doing to fix it and what we expect that intervention to be worth, before they've had to ask. They can plan around us. They stop chasing and start relying on us to tell them first. That's what turns a supplier into a strategic partner. You'll own two pictures and the connection between them: internally, a single view of what the network is doing to improve quality and in what order; externally, the performance story each strategic account sees. Today those views live in different places. Your job is to join them. You'll lead a small team, with data, engineering, product and our operational pillars around you. You won't be building the underlying capture and attribution systems. Our engineering and data teams own that, and you inherit them. Which means you start from numbers you can trust, and can focus on the harder question: **what should we do about them?** ## **What You’ll Do** - **Own delivery quality end to end for our strategic accounts:** know where performance is breaking, what we’re fixing, in what order, and what each intervention is worth. - **Work shoulder to shoulder with engineers, product designers, and data scientists,** close enough to the modelling to understand what an output can and can’t support, and turn technical capability into decisions clients can act on. - **Partner hand in hand with our Account Managers on client performance.** You’ll be their key counterpart on the performance of our strategic accounts: bringing the numbers, diagnosis, priorities, and plan, while working together to turn that into a joined-up experience for the client. - **Build a compelling performance story that starts with the client’s needs.** Connect what we’re seeing in the data, what Relay is building, and what is changing operationally into a clear narrative about the outcomes that matter to the client and what we should do next. - **Turn roadmaps into measurable impact.** Move us from “ships in March” to “ships in March, should move your rate by roughly this much, and here’s how we’ll know.” - **Set the standard for connecting what the network builds to the loss it reduces,** and drive adoption across teams that don’t report to you. - **Build and lead a small team,** raising the bar for how Relay manages client performance and growing the function as the remit expands. - **Report to the CEO,** with a direct line to the exec team on how we’re performing for our biggest clients. ## **Who Will Thrive in This Role?** - **You've owned an outcome that mattered for more than a year**, not just made the recommendation, handed it over and moved on - **You turn ambiguous problems into a clear agenda.** You can work out what matters, what needs to happen first and which questions actually change the decision - **You know how to work with account managers, engineers and data scientists**, because you can translate a business problem into something they'll actually build - **You get things done through teams that don't report to you**, using clarity, judgement and influence rather than escalation - **You're highly analytical and comfortable in the weeds.** You can sit with the data, spot where a story is weak, challenge what you're being told and know what a model's output can and can't support - **You can judge work in a craft you don't own.** Your analyst says a fix moves the number by a third and you're not sure. You know the questions to ask - **You're genuinely client-facing.** You're comfortable in the room with a demanding senior client, holding your own on numbers you didn't personally produce and owning the answer when things don't go to plan - **You sequence complex work well.** Several dependencies, one client commitment: you know what ships first, what ships imperfectly and what gets cut - **You think in portfolios, not accounts**, and are comfortable making differentiated calls about where attention and resources should go - Experience in logistics, delivery or another complex operational environment is a plus, but the ability to learn a domain quickly, reason from first principles and hold your own with subject-matter experts matters more One honest note, because we'd rather you self-select than find out in month four: this role has no end date on its metrics. You'll live with the same numbers, watch a plan you committed to slip, and revise that commitment in front of the client. You'll make presentations that matter, but success isn't the quality of the recommendation. **It's whether the numbers move, and whether you build a system that keeps moving them.** If in twelve months the picture is still being rebuilt by hand each quarter, the role hasn't worked. **Fast and Focused Hiring Process** 1. Talent Acquisition Interview - 30 min 2. Hiring Manager Interview - 60 min 3. Case Study - Onsite - 75 min 4. Final Interview - 1 hour 5. Decision and offer within 48 hours; Our process mirrors our pace of work. **Compensation, Benefits & Workplace** - **Generous equity, richer than 99% of European startups**, with **annual top-ups** to share Relay’s success. - **Private health & dental coverage**, so comprehensive you’d need to be a partner at a Magic Circle law firm to match it. - **25 days of holidays** - **Enhanced parental leave**. - **Located in Shoreditch,** our office set-up enables the kind of in-person interactions that drive impact. We work 4 days on-site, with 1 day remote. - **Hardware of your choice**. - **Extensive perks** (gym subsidies, cycle-to-work, Friday office lunch, covered Uber home and dinner for late nights, and more). **Who Thrives at Relay?** - **Aim with Precision:** You define problems clearly and measure your impact meticulously. - **Play to Win:** You chase bold bets, tackle the hard stuff, and view constraints as fuel, not friction. - **1% Better Every Day**: You believe that small, consistent improvements lead to exponential growth. You move quickly, deliver results, and learn from every experience. - **All In, All the Time**: You show up and step up. You take ownership from start to finish and do what it takes to deliver when it counts. - **People-Powered Greatness**: You invest in your teammates. You give and receive feedback with care and candour. You build trust through high standards and shared success. - **Grow the Whole Pie**: You seek out win-win solutions for merchants, couriers, and our customers, because when they thrive, so do we. If these resonate, and you combine strong technical fundamentals with entrepreneurial drive, let’s connect. *Relay is an **equal-opportunity employer** committed to diversity, inclusion, and fostering a workplace where everyone thrives.*