Associate Partner (Project Management) – London (Client-Side/Consultancy)

CreateFuture

Working at CreateFuture CreateFuture is an AI-native consulting partner where people do work that matters and are supported to do it well. We work alongside organisations such as PayPal, adidas, NatWest, FanDuel and Money Saving Expert, building digital products and services that make a difference  while always putting people first. We’re a team of creators. We write code, shape delivery, build go-to-market strategies, develop AI solutions and create the practices that support our people. We work side by side with our clients, challenging what’s not working and helping them to build the future. Our commitment to craft, quality, and culture has helped us scale to over 600 people in just a few years. Our UK Benefits  * 35 days leave (including bank holidays).  * Private medical insurance. * Enhanced parental and adoption leave.  * Financial coaching + 5% pension match. * 40 hours of paid learning and development.  View our full list of UK benefits.  CreateFuture is a Great Place to Work-Certified™ company and has won Best Workplaces UK multiple years in a row. Join us on our journey. Let’s create tomorrow, together, today.   About the role and team: At CreateFuture, our Lead Engineer - Cloud plays a pivotal role in supporting the success of our Cloud engineers, our clients, and internal projects. Working closely with clients, you are responsible for the successful delivery of client and internal projects by building professional relationships with key client stakeholders, challenging where appropriate. Use your technical expertise to provide best practice advice and processes within your project team and the wider capability. As our client demands expand from traditional cloud migrations to AI enablement and platform engineering, you will lead the charge in building autonomous platforms, managing AI lifecycles, and enforcing strict cost governance across cloud estates. You are seen as a leader internally and externally, through your technical expertise, guidance, and professionalism, both on and off a client. Alongside delivering for your customers, you will also support and mentor a team of cloud engineers to encourage their growth. You will be setting the technical direction of the team alongside Cloud Leads and Senior Engineers. Key responsibilities: CONSULTANCY & ADVISORY * Growth Mindset: Apply a growth mindset to identify new revenue opportunities on client accounts, working alongside the commercial team to successfully land additional work. * Pre-Sales Contribution: Lead and contribute to pre-sales activities, RFPs, and BIDs, accounting for up to 5% to 10% of the role. Engage with the commercial team to drive high-value Cloud and Data advisory roles. * Ambassadorial Presence: Act as an ambassador for CreateFuture in the public space, attending events, speaking, blogging, or leveraging social media to support the growth of the Cloud capability. * Hands-on: you are an experienced engineer and can be active with the cloud platform tools, software development and writing efficient code for clients.   TECHNICAL LEADERSHIP & PLATFORM SUPPORT * Technical Direction: Take responsibility for the technical direction and delivery of single or multiple client and internal project teams, acting as either a technical lead or a solo contributor. * AI-Native Infrastructure: Architect and implement the core engineering infrastructure required to run AI workloads reliably, moving client architectures from static data lakes to dynamic Vector Databases and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures. * Agentic Development: Build production-grade Agentic Workflows and custom AI agents, utilising advanced toolsets to bridge the widening market implementation gap. * Setting Development Best Practices: Define, promote, and establish best practice tools, security approaches, and common service patterns across the entire CreateFuture organisation. Ensure Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the organisational default and challenge inefficient legacy processes. * FinOps & Governance: Enforce strict automated security and cost controls, real-time cost-anomaly detection, and cost estimation into the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) as a standard. Understanding of OpenTelemetry or other telemetry approaches. * Internal Platform Support: Assist the Capability Lead and architects in defining and delivering an internal collection of reusable components, reference architectures, and Proof of Concepts (PoCs). Supporting the internal IT function in helping other parts of the business use Cloud services. LEADING & MENTORING * Culture & Collaboration: Lead by example, creating a culture of open, honest feedback, collaboration, ownership, and accountability. * People Development: Create a psychologically safe environment for the team that enables them to grow by supporting their development journeys and career aspirations. * Capability Growth: Work alongside the Capability Lead and Director of Cloud and Data to identify missing or inconsistent skills within the department, supporting team members through tiered certification journeys. * Recruitment: Collaborate with Talent Acquisition through the recruitment process, including conducting interviews, candidate debriefs, and strategic decision-making to attract top talent. Skills & Experience CORE TECHNICAL CAPABILITIES Candidates must demonstrate a hybrid skillset, balancing Software Engineering (30%), Platform/SRE (40%), and Data Engineering (30%), with a core focus on Security, Governance, and Cost Management. * Cloud & Infrastructure (40%): Advanced Infrastructure as Code (IaC) via Terraform, advanced Kubernetes administration (clusters, nodes, pods), hardcore networking (VPC peering, Service Mesh, Zero Trust security), and solution architecture experience, with a cost-optimisation mindset. * Software Engineering, Agentic & AI Development (30%): Solid software engineer principles (pipelines, toolsets, testing, linting, vulnerability scanning, etc.) Production-level experience with tools such as Amazon Bedrock, AWS AgentCore, Azure AI Studio, LangChain, and writing automation scripts or custom AI agents using node or python. * Data Engineering (30%): Experience deploying and maintaining data orchestration toolsets (e.g., dbt, Apache Airflow), ETL/ELT methodologies, real-time streaming (e.g., AWS Kinesis, Apache Kafka), Vector databases, and RAG architectures. * Observability & FinOps: Experience implementing modern observability tooling (OpenTelemetry) alongside automated cost-control systems (such as Karpenter, Infracost, OpenCost, or Cloud Custodian). DOMAIN & SECTOR EXPERIENCE * Regulated Industries: Experience working in highly regulated sectors such as Financial Services or iGaming is helpful, demonstrating an understanding of strict compliance, data privacy risks, and governance guardrails. * Consulting: Proven background in a client-facing consulting capacity, managing stakeholders, handling commercial realities, and meeting strict SLAs, timescales, and budgets. PREFERRED KNOWLEDGE-LEVEL & CERTIFICATIONS * Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA). * Multiple professional-level certifications (AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional or Azure Architect AZ-305.) * Beneficial for AWS GenAI Developer Professional, AWS ML Engineer Associate, or Azure AI Engineer Associate. * FinOps Certified Practitioner (FOCP). WHAT WE’LL OFFER YOU: We trust people to do their best work. That means flexibility over rigid rules, impact over activity, and real investment in your growth both professionally and personally. You’ll be part of a supportive, and friendly culture, surrounded by smart, curious people who care deeply about what they do. We offer flexible working, including hybrid and remote options. Our office hubs are located in Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, London and Bulgaria, with occasional travel to client sites or CreateFuture offices when needed. We trust you to manage your time balancing collaboration with client time and focused work. What matters is the impact you have, not how busy you look. OUR HIRING PROCESS We try to keep our hiring process clear, fair and respectful of your time. We aim to get back to everyone who applies and we will be upfront about where you are in the process. It usually looks like this: * Call with our Talent Acquisition Team  * Role specific capability interview  Depending on the role, we might also ask you to do a short presentation, a practical or technical task or have a values focused conversation. We will explain what is involved before anything happens. INCLUSION AT CREATEFUTURE  We believe diverse teams build better workplaces and better products. We want CreateFuture to be a place where people feel able to be themselves and do their best work. If you need any adjustments or support during the application process, just. We will do what we can to help. We look forward to your application!

CreateFuture

Working at CreateFuture CreateFuture is an AI-native consulting partner where people do work that matters and are supported to do it well. We work alongside organisations such as PayPal, adidas, NatWest, FanDuel and Money Saving Expert, building digital products and services that make a difference  while always putting people first. We’re a team of creators. We write code, shape delivery, build go-to-market strategies, develop AI solutions and create the practices that support our people. We work side by side with our clients, challenging what’s not working and helping them to build the future. Our commitment to craft, quality, and culture has helped us scale to over 600 people in just a few years. Our UK Benefits  * 35 days leave (including bank holidays).  * Private medical insurance. * Enhanced parental and adoption leave.  * Financial coaching + 5% pension match. * 40 hours of paid learning and development.  View our full list of UK benefits.  CreateFuture is a Great Place to Work-Certified™ company and has won Best Workplaces UK multiple years in a row. Join us on our journey. Let’s create tomorrow, together, today. At CreateFuture, the Senior Cloud Engineer is a vital individual contributor and a technical driving force within our delivery teams. You will work closely with clients and delivery teams to bridge the implementation gap, assisting with architectural designs and transforming them into production systems using autonomous and AI-native platforms. This role requires a modern, hybrid engineering approach, blending infrastructure mastery with software development and data engineering principles. You will act as a technical expert on projects, building trusted relationships with client stakeholders, establishing engineering best practices, and mentoring engineers within the Cloud capability. Furthermore, you will actively contribute to setting engineering standards that influence the whole CreateFuture organisation. Key Responsibilities TECHNICAL DELIVERY & IMPLEMENTATION * High-Quality Execution: Proactively contribute to project teams by providing technical guidance, resolving complex technical blockages, supporting migration efforts and writing high-quality, spec-driven code. * Platform Engineering: Build and maintain independent, self-service developer platforms that allow engineering teams to spin up compliant, ephemeral environments automatically using GitOps workflows. * AI & Agentic Infrastructure: Implement the data pipelines, workflow orchestrations, and specialised compute footprints needed to support enterprise AI applications, using technologies like AWS Bedrock and AWS AgentCore. * Observability & Reliability: Build robust monitoring and observability pipelines to ensure the health, performance, and security of distributed cloud applications and AI models. * FinOps Standards: Embed automated cost-estimation tools into the standard CI/CD deployment pipelines, ensuring auto-shutdown policies and resource optimisation are configured by default. CONSULTANCY & CLIENT ALIGNMENT * Client Advisory: Collaborate with diverse stakeholders, including tech leads, project managers, and enterprise architects, to ensure successful project delivery according to timelines and budgets. * Commercial Growth: Have a growth mindset on projects, recognising potential operational bottlenecks or new requirements, and own communicating these throughout the team for new opportunities. * Best Practice Champion: Establish best practice tools and processes within client environments, confidently challenging legacy ways of working where appropriate. CAPABILITY & LEADERSHIP SUPPORT * Mentoring: Support and mentor engineers within CreateFuture and our client teams, helping them navigate their learning and technical skill gaps. * Community Contribution: Actively engage in the internal engineering communities, helping to build out an internal repository of reference architectures, Infrastructure as Code templates, and technical blogs. * Culture and Feedback: Help foster an inclusive, collaborative, and psychologically safe team environment by providing timely, open, and honest technical feedback. Skills & Experience * CORE TECHNICAL CAPABILITIES Candidates must demonstrate a hybrid balance across the three strategic pillars: Software Engineering (30%), Infrastructure (40%), and Data Engineering (30%). * Infrastructure & Automation (40%): Lots of experience in writing declarative Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, container orchestration with Kubernetes (managing clusters, nodes, and pods), and building CI/CD pipelines via GitHub Actions. * Software & Agentic Engineering (30%): Proficiency with modern scripting languages for building custom AI agents, configuring workflow orchestration, connecting enterprise API integrations, and implementing agentic guardrails. * Data Engineering (30%): Practical experience implementing components of data pipelines, including real-time streaming tools (AWS Kinesis, Kafka), data orchestration (dbt, Airflow), and managing Vector Databases for RAG architectures. * Observability & Cost Management: SRE/Platform experience with the practical application of real-time monitoring and cloud cost optimisation using native CSP tools or utilities like Infracost and Karpenter. DOMAIN & SECTOR EXPERIENCE * Regulated Industries: Experience delivering secure platforms within highly regulated environments, such as iGaming, Financial Services, or banking, where Zero Trust security and strict compliance controls are mandatory, is highly advantageous. * Consulting: Proven experience operating in a client-facing or consulting engineering role, demonstrating strong communication skills, relationship-building capabilities, and adaptability across changing technical contexts. PREFERRED KNOWLEDGE-LEVEL & CERTIFICATIONS * Associate-level cloud certifications (e.g., AWS Solutions Architect Associate or Azure AZ-104). * At least 1 professional-level certification. * Progressing toward or holding multiple professional certifications such as CKA (Certified Kubernetes Administrator), AWS ML Engineer Associate, or FinOps Certified Practitioner. WHAT WE’LL OFFER YOU: We trust people to do their best work. That means flexibility over rigid rules, impact over activity, and real investment in your growth both professionally and personally. You’ll be part of a supportive, and friendly culture, surrounded by smart, curious people who care deeply about what they do. We offer flexible working, including hybrid and remote options. Our office hubs are located in Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, London and Bulgaria, with occasional travel to client sites or CreateFuture offices when needed. We trust you to manage your time balancing collaboration with client time and focused work. What matters is the impact you have, not how busy you look. OUR HIRING PROCESS We try to keep our hiring process clear, fair and respectful of your time. We aim to get back to everyone who applies and we will be upfront about where you are in the process. It usually looks like this: * Call with our Talent Acquisition Team  * Role specific capability interview  Depending on the role, we might also ask you to do a short presentation, a practical or technical task or have a values focused conversation. We will explain what is involved before anything happens. INCLUSION AT CREATEFUTURE  We believe diverse teams build better workplaces and better products. We want CreateFuture to be a place where people feel able to be themselves and do their best work. If you need any adjustments or support during the application process, just. We will do what we can to help. We look forward to your application!

Relay

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 (whose portfolio spans fusion energy and space exploration), Relay is scaling faster than 99.98% 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 • ~110 people, more than 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 Work Alongside Industry Leaders Karthik Harith - VP Operations Karthik is an operator and GM with a track record scaling multi-channel retail and operations across the UK, Germany, and France. Prior to Relay, he operated at VP/General Manager across multiple markets and brands (Getir, Gorillas, and Frichti). He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering (Brown) and an MBA in Finance (HEC Paris). At Relay, Karthik leads Operations, bringing rigorous execution and scaling experience to solve hard, real-world logistics problems end-to-end. Relay’s Mission Relay exists 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 Opportunity Relay's network runs on forecasts. Every day, models predict how many parcels will arrive, which ones to sort tonight, how many shifts to release, and how many bags each route needs. The Network squad owns those forecasts and the operational processes that turn them into action. When teams plan to the right number, the network runs efficiently. When they over-plan, capacity goes to waste; when they under-plan, cost surges and operational performance suffers. At a high level, the outcome you will drive is excellent day-to-day forecast guidance -ensuring teams across the network plan to the right number every day. This is one of the most powerful cost levers in the business. As Senior Operations Associate, you will own the day-to-day operational processes that drive this outcome. You will be the squad's operational backbone: the person who keeps the network on track, steps in when things break, and coordinates the right teams when the operation is under stress. This is fundamentally an operational role - high-context, high-ownership, and central to how the network runs every day. Alongside the day-to-day execution, you will have the opportunity to keep critical projects moving forward across the squad. As a Senior Operations Associate, Network at Relay at Relay, you'll: * Own the quality of day-to-day forecast guidance. Co-build and operate the systems that decide how much volume flows through our network every day, ensuring teams plan to the right number - neither over- nor under-planning. Continually improve these systems, partner with other Operations teams to resolve issues, and maintain a clear specification for Data and Engineering to automate further as resources become available. * Plan the business through scheduled operational moments. When demand is going to deviate from the norm - busy shopping periods, holidays, planned promotions - you will develop the operational plan and make sure all relevant teams are prepared, aligned, and acting on the same source of truth. * Lead the response to unplanned incidents. When something disrupts the network - adverse weather, supply-side shocks, or unexpected client behaviour - you will step in to own the recovery and run the retro process to ensure follow-ups are actioned. * Work shoulder-to-shoulder with the data team. When forecasts look off or operations flag a problem, you will dig into the numbers, interrogate the models, and help the Data Scientists and Analysts pinpoint where the models are creating real-world friction. You will not be building the models - but you will be a trusted partner in pressure-testing them. * Help keep the squad's programme of work on track - beginning with coordination and follow-up, and growing into a role that guides what the squad prioritises as you build context and credibility. Who Will Thrive in this role? * Resilience and high ownership. You enjoy being at the centre of how the network runs each day. The work spans daily execution and complex, ambiguous problem-solving, and you take real pride in owning the outcome of both - including stepping in when other teams or processes need support. * Project literacy. You have run projects or worked closely with Programme Managers in prior roles. You're comfortable absorbing the administrative scaffolding of a programme without requiring a senior PM to direct you. * A bias for action. You would rather get something working today than design the perfect solution for next quarter. You know when to escalate and when to just fix it. * Strong written communication. At Relay, a well-structured doc or one-pager is often how you get things done - it's how you align people, define problems, and create momentum without a meeting. * 3–5 years of experience in operations, programme management, consulting, or a similar function - ideally somewhere fast-moving where the playbook was being written in real time. * Data literacy. Comfortable with SQL and able to query data independently to investigate operational issues. You can articulate the data and insight you need with sufficient clarity that an AI agent or analyst can act on it. You don't need to be building dashboards yourself - but you should be capable of pulling your own numbers when you need to. The qualifications and experiences above act as a loose guide to what we're looking for. We'd still love to hear from you if you have more or less experience, so long as the core skills can be demonstrated. Fast and Focused Hiring Process 1. Talent Acquisition Interview - 30 min 2. Hiring Manager Interview - 45min 3. Case Exercise - 90min 4. Final Interview w/ VP Operations - 30min 5. Decision and offer within 48 hours, our process mirrors our pace of work, typically completed in a week. 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.