Data Analyst - Routing & Sortation

• 45+ advanced degrees across computer science, mathematics and operations research
• Thousands of data points captured, calculated, analysed and predicted for every single parcel we handle
• An intellectually vibrant culture of first-principles thinking, tight feedback loops and relentless experimentation

Overview

Relay is a parcel delivery network. Every night, parcels from online retailers arrive at our sort centres, are sorted into delivery routes, and go out the next day with couriers. Two things have to go right for that to work.

Routing is the planning side: software that decides, before parcels have even arrived, which ones to expect, how to group them into routes, and how to make those routes efficient for couriers to drive. Sortation is the physical side: warehouse teams and sorting robots turning a building full of parcels into neatly separated routes, thousands of times a night.

The two are tightly coupled. If the plan expects a parcel that never arrives, a courier’s route has a hole in it. If the warehouse sorts a parcel the plan didn’t expect, it has nowhere to go. This role owns the analytics across both: spotting when either side is off, working out why, and building the case for what to change.

Your work splits between a daily operational rhythm (is the network healthy this morning, and if not, why) and deeper investigations (what is driving cost, where is the plan falling short of what’s possible, what should we change). Your analysis won’t sit in a dashboard waiting to be discovered - it will change which parcels get planned for, how warehouse shifts are scheduled, and where the operation focuses its improvement efforts.

Relay operates a centralised data team of around 30 data engineers, analysts, and data scientists, with analysts embedded into teams across the business. You will sit with the Routing & Sortation teams but report into the central data team, working daily with software engineers, warehouse operations, commercial, and finance.

What You’ll Do

Routing

• Monitor the health of each night’s route plans: how many parcels each route carries (planned vs what actually happened), how far couriers travel before their first delivery, and the routes no courier should ever be handed - a single parcel stranded miles from every other stop, or one route torn between two towns - and diagnose the cause when any of it moves
• Track how well we predict which parcels will arrive each night: when expected parcels don’t show up, or unexpected ones do, work out whether the cause was the retailer’s data, a warehouse error, or timing, and improve the prediction rules client by client
• Act on what you find: flag issues to warehouse managers and retailer-facing teams, and correct the plan when a retailer’s parcels arrive outside the normal flow
• Monitor the route optimisation engine itself and flag regressions when the software or its inputs change
• Quantify how route design affects courier productivity: deliveries per hour, stops per route, distance between drops - and how far our actual routes sit from the best theoretically possible
• Build the reporting that diagnoses the middle leg of the network: the van journeys that move sorted parcels from sort centres out to local pick-up points where couriers collect them
• Partner with the engineers who build the routing systems to test and validate changes

Sortation

• Investigate cost per parcel: where are we spending too much, where are savings available, and what’s driving the variance
• Track warehouse operative performance: throughput, accuracy, shift utilisation, and the balance between permanent and agency labour
• Monitor sorting robot efficiency and capacity: what volumes can they sustain, where are the bottlenecks, how do they compare to manual sorting
• Build models to predict how many operatives each shift needs, and help automate workforce planning around the best performers
• Compare the parcel volumes retailers actually send us against what they told us to expect, and find where the gaps come from
• Define KPIs and build dashboards that make routing and sortation performance transparent to operations and leadership
• Work with commercial teams to set volume limits and delivery timings that balance growth with operational stability

• You want to understand how an operation actually works, not just analyse it from a distance
• You’re comfortable being the person operations and engineering ping first when something looks off in the morning, and you enjoy the detective work of finding out why
• You’re excited by cost and efficiency problems - finding where money or time is leaking and building the case for how to fix it
• You can navigate messy operational data and turn it into metrics people trust
• You know how to take a large amount of complex data and visualise it in a way people can actually digest - your dashboards tell someone what to look at and why, rather than presenting every number you have
• You’re comfortable working with operations teams and embedding your analysis into their daily workflows
• You’re fluent in SQL and experienced with BI tools, with strong problem-solving instincts
• You have at least 3 years experience, ideally with some exposure to logistics or another physical operation
• You care about impact, not just insight - you measure success by whether the operation runs better
• You communicate clearly with non-technical stakeholders and can explain what the data shows and where the limitations are

Fast and Focused Hiring Process

1. Talent Acquisition Interview - 30mins

   Online

2. Hiring Manager Interview - 45mins
3. SQL Live Coding - 60mins
4. Case Study - 60mins
5. Relay Operating Principles & Impact- 60mins
6. Decision and offer within 48 hours. Our process mirrors our pace of work.

Compensation, Benefits & Workplace

• Generous equity, richer than 99% of European startups, with annual top-ups to share Relay’s success.
• Private health & dental coverage, so comprehensive you’d need to be a partner at a Magic Circle law firm to match it.
• 25 days of holidays
• Enhanced parental leave.
• Hardware of your choice.
• Extensive perks (gym subsidies, cycle-to-work, Friday office lunch, covered Uber home and dinner for late nights, and more).
• Located in Shoreditch, our office set-up enables the kind of in-person interactions that drive impact. We work 4 days on-site, with 1 day remote.

Who Thrives at Relay?

• Aim with Precision: You define problems clearly and measure your impact meticulously.
• Play to Win: You chase bold bets, tackle the hard stuff, and view constraints as fuel, not friction.
• 1% Better Every Day: You believe that small, consistent improvements lead to exponential growth. You move quickly, deliver results, and learn from every experience.
• All In, All the Time: You show up and step up. You take ownership from start to finish and do what it takes to deliver when it counts.
• People-Powered Greatness: You invest in your teammates. You give and receive feedback with care and candour. You build trust through high standards and shared success.
• Grow the Whole Pie: You seek out win-win solutions for merchants, couriers, and our customers, because when they thrive, so do we. If these resonate, and you combine strong technical fundamentals with entrepreneurial drive, let’s connect.

Relay is fundamentally reshaping how goods move in an online era. Backed by Europe’s largest-ever logistics Series A ($35M), led by deep-tech investors Plural (whose portfolio spans fusion energy and space exploration), Relay is scaling faster than 99.98% of venture-backed startups. We’re assembling the most talent-dense team the logistics industry has ever seen

Relay’s Mission is to free commerce from friction. Today, high delivery costs act as a hidden tax on e-commerce, quietly shaping what can be sold online and limiting who can participate. We envision a world where more goods move more freely between more people, making the online shopping experience seamless and accessible to everyone.