Head of Trading

Job Description

THE CARWOW GROUP

Carwow Group is driven by a passion for getting people into cars. But not just any car, the right car. That’s why we are building the go-to destination for car-changing. Designed to reach drivers everywhere with our trail-blazing portfolio of personality rich automotive brands; Carwow, Auto Express, evo, Driving Electric and Car Buyer.

What started as a simple reviews site, is now one of the largest online car-changing destinations in Europe - over 10m customers have used Carwow to help them buy and sell cars since its inception. Last year we grew over 50% with nearly £3bn worth of cars bought on site, while £1.8bn of cars were listed for sale through our Sell My Car service.

In 2024 we went big and acquired Autovia, doubling our audience overnight. Together we now have one of the biggest YouTube channels in the world with over 1.1 billion annual views, sell 1.2 million print copies of our magazines and have an annual web content reach over 350million.

WHY JOIN US?

We are winners of the prestigious Culture 100 award that recognises the most loved and happiest tech companies to work for! We have just raised $52m in funding led by global venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners (an early backer of LinkedIn and Shopify) to accelerate our growth plans!

As pioneers, we’re always driving for new territory and positive change, so our work as a group is never done. Where others see difficulty, it’s our responsibility to see possibility – building new experiences, launching new titles and listening to drivers.

Being a part of Carwow Group means championing drivers and the automotive industry, acting as a disrupter and never being afraid to fail (but learning fast when we do!).

Our team of 500 employees across the UK, Germany, Spain and Portugal are revolutionising car-changing and we are fast expanding our mission across every single brand and country we operate in, so jump in!

THE ROLE

This role oversees the engine room of our Get Your Car business: it balances our supply and demand levers to ensure our customers and dealer partners have an incredible experience transacting on our platform across new, used and leasing products. The success of Get Your Car hinges on our ability to generate a high volume of quality traffic, and ensuring we have the right vehicle supply to match, and this role will have accountability for delivering both of the things.

They will also be ruthlessly focused on flagging underperforming areas and holding both commercial and cross functional teams to account.

The Head of Trading will also have accountability for monitoring and reporting on day to day trading working with their own and wider business teams to identify metrics that are off track, diagnosing the issues, and surfacing these through trading meetings to drive actions that get performance back on track.

This role is truly cross functional, working closely with the rest of the GYC leadership team as well as our marketing and finance teams to deliver against our business goals.

Given the seniority of the role, there is also an expectation that the Head of Trading will share and build pan-region best practice across their home market of the UK, as well as Germany and Spain.

This isn’t a typical role: you will be expected to be deep in the detail, act as an internal representative for the UK business and provide the UK Director regular counsel on the best path going forward.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Own our trading performance, monitoring our critical metrics and ensuring the rest of the business (The Exec, broader SLT and broader business)
• Be the ‘eyes and ears’ of the Country Director, deputising or leading forums when they are unavailable
• Lead the conversation on diagnosis of issues and activity to resolve
• Drive action and outcomes across the wider GYC organisation
• Be accountable for delivering trading performance at required levels to meet our plan, as well as delivering these at planned levels of investment to achieve profitability
• Provide thought partnership with marketing, analytics and other central functions to achieve optimal outcomes
• Work closely with our product organisation to drive continuous improvement of our user experience to support meeting our revenue goals in a way which balances both dealer partner and customer objectives
• Identify ongoing opportunities for improvement in commercial team practices and working with teams to ensure these happen
  

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Articulate communicator able to operate at every level of a fast moving tech company
• Ability to create and nurture internal C-Suite relationships, and influence decision making accordingly
• A clear track record of constant team efficiency improvements
• Clear development of winning strategies and successful execution
• Extensive leadership experience. Ability to motivate, nurture and develop lean teams and dotted line matrixed orgs
• Ability to partner, collaboratively and influence internal stakeholders
• Developing cross-functional relationships is essential to success
• Adaptability and resilience. The ability to thrive in a fast and ambiguous environment is key
• Driven and goal-orientated

WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU

• Hybrid working
• Competitive salary to fund that dream holiday to Bali
• Matched pension contributions for a peaceful retirement
• Share options - when we thrive, so do you!
• Vitality Private Healthcare, for peace of mind, plus eyecare vouchers
• Life Assurance for (even more) peace of mind
• Monthly coaching sessions with Spill - our mental wellbeing partner
• Enhanced holiday package, plus Bank Holidays
• 28 days annual leave
• 1 day for your wedding
• 1 day off when you move house - because moving is hard enough without work!
• For your third year anniversary, get 30 days of annual leave per year
• For your tenth year anniversary, get 35 days of annual leave per year
• Option to buy 3 extra days of holiday per year
• Work from abroad for a month
• Inclusive parental, partner and shared parental leave, fertility treatment and pregnancy loss policies
• Bubble childcare support and discounted nanny fees for little ones
• The latest tech (Macbook or Surface) to power your gif-sending talents
• Up to £500/€550 home office allowance for that massage chair you’ve been talking about
• Generous learning and development budget to help you master your craft
• Regular social events: tech lunches, coffee with the exec sessions, lunch 8 learns, book clubs, social events/anything else you pester us for
• Refer a friend, get paid. Repeat for infinite money

Diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our culture. We know that diverse teams are strong teams, so we welcome those with alternative identities, backgrounds, and experiences to apply for this position. We make recruiting decisions based on experience, skills and potential, so all our applicants are treated fairly and equally.