Director of Operations

Gathern; Riyadh; On-site; SAR 500,000 - 800,000; Full time

Job summary

Gathern in Riyadh is seeking a senior Operations leader to run Content Operations, Contact Centers, and Quality as a unified unit, accountable for customer satisfaction and key performance indicators across reservations and listings.

The role requires ten plus years in operations, cross-functional leadership, and a track record of transforming service levels; fluent in Arabic and English, with experience in marketplace/digital platforms in the GCC.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree; a postgraduate qualification is an advantage.
• Ten or more years in operations, including five or more leading multi-function or multi-site teams in a marketplace/e-commerce platform.
• Proven turnaround of contact-center service levels, evidenced on first contact resolution, response time, and resolution time.
• A numerate operator who owns a KPI tree, sets targets, runs a monthly performance cycle and defends the numbers to an executive audience.
• Experience as a transformation leader
• Professional fluency in Arabic and English.

Responsibilities

• Own the operational KPI tree and deliver targets for CSAT, complaints per 1,000 reservations, guest rating, and occupancy of listings.
• Lead Contact Centers: manage service levels, first response time, first contact resolution, average resolution time, and cost per booking.
• Oversee Content Operations: ensure listing content completeness, photo quality, and destination content readiness; scale interventions.
• Provide leadership across three functions, partner with Product on defects, and collaborate with Data/Analytics to close instrumentation gaps.

Skills

Operations leadership

KPI management

Cross-functional leadership

Transformation leadership

Bilingual English/Arabic

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Postgraduate qualification advantage

Job description

JOB PURPOSE:

Run Content Operations, Contact Centers, and Quality as one accountable unit and own the operational KPI set end-to-end — customer satisfaction, complaints per reservation, guest rating, destination search conversion, occupancy of active listings, and unit activation — so that operational performance becomes a managed, forecastable input to growth rather than a monthly report of outcomes.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES:

Performance ownership:

• Own the operational KPI tree and deliver the monthly and annual targets for CSAT, complaints per 1,000
• reservations, guest rating, destination search conversion rate, occupancy of active listings, and unit activation rate.
• Set, defend and re-base targets with Strategy and the CSO, and ensure every KPI is instrumented, defined, and
• scoreable.
• Run the monthly Operations performance cycle and present results, causes and actions to the Executive Committee.

Contact Centers

• Own the service levels: first response time, first contact resolution, average resolution time and reopened tickets. Restore and hold first contact resolution at or above 80% through root-cause analysis of repeat-contact drivers,
• Agent enablement and process redesign.
• Manage capacity, scheduling, quality monitoring, and any outsourced service partners.
• Reduce cost to serve per booking without trading away resolution quality.

Content Operations

• Own listing content completeness, photo quality and destination content readiness.
• Scale proven content interventions across the destination portfolio; the Abha pilot lifted click-through from 6.0% to
• 11.8%.
• Set and enforce the host content standard with clear controls and consequences.
• Quality and unit readiness
• Own the unit onboarding and activation journey: activation rate, time to activate, and time to first reservation with
• clear SLA
• Close the gap between activation and occupancy by working with Commercial and Product on destination
• readiness.
• Run the quality assurance framework across both the guest and the host journey.

Leadership and cross-functional

• Lead, develop and structure the three function teams, and build capability and succession within them.
• Partner with Product on operational defects that require a product fix, sorting and visibility, and claims.
• Partner with Data & Analytics to close instrumentation gaps and automate departmental reporting.
• Transform the team to be the center of operational excellence

CORE BEHAVIORAL COMPETENCIES:

Accountability: owns the number, not the activity.

Operational rigour: root cause before remedy, measures before and after.

People leadership: turns function leads into owners.

Cross-functional influence: gets fixes prioritized outside their own reporting line.

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor’s degree; a postgraduate qualification is an advantage.
• Ten or more years in operations, including five or more leading multi-function or multi-site teams in a marketplace,
• e-commerce platform.
• Proven turnaround of contact-center service levels, evidenced on first contact resolution, response time, and
• resolution time.
• A numerate operator who owns a KPI tree, sets targets, runs a monthly performance cycle and defends the
• numbers to an executive audience.
• Experience as a transformation leader
• Professional fluency in Arabic and English.

Preferred

• KSA or GCC market experience in a digital platform.
• Exposure to Lean, Six Sigma, DMAIC, or an equivalent process-improvement discipline.
• Experience introducing automation or AI-assisted tooling into a contact center