Senior Onboarding Manager

About Kennek

The UK bridging lending market writes over £13bn in loans every year - capital that moves when traditional finance won't. Behind each loan is a developer getting a site off the ground, a business bridging a cashflow gap, a family unchaining a purchase. When that capital flows, economic activity happens. When it stalls, it doesn't.

Most bridge lenders are still running their loan books on spreadsheets and legacy software. That limits how much they can lend - without clean data, they can't access institutional funding lines or scale past the point where operational complexity takes over. Kennek removes that ceiling. We handle the full loan lifecycle so lenders can focus on deploying capital, not managing chaos.

We ship multiple times a day. The work you do is in front of customers the same day. We're early, well-funded, and there's no committee between a good idea and production.

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 cover including dental & optical cashback, no excess.
• NEST Pension.
• Work from abroad (up to 3 weeks a year).
• Nursery salary sacrifice scheme - tax & NI savings on nursery fees.
• Cycle to work scheme.
• Monthly Thursday socials.