Department: Delivery

Location: Home based, UK (with occasional travel to our London office)

Reports to: Senior Apprenticeships Director

Hours: 37.5 per week

Salary: Depending on experience

Role overview

The Operations Performance Manager is the "Engine Room" leader for our Apprenticeship division. The role is responsible for the operational infrastructure, backend workflows and system efficiencies that make the apprentice learner journey possible. This role ensures high performance and gold standard customer service through rigorous KPI management and the BAU adoption of AI tools.

Key responsibilities

1. Backend performance and KPI management

Operational accountability: Ensure the operational backend (Admissions, Coordination, and Assessment) meets all daily and weekly KPIs.
Backend service standards: Oversee the "front-line of the back-office," ensuring all administrative queries from apprentices and employers are handled with speed and accuracy.

2. Workflow efficiency and scheduling

Daily leadership: Manage the workload and output of the operational pods, ensuring that high-volume tasks are processed without bottlenecks.
Complex scheduling: Oversee the backend scheduling, maximising resource utilisation.
Support infrastructure: Act as the escalation point for technical and operational support queries, ensuring the "backend" never slows down the "front-end" delivery.

3. AI-enhanced operations (BAU)

Efficiency adoption: Ensure the team is actively using AI tools to automate routine tasks (drafting comms, data processing, meeting summaries) to maintain a lean, high-output operation.
Process standardisation: Monitor backend workflows to ensure AI is integrated consistently, identifying manual "drag" and replacing it with automated solutions.
Product collaboration: Work with the EDUKATE.AI product owner to identify features for the roadmap that drive operational efficiency and customer delight.

4. Operational lifecycle management

Admissions backend: Manage the operational funnel from application to enrolment, ensuring the administrative path to starting a programme is frictionless.
EPA and compliance engine: Oversee the administrative preparation and scheduling for End Point Assessments (EPA), ensuring all regulatory requirements are met behind the scenes.
Operational retention: Manage the CSA and coordination pods to ensure all "non-coaching" support stays ahead of learner and employer needs.

Candidate specifications

Essential

The "systems" mindset: You view operations as a series of connected workflows and are dedicated to making them run faster and more accurately.
Performance-driven: You have significant experience managing backend teams (8+ people) against hard metrics and service SLAs.
AI-literate: You are a regular user of AI tools in your own work and understand how to apply technology to remove manual administrative burdens.
Backend specialist: You understand that your success is measured by how smoothly the "delivery" team can operate because of your work.

Company Benefits:

Pension with 4% matched contributions, opportunity to opt into salary sacrifice scheme
25 days holiday + Flexi bank holidays + 1 day off on your birthday
A day for volunteering
Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Leave
Health & Wellbeing allowance of up to £30 per month
Annual Summer and Xmas events
Company socials including everything from Cambridge College formals, pub nights to team building events
CPD Allowance alongside quarterly reflections to ring fence time for development and growth
Private medical insurance and cash plan
Holiday buy back scheme (up to 10 days p/a)
Employee Assistance Programme with a dedicated company counsellor

Background to our Organisation

We are an education technology company that enables corporate and government organisations to achieve their business goals by educating their workforce with critical digital transformation skills to succeed in the AI era.

We deliver unique and innovative professional education that is accelerating the digital transformation of our clients, advancing the careers of their employees, helping people get into work and closing the digital skills gap. We are in a sector that is crucial to the economy and workforce, with a lot of opportunity for change and innovation. We are at the cutting edge of teaching applied data and digital skills, with our unique patented learning platform EDUKATE.AI offering our clients and learners a unique learning experience. EDUKATE.AI was developed with support from Innovate UK and provides all of our learners with 24/7 immediate feedback on their work, helping accelerate the learning process and providing a sandbox environment to experiment on real world datasets.

Since 2016, we have supported more than 15,000 learners across four continents with nearly 550,000 pieces of code submitted for feedback on EDUKATE.AI. We are trusted by some of the most recognisable brands in the world to educate their workforce, including Microsoft, the NHS, GSK, easyJet, the BBC and John Lewis. Our focus on applied learning to create business impact sets us apart - individual learners have reported applying their skills at work to generate recorded value of up to £40m.

Our Values

At the centre of the way we work together and inspire each other to achieve success are these core values:

Entrepreneurial

We take initiative and show entrepreneurial spirit which fuels innovation at Cambridge Spark. This includes identifying opportunities for improvement, taking ownership for implementing solutions effectively and driving improvement by using proof of concepts to demonstrate the feasibility and value of their work.

Team Spirit

Everyone is part of building an open and transparent culture, communicating effectively to raise issues, discuss improvements and share the evidence used to make decisions.

Customer-focused

Our customers are at the centre of everything we do, inspiring us to create great work. We strive to build friendly, professional and lasting relationships with them to better understand and anticipate their needs.

Gold Standard

We are experts in our field and are constantly developing our technology and offering. We set the benchmark in our industry: both in what we offer customers and in how we deliver it.

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Cambridge Spark is an Equal Opportunities Employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any kind. Cambridge Spark is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunities for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions at Cambridge Spark are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, colour or ethnicity, ability or disability, gender or gender reassignment, sexual orientation, marital status, religion, age or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. Cambridge Spark will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. Cambridge Spark encourages applicants of all ages.

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Operations Performance Manager (Apprenticeships)