Continuous Improvement Manager
$31,200,000–$41,600,000 year
On-siteRainham Greater London, England, United Kingdom
Job Summary
Drive the continuous improvement roadmap across intake, refurbishment, dispatch, and returns by mapping value streams, identifying bottlenecks, and running kaizen workshops with mechanics and team leads. Define and track operational KPIs including cycle time, throughput, and first-time-right rates while rolling out standard work, 5S, and visual management across the warehouse and refurb workshop. Spend significant time on the floor observing, coaching, and validating improvements, while leading capacity planning for workstation design and station balancing. Partner with last-mile providers to reduce failed deliveries and returns leakage, and build the data backbone using Excel, WMS, and BI tools to manage operations by fact. Work full-time in Rainham, London, supporting a B Corp Certified company scaling a circular operation across Europe.
Required Qualifications
- A genuine gemba mindset — you'd rather be on the warehouse floor than behind a desk
- Structured, analytical problem-solving — you can break a messy operational problem down and use data (Excel at minimum) to point at the answer
- Strong communication and collaboration skills — comfortable working with mechanics and operators just as easily as with senior stakeholders
- Pragmatic, organised, and biased to action — you thrive in a fast-moving scale-up where things change weekly
- A relevant degree (industrial engineering, logistics, supply chain, business engineering, or similar)
- Some real exposure to operations — through internships, working student roles, a first full-time job, a thesis project, or a few years of hands-on experience
- Fluent English (working language)
Desired Qualifications
- Real curiosity about lean / continuous improvement — bonus points for a Lean Six Sigma certification (Yellow, Green, or Black Belt) or demonstrated kaizen / value stream experience
- Confidence with operational systems (WMS, ERP, Salesforce, ticketing tools); SQL or BI tooling is a plus, not a requirement
- German is a strong plus
- Bonus: interest or experience in circular economy, refurbishment, subscription business models, or sustainable mobility
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