Head of Implementation

Department: Commercial

Employment Type: Permanent

Location: London

Reporting To: Harry Appleton

Description

The Role We're looking for a Head of Implementation to lead the team connecting our commercial ambitions with successful partner launches and ongoing partner support.

You'll own YouLend's implementation function across technical and product presales, new partner implementations, expansions, and support for existing partners. You'll lead a growing team of four Solutions Engineers and Solutions Consultants across the UK, Europe, and the US, bringing together technical judgement, delivery discipline, and strong partner relationships. A big part of the role is working directly with senior leaders at global tier 1 partners. You'll be the technical counterpart to their CPOs, and other technical, product and revenue leaders, shaping how YouLend fits into their products and making sure launches deliver what was agreed.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You'll develop the team and improve how we operate, while staying close to strategic opportunities, complex solution decisions, and delivery challenges. You should be equally comfortable discussing an integration with a partner's engineering team, agreeing priorities with internal leaders, and coaching a colleague through a difficult stakeholder conversation. Working across our UK, European, and US business, you'll help partners choose the right route to launch and build a function that can support increasing scale and complexity.

Key Responsibilities

What you'll do:

• Lead and develop the implementation team.
• Set expectations, coach team members, and build the skills and capacity needed to support our partner pipeline and existing relationships.
• Own implementation delivery.
• Oversee new partner launches and expansions, ensuring scope, ownership, dependencies, and decisions are defined from discovery through go-live and handover.
• Lead technical and product presales.
• Work with Commercial to understand partner needs, shape credible propositions, and establish a practical route from opportunity to delivery.
• Be the senior technical counterpart for tier 1 partners.
• Build trusted relationships with CPOs, CCOs, and other revenue leaders, align on product direction and launch plans, and keep their confidence through complex integrations.
• Guide solution design.
• Help partners and internal teams choose appropriate approaches across referral, hybrid, embedded components, and fully embedded integrations, balancing speed to launch with longer-term objectives.
• Manage priorities and capacity. Maintain a single view of upcoming demand, active implementations, and partner support needs, making resource decisions and communicating trade-offs early.
• Own complex escalations.
• Bring together technical, commercial, and operational context to resolve issues, maintain partner confidence, and keep work moving.
• Strengthen cross-functional delivery.
• Work closely with Commercial, Product, Engineering, Operations, and Risk to resolve dependencies and make sure proposed solutions can be delivered and supported.
• Improve how we work.
• Develop repeatable implementation patterns, documentation, tooling, and handovers that improve consistency and reduce time to launch. Represent partner needs internally.
• Turn recurring requirements and delivery challenges into concrete input for product priorities and improvements to our integration offering.
• Make performance visible.
• Establish useful measures of delivery progress, launch readiness, capacity, and partner experience, using them to identify where change is needed.

Skills, Knowledge & Expertise

What you'll bring:

• Experience leading an implementation, solutions engineering, professional services, or technical delivery function in a business with complex partner or customer integrations.
• A strong background in software implementation and systems integration, with the technical judgement to challenge assumptions, assess feasibility, and guide solution design.
• A practical understanding of APIs, webhooks, authentication, data flows, and embedded customer journeys.
• A track record of delivering partner or customer implementations involving multiple internal and external teams.
• Experience supporting technical presales and helping commercial teams develop proposals with well-defined scope and realistic delivery expectations.
• Strong people leadership skills, including coaching, performance management, and developing a team with complementary technical and delivery strengths.
• Confidence managing competing priorities, allocating capacity, and making decisions with incomplete information.
• Strong communication with engineers, product teams, and commercial leaders, and credibility with C-level and revenue leaders at tier 1 partners.
• A structured approach to delivery, with strong accountability, timely escalation, and practical options when plans need to change.
• A partner-focused, commercially aware mindset and a willingness to get involved directly where your experience will make a difference.
• You may be an especially good fit if you Have worked in fintech, payments, embedded finance, lending, or banking.
• Have supported a business that distributes its products through platforms, marketplaces, payment providers, or other partners.
• Have led teams working across countries or time zones.
• Have helped a growing function scale through better processes, clearer ownership, and reusable solutions.
• Have experience supporting both straightforward launches and complex, strategically important integrations. Enjoy combining team leadership with technical problem-solving and building trusted relationships across a business.

Job Benefits

Why join YouLend?

• Award-Winning Workplace: YouLend has been recognised as one of the "Best Places to Work in 2024, 2025 and 2026" by the Sunday Times for being a supportive, diverse, and rewarding workplace.
• Award-Winning Fintech: YouLend has been recognised as a "Top 250 Fintech Worldwide" company by CNBC

It's just getting fun:

• We have developed powerful solutions, won some significant partnerships, and are growing at a rapid pace.
• But the global opportunity is still massive, and YouLend is a raw organisation where we are only just getting started.

Lots of upsides:

• High-growth (>100% growth during 2022 and 2023), so clear outlook to compensation (bonus or share option appreciation) and career growth (through growth with business).
• Well-capitalised with supportive private equity backing.
• Part of Banking Circle Group with a fully licensed Luxembourg bank, which can provide a balance sheet and support European expansion in otherwise complex regulated markets.

Motivating work environment:

• A high-quality team that pushes each other to succeed through direct feedback and aligned incentives.
• Strong and transparent team culture, we have each other's backs.
• Independent work environment where results matter.
• Data-driven culture and emphasis on speed (anti-red tape).

We offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes:

• Private Medical insurance via Vitality and Dental Insurance with BUPA
• EAP with Health Assured
• Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Leave
• Modern and sophisticated office space in Central London
• Free Gym in office building in Holborn
• Subsidised Lunch via Feedr
• Deliveroo Allowance if working late in office
• Monthly in office Masseuse
• Team and Company Socials
• Football Power League / Paddle and Yoga Club