Team Lead Retail Expansion

Emma-the-Sleep-Company; Lisboa; Hybrid; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private Health Insurance

Vacation days + extra accrual (29 max)

Hybrid work setup

Lisbon office

Job summary

Emma – The Sleep Company is seeking a leader to drive retail expansion and network growth across multiple European markets from its Lisbon area offices. The role focuses on prioritizing launches, building scalable playbooks, and ensuring strong pipeline health while guiding a team of launch managers and network developers.

You will own the market-entry framework, evaluate business cases, and collaborate with Legal, Finance, Real Estate, Marketing, IT, HR, and Retail Ops to execute launches.

Qualifications

• Experience leading retail expansion or network growth.
• Proven track record launching and scaling store networks across markets.
• Strong business sense: unit economics, negotiations, and go/no-go gates.

Responsibilities

• Lead market launch strategy with prioritization and resource allocation.
• Monitor pipeline health and candidate quality across markets with a 12‑month view.
• Own launch model: create playbooks, templates, and stage-gate from candidate to opening.
• Apply rigorous business case discipline before commitments.
• Lead and coach launch managers and network developers; define market ownership.
• Track and report pipeline, signings, openings, timing, and early performance.
• Coordinate cross-functional alignment (Legal, Finance, Real Estate, Marketing, IT, HR, Retail Ops).
• Ensure clean handover from launch to Store Management with defined criteria.
• Support new markets with a structured test-and-learn approach.

Skills

Retail expansion

Franchise development

Team leadership

Launch strategy

English fluency

Travel across Europe

Tools

Nilo

Learning Hub

Job description

Ready to lead, disrupt and reinvent the sleep industry?

We are Emma – The Sleep Company. Founded in 2015, we have grown into the world’s largest direct-to-consumer (D2C) sleep brand, with a presence in over 20 markets and more than 35 Emma stores across Europe.

Our mission is simple: to develop sleep comfort products that empower our customers to awaken their best every day. Today, our products are trusted by millions and recommended by leading consumer associations worldwide.

It’sour people who bring this mission to life. At Emma, you’ll join a driven, international team that values ownership, collaboration, and continuous knowledge sharing. With colleagues from over 70 nationalities, we combine diverse perspectives with a shared ambition to learn, grow, and create lasting impact, together.

Ready to awaken your best with us?

What you´ll do:

• Launch strategy by market: prioritization, sequencing and resource allocation across countries, with a clear view of where the next stores must be launched
• Pipeline health: lead generation capacity, funnel conversion and candidate quality across all markets, with a rolling 12-month view of openings
• The launch model: playbooks, templates, standards and the stage-gate from candidate to opening, owned centrally and enforced locally
• Business case discipline: a common standard for evaluating partners and sites, with a go/no-go gate before commitments are made
• Team leadership: hiring, onboarding, coaching and performance of the launch managers and network developers, including a clear market ownership structure
• Tracking and reporting: pipeline, signings, openings, timing, early performance
• Cross-functional alignment for launches: Legal, Finance, Real Estate, Marketing, IT, HR and Retail Ops aligned on launch priorities, timelines and capacity
• Handover quality: a clean, defined transfer from launch to Store Management, with agreed criteria for when a store is “launched”
• Market entry and model testing: supporting new markets with a structured test-and-learn approach

Who we´re looking for:

• Strong experience in retail expansion, franchise development or network growth, with at least 2 years leading a team
• Proven track record of launching and scaling store networks across more than one market
• Strong commercial and financial judgment: business cases, unit economics, negotiation
• Comfortable with ambiguity, and able to build structure w
• Credible with senior leadership, partners and cross-functional teams
• Fluent in English, plus at least one other major European language (French, German or Spanish); more is a plus
• Willing to travel regularly across Europe

What we offer:

• The opportunity to create real impact, take ownership and accountability, and drive meaningful change.
• Continuous learning and development through hands-on experience, mentoring, formal training, and access to tools such as our Learning Hub and Nilo.
• A collaborative community of smart, driven people where you learn, contribute, and connect, every day and through team events.
• A global environment, working daily with diverse perspectives across 4 offices and 70+ nationalities.
• Private Health Insurance and 24 vacation days per year, with 1 extra day per year worked (until a limit of 29 days per year).
• A flexible hybrid setup with up to 22 remote days per quarter.
• A modern, pet-friendly office in Parque das Nações, Lisbon.

Become an Emmie

We are on a mission to become No.1 in the world of sleep, and we’re looking for driven, ambitious people to help us shape what’s next. If you’re curious, hands-on, and ready to challenge the status quo, you’ll find the space here to make things happen and create real impact.

We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and are committed to building an inclusive workplace. We celebrate diversity and consider all qualified applicants regardless of race, ethnic origin, religion or belief, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, or age.

Our aim is to get back to you within a few days. Due to the high volume of applications, there may be slight delays, but we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.