Senior Onboarding Manager

## About the Role This is a senior, hands-on position responsible for taking new bridge lender clients from signed contract to confident, self-sufficient users of the Kennek platform. You'll be on-site with clients regularly, getting under the skin of their operations and translating that into a smooth, well-structured implementation. UK bridge lending is unregulated, highly bespoke and intensely relationship-driven. Our clients are specialist property lenders - typically lean teams of 3 to 50 people, running loan books from as little as c.£10m up to several hundred million. Some are established names replacing spreadsheets or legacy systems; others are brand-new lenders going live on Kennek from day one. Either way, an implementation is never a single-threaded handover: you'll be working across founders, credit and underwriting, operations and servicing, and finance - each with a different stake in getting live, and each operating their own way. There is no established onboarding playbook to follow - you'll be expected to build one. The right person brings a clear methodology from a previous SaaS implementation role, the commercial awareness to earn trust with experienced lenders, and the judgment to know when to move fast and when to slow down. ## What You'll Do - Client onboarding & implementation - Own end-to-end onboarding for new bridge lender clients: discovery, configuration, testing, training, and go-live. - Spend significant time on-site with clients, mapping their loan workflows and ensuring Kennek is configured to reflect how they actually operate. - Manage multiple concurrent onboarding projects, keeping stakeholders aligned and timelines on track. - Act as the primary point of contact for clients during the implementation phase, escalating technical blockers to the product and engineering teams as needed. - Train the trainers: establish power users at each customer who can assist in the transition from excel. - Process & playbook ownership - Design and document a repeatable onboarding methodology from the ground up - discovery templates, configuration checklists, training materials, and go-live criteria. - Identify patterns across clients and feed insights back to product to shape the roadmap. - Build out FAQs, help centre articles, product tours and any other tools that help improve the onboarding experience. - Define success metrics for onboarding (time-to-live, adoption rates, support ticket volume) and report against them. - Cross-functional collaboration - Work closely with Sales to ensure smooth handoffs and set realistic expectations pre-contract. - Partner with product and engineering to triage client feedback and influence prioritisation. - Contribute to early-stage CS function building as Kennek scales. ## What We're Looking For ### Essential - 10+ years in a customer-facing SaaS implementation, onboarding, or professional services role. - Experience in financial services - ideally lending, bridging finance, or mortgage technology. You understand how a loan book works and can hold a credible conversation with an experienced credit professional. - Proven track record of owning complex, multi-stakeholder software implementations end-to-end. - Strong project management instincts: you're comfortable managing timelines, risks, and dependencies without being told to. - Willingness to travel regularly to client sites across the UK - this is not a desk-based role. - A builder's mentality: you're energised by creating structure where little exists, not frustrated by it. ### Desirable - Direct experience with bridge or short-term lending - either at a lender, a broker, or a technology provider serving this market. - Familiarity with loan management systems or fintech infrastructure platforms. - Experience at an early-stage B2B SaaS company (Seed to Series B). - Comfort with data and light technical configuration (you don't need to code, but you shouldn't be intimidated by system settings). ## What Great Looks Like - In the first 90 days, you'll have onboarded at least three clients, built a first draft of the onboarding playbook, and developed a strong enough understanding of the bridge lending world to run discovery calls independently. - Within six months, you'll have reduced average time-to-live, built trusted relationships with your clients, and become the internal voice of the customer on all things implementation. ## Why Kennek - Own a function. You're not joining a 50-person CS team to run ticket queues. You'll shape how Kennek delivers for clients. - Proximity to the product. We're small enough that your field insights directly influence what gets built. - A market with real complexity. Bridge lending is niche, fast-moving, and relationship-driven - the clients are smart and the problems are interesting. ## What We Offer ### Compensation & equity - Competitive salary benchmarked to market rate. - EMI Share Options - tax advantaged equity in the company. ### Benefits - 25 days holiday + bank holidays. - Additional day off for your birthday. - Long-service additional holidays: +1 day at 2 years, +2 days at 3 years, +3 days at 4 years. - AXA Private Health Insurance - comprehensive