Head of venue operations

Closing date: Mon, 05 Jan 2026

Job Title: Head of Venue Operations

Salary: £40k-£50k

Hours: 32 hours per week (4 days a week, full-time equivalent)

Location: On-ite across SET Centres, with flexibiliy to work from home for specific tasks and adaptable arrangements to meet organisational needs

Contract: Permanent

SET is seeking a values-driven Head of Venue Operations to lead our growing venues, including SET Social Vauxhall and SET Walthamstow opening in 2026.

The role blends strategic and hands-on work across operations, staff, finance, safety, and our inclusive, experimental, and community-focused ethos.

The Head of Venue Operations will oversee SET's public venues, ensuring seamless day-to-day operations, consistently high service standards, licensing and safety compliance, and a strong culture of staff leadership. The role covers four key venues:

1. SET Social Peckham - cafe/bar and community arts centre
2. SET Social Vauxhall - events venue with a function room, project spaces, cafe and bar
3. SET Walthamstow - cafe/bar, live music and multipurpose venue (opening 2026)
4. SET Vault (location TBC) - late-night venue with a 6am licence for experimental nightlife and music programming

Each venue has (or will have) its own Venue Manager, all reporting to the Head of Venue Operations.

At the outset, the Head of Venue Operations will directly open and run SET Social Vauxhall as acting Venue Manager during its establishment phase, embedding systems, hiring the initial team, and ensuring a smooth launch before appointing a Venue Manager.

This role is both strategic and hands-on: responsible for operational systems, financial oversight, safety, staff wellbeing, event delivery, bar performance and maintaining SET's community-focused, experimental and inclusive ethos.

With an inclusive ethos always, SET actively encourages applications from all sections of the community, particularly from people whose backgrounds are underrepresented across the arts and charity sectors. This includes people from low-income backgrounds, people from Black, Asian and ethnically diverse backgrounds, and disabled people.

As an employer participating in the government-backed Disability Confident scheme, we are committed to offering an interview to disabled applicants who meet the minimum essential criteria for the role.

Please include in your application that you found this role through Creative Access.

Job Requirements

ESSENTIAL SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE & EXPERIENCE

• Exceptional experience managing venues, large bars, cultural spaces, or late-night operations.
• Experience leading multi-site teams or high-capacity venue teams.
• Strong knowledge of licensing, health & safety, food hygiene, safeguarding and compliance.
• Experience delivering music events, nightlife programming
• Comfortable using cloud-based systems, rota tools, and EPOS/bar software.

DESIRED KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

• Experience in the arts, charity, community, or not-for-profit sectors.
• Experience opening or launching new venues.
• Familiarity with nightlife culture, club licensing, and technical production.
• Experience integrating accessibility and community engagement into venue operations.
• Familiarity with HR processes or staff wellbeing practices.

Job Responsibilities

For the full list of job responsibilities, please refer to the job pack via the Apply button.

The closing date for applications is Monday 5 January 2026, 23:59pm. Applications received after this time will not be considered.

Short-listed candidates will be invited to interview w/c 19 January 2026, with candidates chosen by February 2026. If you need to submit your application in a different format or require reasonable adjustments, please contact us work@setspace.uk

Please note: References from previous employers will only be contacted after a job offer. If there are valid reasons for this not to be possible, please mention this on your application.

If you have any queries regarding the process or the role, please contact us at the same email address above.