Location: Bristol, UK - 20-22 The Mall, Clifton, 3rd Floor, Bristol BS8 4DR (on-site)
Department: Events & Operations
Reports to: Head of Operations
Company: Masterclassing
Salary Range: £33,000 - £35,000 per year
Job Type: Full-Time
Schedule: Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM-5:30 PM, with flexibility required for event travel and occasional early mornings or evenings.
About Masterclassing
Masterclassing hosts a global series of executive events that bring together leading B2C brands and senior professionals through curated networking and lead generation experiences. Our events are designed to foster meaningful conversations, drive business growth, and create lasting professional connections.
Role Purpose
The Senior Operations Lead is responsible for the end-to-end operational delivery of Masterclassing's UK events portfolio, ensuring every event is planned and executed to a consistently high standard.
This is a hands-on operational role with significant ownership across event planning, venue and supplier management, sponsor operations, logistics, internal coordination, and client experience. You will manage the operational lifecycle of events from initial planning through successful delivery and post-event completion.
Working closely with Sales, Marketing, Community Leads, Data, and senior leadership, you will act as a central operational point of contact, ensuring timelines, responsibilities, deliverables, and event requirements remain aligned across departments.
The role also plays an important part in improving how we operate. You will be expected to identify opportunities to make our processes more efficient, scalable, and consistent as our event portfolio continues to grow.
Success in this role requires someone who is highly organised, commercially aware, proactive, detail-oriented, and confident managing multiple stakeholders and competing priorities. You should be comfortable taking ownership, making decisions, solving problems, and communicating clearly with both internal teams and external partners.
Core Responsibilities:
Sponsor Operations & Relationship Management
- Own sponsor onboarding from contract signature through event delivery.
- Act as the primary operational point of contact for sponsors throughout the event lifecycle.
- Manage sponsor communications, timelines, deliverables, and event requirements.
- Build strong professional relationships with sponsors and ensure they receive a consistently high standard of service and support.
- Liaise with Marketing and Data to ensure sponsor wishlists and attendee targeting requirements are communicated and actioned efficiently.
- Coordinate presentation logistics, branding assets, attendee lists, speaker requirements, and post-event follow-up.
- Proactively identify outstanding sponsor requirements and ensure deadlines are met ahead of each event.
Venue & Supplier Management
- Source and evaluate venues that align with event objectives, budgets, format, and attendee experience.
- Negotiate contracts, pricing, minimum spends, cancellation terms, and other commercial arrangements with venues and suppliers.
- Manage venue and supplier communications and requirements throughout the planning process.
- Coordinate catering, AV, room layouts, timings, accessibility requirements, and other event logistics.
- Build and maintain strong relationships with venues, caterers, AV providers, and other event partners.
- Maintain an accurate and up-to-date venue and supplier database.
- Identify opportunities to improve commercial terms, supplier performance, and operational efficiency.
Event Operations
- Lead the operational planning, scheduling, and execution of Masterclassing's UK event portfolio in partnership with the CEO, Sales team, and wider business.
- Support a range of event formats, including Masterclasses and multi-partner Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, and bespoke client events.
- Build and maintain detailed event timelines and ensure operational milestones are achieved.
- Coordinate logistics from initial event planning through on-site delivery and post-event wrap-up.
- Identify potential operational risks and proactively implement solutions.
- Own and maintain operational documentation, including run sheets, agendas, event briefs, timelines, and execution plans.
- Ensure all relevant teams have accurate and timely information ahead of each event.
- Provide hands-on operational support for events as required.
Operational Excellence & Process Improvement
- Develop, document, and continuously improve operational processes and standard operating procedures.
- Identify opportunities to improve efficiency, scalability, and consistency across the events portfolio.
- Review existing ways of working and recommend practical improvements.
- Monitor operational performance and use event outcomes and stakeholder feedback to identify areas for improvement.
- Ensure operational documentation remains accurate, current, and aligned across departments.
- Help build scalable systems and processes that support the continued growth of the business.
Internal Operations Support
- Provide operational support during UK working hours to ensure time-sensitive issues are resolved promptly and business continuity is maintained.
- Take ownership of day-to-day operational decisions within the scope of the role.
- Identify and resolve issues proactively while escalating significant matters to the Head of Operations when appropriate.
- Ensure clear communication and continuity across the UK team.
Cross-Functional Planning & Coordination
- Partner with the Head of Operations and Head of Marketing to support event scheduling, prioritisation, resource planning, and the successful onboarding of new events.
- Work closely with Sales to assess new event opportunities, operational feasibility, requirements, and delivery timelines.
- Collaborate with Sales, Marketing, Data, Community Leads, and senior leadership to ensure seamless planning and execution.
- Act as an operational lead across departments, ensuring timelines, deliverables, and responsibilities remain aligned throughout the event lifecycle.
- Support capacity planning and operational readiness as the UK events portfolio grows.
- Communicate potential risks, delays, or resource constraints early and work collaboratively to identify solutions.
What We're Looking For
Highly Organised & Detail-Oriented: You are comfortable managing multiple events, deadlines, suppliers, sponsors, and internal stakeholders simultaneously. You take pride in maintaining accurate information and ensuring important details do not fall through the cracks.
Proactive & Accountable: You take ownership of your responsibilities and see them through from beginning to end. You do not wait for problems to escalate before taking action and are comfortable identifying what needs to happen next.
Commercially Minded: You understand the importance of budgets, commercial terms, and supplier negotiations. You are confident discussing pricing and contracts and can balance cost considerations with event quality and business requirements.
Client & Relationship Focused: You communicate professionally and confidently with sponsors, venues, suppliers, senior professionals, and colleagues. You understand that strong relationships and reliable communication are fundamental to successful event delivery.
Strong Communicator: You can communicate clearly and professionally across email, calls, meetings, and in-person interactions. You are comfortable coordinating across multiple departments and ensuring stakeholders understand their responsibilities and deadlines.
Adaptable & Calm Under Pressure: Events do not always go according to plan. You can assess situations quickly, make sensible decisions, solve problems, and maintain composure when priorities or circumstances change.
Process-Driven: You understand the importance of strong systems and repeatable processes. You are interested not only in completing the immediate task but also in finding better and more efficient ways of working.
Qualifications & Skills
- Strong project management and organisational skills.
- Experience managing events, operations, projects, clients, or a similar area with multiple stakeholders and deadlines.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Confidence managing external clients, suppliers, venues, and internal stakeholders.
- Strong commercial negotiation and relationship management skills.
- Excellent attention to detail and administrative accuracy.
- Strong problem-solving and decision-making abilities.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities and deadlines independently.
- Comfortable taking ownership and making operational decisions.
- Experience developing or improving operational processes is beneficial.
- Proficient with Google Workspace and comfortable learning new systems and technology.
- Experience within events, hospitality, client success, operations, or a related environment is beneficial.
- Flexibility to support and attend events where required, including occasional early mornings or evenings.
Why Join Masterclassing?
- Take significant ownership of the operational delivery of a growing UK events portfolio.
- Work directly with leading brands, sponsors, venues, and senior professionals.
- Build experience across event operations, client success, commercial negotiation, supplier management, and business operations.
- Have a direct impact on how the company develops and improves its operational processes.
- Work closely with teams across Operations, Sales, Marketing, Data, and Community.
- Join a collaborative, entrepreneurial business where strong performers have the opportunity to take on greater responsibility as the company grows.
Benefits
- Company pension scheme
- 25 days of paid annual leave
- 8 UK bank holidays
Candidates must be able to reliably commute to the Bristol office.
Pay: £33,000.00-£35,000.00 per year
Benefits:
Work Location: In person
