Chief of Staff

Contract type: Permanent

Location: Hatfield (Hybrid working – 3 days in the office)

Working hours per week: 40 hours

Level: Senior/Lead

Application closing date: 13th June 2025

About Us

Our mission is to deliver joy in every shop, through unbeatable choice, unrivaled service, and reassuringly good value.

We’re Ocado Retail, a market-leading, joint venture between Ocado Group and M&S and the world’s largest dedicated online supermarket ocado.com. Not only is Ocado.com the only place to shop a full range of M&S food online, but it’s also the home to the widest online supermarket range in the UK and champion of small, independent brands. We’re also the brains behind Zoom by Ocado, our same-day grocery delivery service.

About The Team And The Role

Join us as Chief of Staff, working directly for the CEO, where you'll collaborate closely with our CEO and executive team, helping to define strategy, foster culture, and improve how we operate from high-level thinking to daily execution.

Your aim is to help define, clarify and communicate the company’s strategic direction; support the team to build a great culture across the business and with our partners; and assist the CEO on many day to day tasks from Board and governance preparation, external and internal comms and anything and everything else in between! You will be someone who is capable of high level thinking as well as happy to get their sleeves rolled up and get stuck in. You will be a great communicator and comfortable in debating and challenging the CEO and broader leadership team.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the formation of the business strategy alongside the CEO, create the strategic narrative, and support the leadership team in cascading this throughout the organisation
• Prepare the CEO’s regular updates to the Ocado Retail, Ocado Group and M&S Boards on trading performance, progress against key objectives, and future plans
• Design the annual Board strategy day to ensure the Ocado Retail Board have a clear view of the state of the market and the business’ strategic direction;
• Oversee updates to the business’ five-year plan, in close collaboration with Finance
• Prepare briefings, scripts and presentation materials for the Executive team’s engagements with equity analysts and the media (e.g. results announcements), suppliers (e.g. conferences), and colleagues (e.g. town halls, huddles)
• Facilitate corporate governance and orchestrate objective-setting process for the business
• Design agendas and facilitate forums and offsites for the executive team and senior leadership to aid prioritising, problem-solving and decision-making
• Act as a sounding board for members of the executive team (e.g. CEO, CFO)
• Work with the EA to the CEO and CFO to ensure meetings and events are scheduled in line with the annual cadence and are run as effectively as possible
• Provide ad-hoc strategic support, problem solving, analysis and being a general sounding board for the CEO and leadership team.
  
  

Who You Are

• Experienced in strategy and/or commercial roles within a retailer, technology company or management consultancy
• Proven track record of managing multiple stakeholders, influencing and working collaboratively across a number of functions
• Experience holding leadership positions, including project leadership
• Good understanding of retail, operational performance metrics and financial accounts
• Experience working in or with fast-growing / scaling businesses is desirable
  
  

Key Skills:

• You apply a structured approach to strategic problems and can switch between the big picture and the detail
• You have excellent written and verbal communication skills and bring energy to every room you enter
• You have experience with commercial modelling and business case development and are comfortable working with financial metrics
• You are comfortable analysing and synthesising data and insights to tell a story in a concise and understandable way
• You build trusting relationships with a wide range of stakeholders and are comfortable working with and influencing senior leaders, developing strong alignment and partnerships
• You can quickly form high-performing working groups from across the organisation, setting a clear vision and energising the team to deliver
• You are highly organised and structured, but comfortable with ambiguity and pace, and always take the initiative and get stuck in
• You are able to run multiple projects simultaneously, creating clear and realistic plans and adapting to business priorities
• Most importantly, you demonstrate our core values:
• Always be Curious: ask why and keep on learning
• Bring our Best Selves: take ownership and deliver together
• Challenge What’s Possible: raise the bar and never give up
  
  

What’s In It For You

By joining Ocado Retail you’ll have the chance to experience life at the world’s largest online retailer, work with an amazing bunch of people who challenge what’s possible each day, and grow your skills and career in online retail.

If that’s not enough to tempt you, you’ll also get access to loads of great benefits to sweeten the deal. Here’s a taste of what we offer:

Health & Wellbeing: Private medical insurance with the option to add your family, Digital GP appointments, market-leading family policies, mental health support, discounted gym memberships, dental insurance, and more.

Spend & Save: Annual bonus scheme split between personal and business objectives, recognition with reward platform, up to 7% matched pension contributions, 15% Ocado discount, 20% M&S discount, free breakfast every day in the office, electric vehicle leasing scheme and free shuttle bus from Hatfield station to the office.

Never miss the moments that matter: Blended/Hybrid working, 26 days holiday plus 8 flexible bank holidays, options to buy an extra holiday, 2 weeks work from anywhere, and lifestyle break opportunities.

Our Hiring Process

Lucky for us, we get loads of great applications and we really appreciate that so many people put the time and effort in to apply. To recognise that, we treat all applications respectfully and fairly. So, if yours stands out, you’ll follow our standard hiring process – one of our Talent Partners will talk you through this in an initial call.

Everyone’s welcome

We’re an equal opportunities employer. That means that we make sure all potential colleagues are treated fairly and equally. If you require reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know on the application form.

Our mission is to deliver joy in every shop, through unbeatable choice, unrivaled service, and reassuringly good value. We're Ocado Retail, a market-leading, joint venture between Ocado Group and M&S and the world's largest dedicated online supermarket ocado.com. Not only is Ocado.com the only place to shop a full range of M&S food online, but it's also the home to the widest online supermarket range in the UK and champion of small, independent brands. We're also the brains behind Zoom by Ocado, our same-day grocery delivery service.