Senior Strategy & Ops Manager - New Verticles

Trainline plc; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private healthcare & dental insurance

Work from abroad policy

2-for-1 share purchase plans

EV Scheme to reduce carbon emissions

Extra festive time off

Excellent family-friendly benefits

Job summary

Trainline is seeking a Senior Manager, Strategy & Operations within the New Verticals team. You will shape strategy across Hotels and Cars, turning it into structured roadmaps and milestones while coordinating with Legal, Compliance, Finance, Product, Design and Commercial.

You will manage end-to-end programmes, track risks, drive governance and deliver executive-ready reporting to senior leadership. This role operates in a hybrid model with exposure to cross-functional leadership.

Qualifications

• Proven experience delivering complex, multi-stakeholder launches.
• Structured, analytical approach with ability to create plans and reporting from scratch.
• Executive presence and confident communication to steering committees.
• Strong stakeholder management with senior leaders across functions.
• Bias to action and willingness to drive initiatives rather than wait for direction.
• Comfort with ambiguity and building new processes from the ground up.
• Experience in hotels, travel or travel-tech/OTA space is beneficial.

Responsibilities

• Shape the New Verticals strategy across Hotels and Cars into roadmaps, milestones and success metrics.
• Bring structured thinking to ambiguous problems and anticipate risks before blockers arise.
• Own end-to-end programme across major New Verticals initiatives, including launches and feature rollouts.
• Track dependencies, risks and decisions across cross-functional partners and drive resolution.
• Build and run the governance rhythm for the programme, ensuring timely information for the right people.
• Own leadership reporting, including updates and steering materials, translating detail into clear narratives.
• Act as a connective layer between New Verticals and Legal, Compliance, Finance, Product, Design and Commercial.
• Foster strong relationships with senior stakeholders and influence without formal authority.

Skills

Programme management

Structured thinking

Executive presence

Stakeholder management

Bias to action

Ambiguity handling

Travel-tech experience

Job description

About us

At Trainline, our purpose is to empower greener travel choices, connecting people and places. Trainline enables millions of travellers to find and book the best value tickets across carriers, fares, and journey options through our highly rated mobile app, website, and B2B partner channels.

Great journeys start with Trainline

We’re Europe’s leading independent rail platform, helping millions of travellers find and book the best-value rail and coach journeys across our app, website and partner channels.

Our job is to make the green travel choice the best choice. By building a better train travel experience, we help more people choose rail - creating a positive impact for customers, our business and the planet.

We’re a team of more than 1,000 Trainliners from over 50 nationalities, working across London, Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Edinburgh and Madrid. Now is a brilliant time to join us and help shape the future of travel.

Introducing the Trainline New Verticals Team

New Verticals is one of Trainline's largest growth bets, building and scaling our Hotels and Car Hire businesses. The team is moving fast: standing up new partnerships, launching new product experiences, and setting the operating model that will grow this into a meaningful part of Trainline over the next few years. We're looking for a Senior Manager to be the strategic and operational backbone of this build, working directly with the Head of New Verticals and cross-functional stakeholders to turn ambition into a disciplined, well-run programme.

This is a high-visibility role for someone comfortable structuring a loosely defined problem, bringing a point of view to the table, and combining strong execution with a keen eye for detail. You'll co-create strategy alongside Product, Commercial and Legal leads, working closely with multiple cross-functional teams to keep complex, multi-party launches on track, translate strategy into executable plans, and ensure nothing important falls through the cracks.

In this role as the Senior Manager, Strategy & Operations, you will

• Shape the New Verticals strategy across Hotels and Cars, translating it into structured roadmaps, milestones and success metrics
• Bring structured thinking to ambiguous, fast-evolving problems and anticipate risks and dependencies before they become blockers
• Own the end-to-end programme across major New Verticals initiatives, including new product launches and feature rollouts
• Track dependencies, risks and decisions across cross-functional partners, driving them to resolution
• Build and run the governance rhythm for the New Verticals programme, ensuring the right people have the right information at the right time
• Own leadership reporting, including performance updates, business reviews and steering committee materials, synthesising complex detail into clear, decision-ready narratives
• Act as a trusted connective layer between New Verticals and partners including Legal, Compliance, Finance, Product, Design and Commercial
• Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders, influencing without formal authority and getting ahead of cross-team friction

We'd love to hear from you if you have

• Strong programme or project management experience, ideally including complex, multi-stakeholder launches
• A structured, analytical approach, comfortable building plans, frameworks and reporting from scratch
• Executive presence and communication range, equally credible presenting to a steering committee or debating in a working session
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with the credibility to work confidently with and influence senior leaders
• A bias to action, spotting what needs to happen and driving it rather than waiting to be told
• Comfort with ambiguity, energised by building things from the ground up rather than following an existing playbook
• Experience in hotels, travel or the broader travel-tech/OTA space is helpful but not required; what matters most is the operating rigour, judgement and strategic instinct you bring

What this role offers you

• Seat at the table early. Direct exposure to senior leadership and C-suite as you help shape a business that’s still being written, not one you’re inheriting
• The full arc of business building, from strategy through to launch and beyond, with a real P& L to show for it, backed by the resources and stability of an established, publicly listed company
• Steep learning curve. You’ll pick up foundational skills across Strategy, Product, Commercial, Ops and more
• Launchpad for what’s next. New Verticals has genuinely aggressive growth ambitions across new lines of business, and you’ll be positioned to grow with it.
• Great team and work culture. Genuinely friendly people who’ll always have your back!

More information

• Private healthcare & dental insurance
• A generous work from abroad policy
• 2-for-1 share purchase plans
• An EV Scheme to further reduce carbon emissions
• Extra festive time off
• Excellent family-friendly benefits

We prioritise career growth with clear career paths, transparent pay bands, personal learning budgets, and regular learning days. Jump on board and supercharge your career from day one!

We’re operating a hybrid model and ask that Trainliners work from the office a minimum of 60% of their time over a 12-week period. We also have a 28-day Work from Abroad policy.

• Think Big - We’re building the future of rail
• Own It - We focus on every customer, partner and journey
• Travel Together - We’re one team
• Do Good - We make a positive impact

We know that having a diverse team makes us better and helps us succeed. And we mean all forms of diversity - gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, nationality and diversity of thought. That’s why we’re committed to creating inclusive places to work, where everyone belongs and differences are valued and celebrated.

Interested in finding out more about what it’s like to work at Trainline? Why not check us out on LinkedIn, Instagram and Glassdoor!