Business Systems & AI Operations Lead

Department: Head office

Glassworks London is an independent women's fashion retailer founded in 2010, operating across retail stores, ecommerce, sourcing, product, marketing and fulfilment. We are building a more scalable, systems-led organisation with clearer ownership, better operating visibility and stronger use of AI-assisted workflows.

THE ROLE

We are looking for a highly structured Business Systems & AI Operations Lead to turn repeated work, founder-held knowledge, unclear processes and manual workflows into usable operating systems.

This is not a generic admin, IT support or prompt-writing role. We need someone who can understand messy business problems, extract the logic, build practical workflows, create trackers and dashboards, support AI-assisted processes, and help teams actually use the systems.

The immediate need is to reduce founder dependency by moving important workflows - including recruitment, candidate review, operating standards, meeting follow-up, retail training, ecommerce issue tracking, file management and reporting - into controlled, repeatable systems.

WORKING PATTERN / LOCATION

Full-time remote role. Applicants may be based outside the UK, including India, South Africa or Eastern Europe, but must provide reliable overlap with UK working hours.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Turn repeated founder-led workflows into clear, usable operating systems.
• Help convert AI-assisted processes into workflows that managers and team members can actually use.
• Build and maintain trackers, dashboards, templates, forms, SOPs and source-of-truth documents.
• Support recruitment workflows, candidate ledgers, screening processes, interview packs and assessment evidence.
• Create workflows that turn meetings, transcripts, notes and decisions into actions, owners, deadlines and evidence.
• Map business processes, handoffs, decision points, blockers and failure points.
• Improve file management, document control, naming, access and source-of-truth discipline.
• Support light business systems administration, access management and IT issue tracking.
• Help teams use approved AI tools safely and effectively without producing generic or uncontrolled output.
• Test workflows with users, identify adoption problems and improve the system.
• Create simple reporting that shows what is working, what is late, what is blocked and what needs a decision.

EXAMPLES OF WORKSTREAMS

• recruitment engines and candidate review workflows;
• retail training, quiz and release-gate trackers;
• meeting-to-action workflows;
• HR onboarding and probation tracking;
• ecommerce issue logs and trading dashboards;
• product data / stock movement trackers;
• marketing and content workflow trackers;
• AI-assisted SOP and training document workflows;
• company file and source-of-truth organisation;
• hardware, access and light IT issue tracking;
• Asana / Google Drive / Google Sheets / forms / dashboards.

WHAT THIS ROLE DOES NOT OWN

This role does not independently own:

• final hiring decisions;
• HR/legal decisions;
• brand or creative direction;
• ecommerce trading strategy;
• product buying decisions;
• final people-management decisions;
• major software purchases without approval;
• uncontrolled AI, automation or code changes;
• confidential founder strategy without permission.

The role builds and improves the operating infrastructure. Business owners remain accountable for business judgement and final decisions.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• Evidence of turning unclear work into usable systems.
• Strong structured thinking and practical business judgement.
• Confidence with AI tools, spreadsheets, databases, forms, dashboards and workflow tools.
• Ability to extract knowledge from founders, managers and subject-matter experts.
• Ability to simplify messy processes without over-engineering.
• Strong written communication in a remote environment.
• Good judgement around confidentiality, access, permissions and approval.
• A tool-agnostic approach: you choose the simplest useful system, not the fanciest tool.
• Focus on adoption, not just system design.
• Comfort working across retail, ecommerce, HR, recruitment, marketing, operations and product workflows.

WHAT GOOD LOOKS LIKE

• Founder-held workflows become usable by other people.
• Repeated processes have clear owners, steps, evidence and review rhythms.
• Recruitment, HR, retail, ecommerce and marketing workflows become easier to operate.
• AI outputs become more structured, useful and reviewable.
• Managers know where to find the latest documents, trackers and actions.
• Meetings turn into actions without repeated founder chasing.
• Dashboards show exceptions, blockers and overdue work.
• Systems are actually adopted by users, not just built and abandoned.
• The company becomes less dependent on one person remembering everything.