Director, Experience & Operational Excellence

About the Company

talabat is part of Delivery Hero Group, a global local-delivery platform operating in roughly 65 countries. The group is headquartered in Berlin, Germany, has been listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since 2017, and is included in the MDAX index.

Role Overview

talabat is looking for a senior leader to own the company’s experience and operational excellence agenda across Customer Experience, Partner Experience, Fraud Operations, and CX Insights in eight MENA markets. The role carries responsibility for shaping and delivering long-term strategies that improve customer and partner outcomes, while also protecting platform integrity through strong fraud controls.

This position sits at a strategic and execution-focused level. It involves influencing product and commercial priorities, helping define cross-functional policy, guiding a team of senior managers and specialists, and contributing as a core member of the COO leadership group. The role requires a strong focus on data-led decision-making, operational discipline, and continuous improvement.

Customer Experience Strategy

• Set and lead the overall customer experience agenda across Food, tMart, Local Shops, and DineOut in all eight MENA markets.
• Own the direction of key experience measures such as cNPS, cSAT, and related performance indicators, including target setting, methodology, and execution to improve them.
• Turn customer behavior, service signals, and operational data into prioritized actions that strengthen retention, satisfaction, and ordering frequency.
• Drive the use of automation, standard processes, and digital tools to improve core CX workflows.

Partner Experience and Budget Control

• Lead the partner experience function and ensure vendor satisfaction metrics such as vNPS and vSAT are managed as meaningful business differentiators tied to commercial results.
• Take full ownership of customer and vendor compensation budgets, which together represent a multi-million-euro annual spend, including planning, policy creation, rollout sequencing, and ongoing budget oversight.
• Manage the full set of partner-facing policies and SOPs across every market and vertical.

Fraud Operations and Risk Oversight

• Provide senior oversight for fraud operations, including prevention, detection, and response across the platform ecosystem.
• Ensure fraud governance aligns with compliance, audit, and legal requirements.
• Work closely with Product, Finance, and Legal to balance fraud risk control with customer experience and business growth.

Insights and Analytics

• Oversee the insights function so that performance visibility is available in real time through dashboards and structured reporting across markets.
• Build a strong data-led culture by ensuring insights are converted into practical actions.
• Partner with BI, Data Science, and Product teams to strengthen the data foundation that supports reliable performance tracking.
• Lead primary research and NPS programs to gather balanced qualitative feedback that informs local and regional priorities.

People Leadership and Organizational Development

• Manage and develop middle managers, specialists, analysts, and other team members.
• Design the department’s OKR framework, KPI structure, and business review cadence.
• Set clear objectives and build a high-performance culture based on ownership, innovation, customer focus, and career growth.

Senior Stakeholder Management

• Act as the senior authority on experience topics in leadership discussions and influence decisions across Product, Commercial, Finance, and Operations.
• Present strategy updates, budget performance, and OKR progress to the COO and executive leadership team.
• Lead complex cross-functional programs at department or company level, including initiatives that do not yet have an established playbook.

Qualifications and Experience

• A bachelor’s or master’s degree in Business Administration, Operations, CX, Data Analytics, or a closely related discipline.
• At least 10 years of experience in customer experience, operations, or strategy, preferably within e-commerce, food delivery, or another fast-growing technology business.
• A strong history of leading middle managers and large, multi-functional teams in a matrixed structure.
• Experience owning P&L or large budgets, ideally at multi-million-euro scale.
• Solid experience in data analysis, performance management, and CX or operational strategy.
• Exposure to working across several markets and geographies.

Skills and Competencies

• Strong leadership ability with a track record of motivating and developing high-performing teams.
• A strategic outlook combined with disciplined execution.
• Comfort working with large datasets and turning them into clear business recommendations.
• Excellent executive communication and stakeholder influence skills, including presenting to ExCo and board-level audiences.
• Strong empathy for customers and partners, with a commitment to delivering high-quality experiences at scale.
• Effective cross-functional collaboration across Product, Finance, Legal, and Operations.
• Ability to bring clarity and direction in ambiguous, fast-changing environments.
• An AI-forward mindset and willingness to use automation and emerging tools to improve efficiency and scale.

Additional Information

This is a full-time onsite role based in Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.