Operations & Events Associate

Level: Mid level (3+ years experience)

Salary: £42,000 - £47,000 dependent on experience + performance based bonuses paid twice per year.

About Entrepreneurs First

At Entrepreneurs First (“EF”), we bring together exceptional people to build companies that otherwise wouldn’t exist. We do this by identifying a small number of people who will have an extraordinary impact by creating technologies that shape the future. For many of these individuals, entrepreneurship is not an obvious or entirely legible career path. Our team of Talent Investors identify these individuals from before they even know they’re outliers, and work with them right through to the day they prove it. The companies built at EF are now worth over $18bn. They include Tractable (a computer vision unicorn), Magic Pony Technology (AI, acquired by Twitter for a reported $150m), Credit Kudos (exited to Apple), La Vie (foodtech), Kinetix (creator tools), Neoplants (biotech) and many more. EF is backed by some of the world's leading founders and investors, including Patrick and John Collison (Stripe); Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Tom Blomfield (GoCardless and Monzo), Sara Clemens (Pandora and Twitch); Nat Friedman (GitHub); and Matt Mullenweg (Wordpress). We exist to make great companies happen that otherwise wouldn’t.

What We Need

We’re looking for a proactive, highly organised Operations Associate who thrives on delivering exceptional experiences. You'll take ownership of our diverse portfolio of founder-facing events, helping to strengthen the EF brand, while also managing our network of strategic partnerships. This is more than an events role. As EF continues to scale, you'll have the opportunity to take on broader operational responsibilities across our flagship London office and support our Talent Investing teams. With five cohorts launching over the next 12 months, you'll be expected to jump in where it's needed most. Whether that's running key operational projects, supporting programme delivery, or ultimately owning the operations of a talent and programme cycle from end to end.

What You'll Do Day To Day

• Build EF's brand as the number 1 place to build in Europe
• Own London's external events strategy, delivering at least 2 high-impact events a month that bring in high quality leads.
• Partner with Talent Investors to create events that strengthen founder cultivation.
• Track ROI of each event to see effectiveness of different strategies, using insights to recommend adjustments in future.

Lead the end-to‑end delivery of EF's founder, team and alumni events

Collaborate with the TI squads to plan and deliver events for EF founders on London cohorts. This includes Builders' Retreats, kick‑off weekends, selection days, cohort socials and ad hoc activities

Co‑create internal events for EF team to foster team collaboration and culture, including EF’s annual ‘Talent Investor’ week and the London team Autumn offsite

Work with the Funds team to create annual calendar of events for EF alumni, fostering founder community beyond program completion.

Create scalable playbooks and processes that make event delivery self‑serve, repeatable and operationally excellent.

Own and manage EF's partnership portfolio

Be London’s primary point of contact for external partners, prioritising key partners and optimising on ways they can offer the best support to EF founders.

Identify strategic opportunities with partners to secure sponsorship/venues for events (e.g. hackathons) and build mutually beneficial collaborations.

Identify and onboard new partnerships which would provide value to the EF community, actioning any specific partner requests from founders.

Own the partnership strategy and distribution across all Ops teams across San Francisco, Bangalore and Paris.

Become an operational expert across the Talent and Form cycles, stepping into critical workflows when needed.

Understand the key operational work needed across the Talent and Form cycles, including tooling, meetings, and deliverables

Engage with founders through their entire EF journey, to eliminate roadblocks to their progress and identify areas to improve

Reduce low leverage activities through automations and tooling

Continuously identify opportunities to streamline processes and remove inefficiencies by integrating tooling across Slack, Notion & Airtable.

Champion the adoption of AI tools to reduce manual work such as communications and reminders.

Own the day‑to‑day running of the London office, ensuring a cohesive environment for founders, EF team, and external guests.

Own the relationship with the Shoreditch Exchange Community team, acting as the primary point of contact and ensuring issues are resolved promptly and office space remains suitable for purpose.

Lead workspace improvement projects when required to boost employee and founder experience

Who You Are

• You thrive when making “order from chaos”. You seek out fast‑moving cultures and see ambiguity as an opportunity to define your role. You demonstrate maximum organisational efficiency and attention to detail to get things done on time and on budget, whilst staying open to changes which might arise.
• You take ownership of your work and growth, and enjoy high‑trust, low‑touch management. You don’t need to wait to be told what to do, but take on a varied workload and context switch when needed. You prioritise the most important tasks rather than getting distracted by small issues, and always raises problems with a variety of solutions on hand.
• You take a First Principles approach to problem solving. You are able to synthesize large amounts of information quickly, and identify root problems rather than the ones directly in front of you. You think about the implications of the tasks assigned to you and manage them in a way that keeps the end user in mind.
• You are a clear communicator, and build trusted relationships with those you work with. You see trust as something that compounds over time, and that builds by being reliable and proactive. You have a high EQ and are able to change your working styles to fit the different stakeholders you interact with.

Reasons not to take this job

• You need high oversight and a clear line to progress - working in Operations in a fast paced company requires a scrappy, proactive, and flexible mindset. We can’t promise what you’ll be working on in six months but we can promise it will be interesting!
• You want a slow ramp up and time to find your feet before being given responsibility - We’ll equip you with what you need to get started but doing well in this job will involve diving headfirst and being hungry for responsibility to make an impact fast.
• You want to work remotely - The founder experience is core to EF, from first interaction onwards. This job therefore requires you to be in our East London office at least 4 days a week and be passionate about creating the best customer experience.
• You like to clock off after 5pm - EF exists to work with the best people in the world, and that doesn’t just happen in a normal work week. You might need to jump into help at evenings and weekends to help your colleagues close exceptional talent.

What We Offer

• Ownership: The chance to shape and grow this role based on your ideas.
• Meritocracy: People at EF progress based on ambition and success rather than length of tenure.
• Vibrant Workspace: A buzzing East London office filled with ambitious minds working on frontier technologies to solve world‑changing problems.
• Competitive Benefits:
• Attractive salary with performance‑based incentives.
• Generous vacation allowance, including a two‑week global office closure over the Christmas holidays.
• A Learning & Development allowance to purchase any product or service that will contribute to your personal or professional development
• Enhanced parental leave, plus broader leave policies. We care about our team and enabling the right balance between home and working life

The hiring process

• Initial call with the hiring manager (30 mins)
• Task round, which you’ll be set to complete in your own time by a deadline
• Debrief on the task and second stage interview with hiring manager (45 mins)
• Final interview at our Hoxton office to meet the Head of London Operations, General Manager and Ops teams (90 mins)

EF champions diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment in which a wide variety of backgrounds thrive. We do not tolerate discrimination of any nature including but not limited to discriminating on the basis of race, colour, religion, culture, nationality, gender, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, sexual orientation, age, disability, or marital status

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