Senior Team Leader

Hungry for a challenge?
That's good, because at Just Eat (JET) we have abundant opportunity, or, as we say, everything is on the table. We are a leading global online food delivery marketplace. Our tech ecosystem connects millions of active customers with hundreds of thousands of connected partners in countries across the globe.

Our mission? To empower every food moment around the world, whether it's through customer service, coding or couriers.

About This Role
As the Senior Team Lead for Operations Research, you will function as a "player-coach" at the forefront of building the intelligent brain behind our global delivery network. This is a hybrid role where you will dedicate approximately 50% of your time to leading and developing a high-performing team and the other 50% to hands-on conceptual and analytical work, designing solutions for our most complex optimization challenges.

Your mission is to guide the development of a fully autonomous dispatch system that dynamically optimizes every order for speed, cost, and quality. You will be responsible for both shaping the team's strategic roadmap and making significant individual contributions to the design, prototyping, and validation of our core algorithms.

*These are some of the key ingredients to the role
Leadership & Strategy (50%)*

• Lead & Develop: Build and scale a high-performing team of Operations Research Scientists through mentorship, coaching, and performance management, fostering a strong and collaborative team culture.
• Define Strategic Roadmap: Own the team's technical roadmap, aligning it with company objectives and the broader business strategy. Proactively manage dependencies and communicate the team's direction and impact to senior stakeholders.
• Drive Business Impact: Own and enhance key logistics KPIs, making strategic trade-offs to ensure the team is focused on the most valuable work and that our products move in a data-driven direction.
• Collaborate & Influence: Partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Data Platform leads to build and deploy robust, scalable optimization services. Effectively negotiate priorities and build strong cross-functional relationships to achieve team goals.

*Hands-on Technical & Analytical Contribution (50%)*

• Model & Algorithm Design: Lead by example in designing and prototyping advanced optimization and simulation models for key logistical problems, particularly in the dispatch domain.
• Prototyping & Validation: Develop proofs-of-concept and prototypes to test hypotheses and validate new models. Clearly define and document algorithmic logic to guide the software engineering team's implementation of production-level services.
• Technical Guidance & Review: Serve as the senior technical expert within the team, guiding architectural decisions and maintaining high standards through rigorous design discussions and model reviews.
• Analysis & Experimentation: Conduct deep-dive analyses to identify opportunities for improvement. Foster a culture of experimentation and innovation, promoting best practices for model development, validation, and monitoring.

*What You'll Bring to the Table*

• Proven experience in a hands-on role developing and deploying optimization models in a corporate environment. Prior research or experience in the field of rich & dynamic vehicle routing problems is a plus.
• Deep expertise in mathematical optimization (e.g., Mixed-Integer Programming, Linear or Nonlinear Programming, Constraint Programming) and simulation (e.g. discrete-event, agent-based) techniques.
• Experience with optimization solvers (e.g., Gurobi, CPLEX, SCIP).
• Proficiency in machine learning concepts and experience with combining machine learning and optimization techniques.
• Familiarity with advanced optimization techniques such as stochastic optimization, multi-objective optimization, Bayesian optimization or reinforcement learning.
• A "player-coach" mindset with demonstrated experience in leading projects and mentoring junior team members.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear, actionable insights for non-technical audiences.

*At JET, this is how we play*
Our teams forge connections internally and work with some of the best-known brands on the planet, giving us truly international impact in a dynamic environment.

Being the best at what we do isn't just about delivering on our strategy. It's a competition for something incredibly valuable – our customers' choice. Every time a customer decides where to order, they're picking a side.

At the heart of the JET Customer League are our values and behaviours. They guide every interaction, every decision, every innovation. These are the actions we need to perform consistently and brilliantly, to surpass the competition and earn our customers' loyalty, again and again.

Fun, fast-paced and supportive, the JET culture is about movement, growth, helping one another to succeed and celebrating wins. By truly living our values and embodying our behaviours, we're building a customer-first culture which enables us to stay one step ahead of the competition.

*Inclusion, Diversity & Belonging*
No matter who you are, what you look like, who you love, or where you are from, you can find your place at Just Eat We're committed to creating an inclusive culture, encouraging diversity of people and thinking, in which all employees feel they truly belong and can bring their most colourful selves to work every day.

*What else are we delivering?*
Want to know more about our JETers, culture or company? Have a look at our career site where you can find people's stories, blogs, podcasts and more JET journeys.

*Are you ready to join the team? Apply now*