Operations Director, Urban Jungle
Every Urban Jungler receives share options that can increase alongside performance and growth
4+ days a week in office (Oval, London)
Urban Jungle crafts insurance for the demands of a new generation. B-Corp Certified.
Open for applications
Urban Jungle crafts insurance for the demands of a new generation. B-Corp Certified.
21-100 employees
Open for applications
Every Urban Jungler receives share options that can increase alongside performance and growth
4+ days a week in office (Oval, London)
21-100 employees
Company mission
To craft great insurance for the demands of a new generation. End of story.
Role
Who you are
- 7+ years of relevant professional experience, including direct experience in operations at a consumer-facing business
- Experience leading and developing customer service/support teams
- Experience developing, managing & hiring teams
- Experience leading a function and making decisions, at both the strategic and tactical level
- A confident communicator who can hold their own in a senior team discussion
- Someone used to applying intellectual rigour to their thinking, and able to make their own arguments for change
- Some experience in a regulated market would be great, but not essential
- Ultimately, you’re highly ambitious with the drive to push both the business and yourself to the next level
What the job involves
- We want you to take charge of the Operations function for the business, reporting directly to one of our founders
- You’ll be taking over the leadership of the amazing 13 strong team that’s already in place, helping them to maintain our efficiency and customer experience as we scale rapidly, and taking on new operational responsibilities as we grow the business
- In this role, you'll report to our Co-Founder and CTO, Greg Smyth
- Take charge of the Operations function for the business, reporting directly to one of the founders
- Strategise and execute long-term plans on how to run, scale and structure our team
- Serve as the go-to person for handling big/complex customer support cases
- Build and scale our talent model for what is one of the biggest teams in the company
- Ensure that operational priorities are reflected within the senior team, and across the business
- Drive real change in a sector that matters, and make a positive impact on our 175,000+ customers
Salary benchmarks
Otta's take
Sam Franklin
CEO of Otta
Urban Jungle was founded in 2016 by a team from both in and outside of the insurance industry. Jimmy Williams and Greg Smyth noticed that the insurance industry was moving at a really slow pace, hardly taking advantage of the available technology and often leaving customers behind, especially younger ones. After more than three years, Urban Jungle is now the top rated home insurance provider in the UK.
Modern insurers have inherited, from their 80s predecessors, a highly inefficent general approach to the industry: when launching a new system, only new customers are included in it, while old customers remain in the old system. Customer Service Operatives at really big insurers are fishing in different systems to find people's records and that does not favour productivity at all. The challenge with Urban Jungle’s process is to build up the insurance experience from scratch taking advantage of the technology that has been developed in recent years, reducing costs and empowering customers.
Special attention needs to be paid to the insurance product. The responsiveness to the way people's risks are changing over time is a key aspect that insurers should always bear in mind. Adapting the insurance product to ever-changing needs is definitely the main challenge for Urban Jungle and its competitors, and the best way to do it is to keep a continuous and direct contact with customers. Regularly testing the current insurance offer and showing readiness when adapting the product to a new necessity is the real turning point and what Urban Jungle is working for.
Insights
Many candidates hear
back within 2 weeks
49% female employees
29% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Employee endorsements
Opportunities to learn
"This is a learning environment. Not only are we encouraged to ask and learn from others but we are encouraged to teach and share our own knowledge...."
Funding (last 2 of 7 rounds)
Apr 2024
$14.4m
EARLY VC
May 2022
$21.3m
SERIES A
Total funding: $56.4m
Company benefits
- Share options that can increase alongside performance and growth.
- 25 days paid annual leave, plus public holidays.
- Rapid Progression. We’ll give you the opportunity to experience loads, and develop rapidly. You’ll get tons of responsibility from day one, and all the feedback, coaching and support you need to fuel your career growth.
- Real Impact. You’ll work on big, interesting problems that will challenge you, and do so in a way that has a positive impact on people’s lives, the planet and our community.
- A Clear Plan. We’ll give you the clarity on what we want to achieve, with the freedom and autonomy for you to decide how we get there.
- The Best People. You’ll be surrounded by teammates who are exceptional at what they do, whilst being kind, honest people who champion our values.
- A dedicated development budget, access to a senior mentor, and training on whatever you need to do your job well.
- Well-being support. We’re committed to supporting both physical and mental well-being through access to therapy, weekly onsite yoga, and subsidised sports clubs.
- Enhanced parental leave, and support for parents returning to work.
- All. The. Fun. We regularly organise awesome socials and have some vibrant team communities such as book club and foodies.
Company values
- Customer First. We do the right thing, even when no one is watching. We’ll always talk to our community of customers to stay on top of what that is.
- Be Responsible. We don’t just say we care, we show it with our actions. We make decisions that take into account the world around us, whether that be considering the environment, supporting diversity or creating a great place to work.
- Keep Getting Better. We always look for ways to innovate and improve next time. We’re open and honest about what’s working and not.
- Aim For Extraordinary. Nothing daunts us. We never back away from the toughest problems, and hold ourselves to the highest standards. We’re setting a new pace in an industry that moves slowly.
Company HQ
Lambeth, London, UK
Articles
Founders
Jimmy Williams
(CEO & Co-Founder)His background is in consulting, where he worked with various insurers, tech providers in financial services, and price comparison sites, as a Principal at OC&C.
Greg Smyth
(CTO & Co-Founder)He was most recently VP of Research and Data Technology at Winton Capita. Previously he worked at Facebook, starting their first engineering team in London, and Google.
People progressing
Julia joined the team as our Data Analyst in 2020, and was promoted to Senior Data Analyst after 1 year. Julia now heads up our BI & Analytics team at Urban Jungle.
Tiago joined us as Software Engineer in 2019, and after several promotions, he is now our Principal Engineer.
Lara joined us as Junior UX/UI Designer in 2021 and was promoted to UX/UI Designer after 18 months in the role.
Jacob joined as Operations Associate in 2022 and was promoted to Senior Operations Associate after less than a year.
Sandra started her career as an NHS doctor before joining the team as a Software Engineer. After just 9 months, she was promoted to Senior Software Engineer.
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