Strategic & Corporate Development Associate at carwow Ltd. · London

OUR MISSION

To become the car-changing destination of choice. By combining technology, media and deep automotive expertise, we've turned how people buy, sell, advertise and lease cars on its head.

What started as a simple reviews site is now one of the largest online car-changing destinations in Europe. Last year alone 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 — creators of AutoExpress and Evo magazines — doubling our audience overnight. Together we now have one of the biggest YouTube channels in the world with almost 10m subscribers and over 1.1 billion annual views, while we sell 1.2 million print copies of our magazines and have an annual web content reach over 350 million.

And we’re a long way from done!

THE CEO OFFICE @ CARWOW

The CEO Office & Corporate Development team is Carwow’s strategic nerve centre. We operate as the CEO’s extended brain, translating top-level ambition into sharp strategic analysis, Board-ready decisions, and decisive action.

We own three things: the end-to-end M&A and corporate development agenda (origination, valuation, diligence, integration planning); the Group’s long-range strategic plan and Corporate narrative; and execution support on the highest-priority cross-functional initiatives the CEO is personally invested in.

We’re small, senior and high-leverage. Every person on this team punches well above their weight and gets direct line-of-sight to the most consequential decisions being made at Carwow.

YOUR MISSION

As Strategic & Corporate Development Associate, you’ll work shoulder-to-shoulder with the Director to deliver sharp strategic analysis, polished Board-quality materials, and reliable execution support across the CEO Office agenda and live corporate development activity.

This is not a rotational strategy seat. You’ll be in the room on real deals and real CEO priorities from day one, supporting target screening, contributing to business cases, drafting Board and investor materials, and helping move the most important strategic projects forward.

Success looks like: you make the Director and, more importantly, the CEO meaningfully more effective. Materials going to the Board and potential investors are clean, tight and insight-led. Analyses you produce stand up to scrutiny. You spot the second-order implication nobody else has flagged. And you do it all with the discretion and trustworthiness a CEO Office demands.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Strategically support the Office of the CEO:

  • Board & Investor Materials: Support the development of Board materials and investor communications, partnering with Finance and the Senior Leadership Team to ensure clarity, consistency and strategic alignment. Build slides, draft briefs, pull supporting analysis, and help coordinate inbound investor questions and requests.
  • **Strategic Projects & Execution Support:**Contribute to strategic and cross-functional projects under the CEO Office’s direction, translating priorities into workstream plans, tracking progress against key metrics, and surfacing risks or dependencies that need escalation.
  • Insight, Analysis & Decision Support: Conduct focused strategic analysis (market, competitive, commercial, financial) on questions raised by the CEO and senior leadership, translating findings into clear recommendations that inform decision-making.

• Corporate Development & M&A Support:

  • Pipeline & Opportunity Identification: Perform target screening, competitive landscape analysis, and early-stage diligence on potential opportunities. Help build and maintain a pipeline of acquisition, investment, and partnership opportunities aligned to company strategy.
  • Deal Evaluation & Business Case Development: Contribute to business cases, scenario planning and supporting analyses for M&A, investments and new ventures, helping translate strategic rationale into clear, defensible recommendations for senior leadership.

M&A Lifecycle Execution: Support workstreams across the deal lifecycle — origination, deal evaluation, due diligence coordination, internal approvals, and post-deal integration planning — partnering with internal teams and external advisers to keep processes moving.

KEY REQUIREMENTS

• 2–4 years' experience in management consulting (ideally MBB or Big Four strategy/transaction advisory) or a comparable in-house strategy / corporate development role at a high-growth company.
• Excellent strategic thinking, with the ability to structure unstructured problems, generate insight, and propose actionable recommendations.
• Exceptional communication and slide-making skills. You can produce clean, insight-led, Board-quality decks and written materials, and you hold a high bar for visual clarity and narrative flow.
• Strong commercial acumen and a solid understanding of how a business works, with the ability to read and reason about a P&L, unit economics, and the levers that drive performance (especially in tech, marketplace or digital businesses).
• Analytically sharp and numerate, comfortable working with data, building straightforward analyses in Excel/Sheets, and stress-testing assumptions.
• High level of ownership, proactivity, and ability to drive tasks end-to-end with minimal supervision.
• Ability to work cross-functionally and influence stakeholders without formal authority.
• Discretion and integrity. Comfortable handling confidential financial, strategic and personnel-related information.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and rapid change; adaptable and resilient in a fast-paced environment.

BONUS POINTS

• Prior exposure to preparing Board-level or investor materials, whether in a consulting, in-house strategy, or corporate finance context.
• Experience in or around tech, marketplace, classifieds, automotive or e-commerce businesses.
• Genuine fluency with agentic AI tools and a clear point of view on how they can be deployed across strategy, analysis and operational workflows. You actually build with them, not just talk about them.
• Direct exposure to live deal processes, including M&A transactions (buy-side or sell-side) and/or post-merger integration work, in either an advisory or in-house capacity.

WHY THIS MIGHT NOT BE FOR YOU

The CEO Office moves fast, operates under confidentiality, and serves the sharpest end of the business. Priorities shift with the CEO's agenda and deal flow; what's urgent on Monday may not matter by Thursday. You'll often be the most junior person in the room, and you'll be expected to add real substance, not just capture actions. If you want a structured, predictable rotation with a clear weekly rhythm, this probably isn't it. If you want the steepest learning curve available at Carwow, this is it.

INTERVIEW PROCESS

• Introductory call with our Talent team
• Interview with Director, CEO Office & Corporate Development
• Case study and slide-build exercise
• Values interview

WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU

• Competitive comp package
• 28 days' holiday plus bank holidays, increasing to 35 with length of service, plus extras for house moves, weddings and more!
• Employee-friendly share options
• Pension scheme via Royal London - up to 5% company contribution
• Vitality private healthcare insurance
• Life Assurance - 4x annual salary
• Monthly coaching sessions with Spill - our mental wellbeing partner
• Inclusive parental, partner and shared parental leave, including up to 20 weeks' full pay maternity and shared parental leave, and 8 weeks' full partner pay, as well as fertility treatment and pregnancy loss policies
• Bubble childcare support and discounted nanny fees for little ones
• 'Work from abroad for a month' annual scheme
• Generous learning and development budget
• £500/€550 home office budget

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.