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- Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Business Development & Support
- 29428
Booking.com
Role Description
Business Operations at Booking.com bridges strategy and execution, ensuring the organization can effectively translate priorities into outcomes. Through planning, operational governance, performance monitoring, and cross-functional coordination, we drive alignment, operational readiness, and execution excellence—helping Booking.com deliver on its Mission, Vision, and Strategy with the customer at the center.
The Chief Business Officer (CBO) Office is responsible for leading business planning and operations, program management and change management for Booking.com. The CBO Office reports to Booking's Chief Business Officer and works directly with the most senior leadership across the organization, including Department LT's and corporate functions (HR/People, Finance, Legal, and Global Strategy & Development), to enable Booking.com to achieve its strategic and operational goals.
The Senior Business Operations Manager serves as a strategic and hands-on operating partner to (also reporting into) the Director of Business Operations, in the CBO Office. In this high-impact role, you act as the "connective tissue" between strategy and execution for Booking.com — ensuring the company operates efficiently, scales effectively, and makes decisions grounded in data. You are responsible for shaping, building and scaling key elements of the enterprise operating system, orchestrating the translation of strategy into execution so both remain tightly aligned. The role requires strong versatility, contributing across a wide range of initiatives and adding value wherever it is most needed.
Key Job Responsibilities and Duties:
- (Quarterly) Operational Planning & Adaptive Execution: Design, operate, and continuously improve rolling quarterly planning and execution cycles at scale that translate annual direction into near-term priorities, commitments, sequencing, and decisions. Partner closely with annual planning owners to keep the two horizons connected, using execution insights to validate assumptions, surface dependencies and trade-offs, and adjust course as conditions change. Evolve quarterly planning from a periodic event into an effective operating rhythm that improves execution velocity, agility and predictability.
- Strategic Portfolio, Capacity & Trade-off Management: Build and continuously improve strategic portfolio-management and capacity/resource-management practices that enable active enterprise steering. Create visibility across priorities, demand, dependencies, investment, and capacity; establish effective prioritization and decision rights; and equip leaders to make explicit trade-offs on what to start, protect, pause, re-sequence, or stop. Partner with Finance, HR and other relevant functions where needed to strengthen resource, workforce, and investment decisions.
- Enterprise Operating Maturity: Shape and advance operating-model improvements across the organization in line with leadership direction and sponsorship. Translate emerging strategic direction into practical improvements to quarterly governance, leadership rhythms, decision-making, standards, and ways of working. Build alignment across senior stakeholders; pressure-test approaches against operational realities, and pilot, test, and scale improvements where there is organizational mandate. Progressively mature the operating model as priorities, permissions, and organizational readiness evolve.
- Data-Driven Insights & Performance Monitoring: Synthesize qualitative and quantitative data into actionable insights and executive-ready materials (dashboards, presentations, and reviews) to support leadership decision-making. Proactively monitor operational realities to surface risks and opportunities, providing data-backed recommendations for timely course correction.
- Cross-Functional Leadership & Initiatives: Act as a central connector across internal teams and departments (e.g., Product, Strategy, Finance, HR) to align and translate (strategic) priorities into actionable work. Lead and deliver high-visibility, cross-functional initiatives end-to-end—from scoping and stakeholder alignment to execution and impact measurement—ensuring blockers are resolved and intended outcomes are achieved.
- Process Improvements: Partners with senior leadership and operational teams to scope internal improvement opportunities, pressure-test proposed approaches against on-the-ground realities, and support trade-off discussions, in order to ensure internal decisions are both strategically sound and practically executable.
- Leadership Support & Governance: Prepares, facilitates, and follows up on internal leadership forums, offsites, and strategic reviews as needed — ensuring outcomes, owners, and timelines are clearly defined and cascaded to operational teams — in order to close the loop between strategic discussion and ground-level execution.
- Craft Maturity: Actively contributes to advancing the Business Operations craft at Booking.com by bringing in and applying external best practices and expertise to strengthen the function.
Resource Planning: May partner with Finance and HR to manage headcount tracking, workforce planning, and budget allocation across the CBO scope to ensure resource decisions are sound, variances are flagged early, and corrective actions are taken promptly.
Note: This role does not have ownership of Booking.com strategic direction or priority-setting, and does not define, manage or report on P&Ls or company-level strategy. But you may have the opportunity to influence how strategy is translated, structured, and executed, which can shape outcomes. It is also not a traditional operations role solely focused on driving measurable efficiencies in company-wide systems/workflows or in volume-based functions (e.g., customer service).
Role Qualifications and Requirements:
- Bachelor degree required
- Master degree (preferred) in Business or a related field.
- Extensive Knowledge; 8+ years of experience in strategy, business operations, strategic program management, or a similar strategic/operational function at a fast-paced, complex organization. (Note: Solid experience working and executing initiatives within a company; consultancy experience only will not be considered).
Required:
- Quarterly Operational Planning & Adaptive Execution: Demonstrated experience designing and maturing quarterly or similarly adaptive planning and execution practices at scale, connecting annual direction to near-term commitments, sequencing, trade-offs, and course correction.
- Strategic Portfolio, Capacity & Trade-off Management: Demonstrated experience improving portfolio and capacity/resource-management practices, creating visibility across priorities, demand, dependencies, investment, and resources, and enabling effective prioritization and reallocation decisions at scale.
- Enterprise Operating Maturity: Experience shaping and implementing operating-model improvements across complex organizations, including governance, leadership rhythms, decision rights, standards, and ways of working. Able to move from concept to practical implementation while building senior stakeholder alignment.
- Digital Product & Technology Environment: Strong experience operating in a large-scale, complex digital organization, with exposure to customer-facing product and technology teams and a solid understanding of product operating models, development lifecycles, cross-functional delivery, and outcome-oriented ways of working.
- Strategic Problem Solving & Analytical Acumen: Strong ability to connect strategy, operational realities, and data; break down complex and ambiguous problems; synthesize quantitative and qualitative insights; and translate them into clear recommendations and actions. Sound financial acumen, including understanding key business and P&L drivers.
- Cross-Functional Leadership & Senior Stakeholder Influence: Proven ability to operate across Product & Tech, Strategy, Finance, HR, and other functions, influence VP/SVP-level stakeholders without direct authority, build alignment across competing perspectives, and drive decisions and follow-through.
- Complex Initiative & Change Delivery: Experience leading complex, cross-functional Business Operations, operating-model, or organizational initiatives end-to-end, including scoping, governance, stakeholder alignment, dependency and risk management, implementation, and adoption. Strong communication skills and ability to produce executive-ready materials.
- Technology, Data & Work Management Tools: Experience using modern planning, work-management, and collaboration tools such as Jira/Atlassian, with a strong interest in using AI, automation, and data to improve planning, decision-making, execution visibility, and operational effectiveness.
Preferred:
- Operating in a large-scale, complex digital organization of 8,000+ employees, experience in a B2C technology, platform, or marketplace company.
- Familiarity with enterprise financial planning tools and business intelligence platforms (e.g., Tableau, Anaplan).
- Fluency in SQL or experience working closely with data/analytics teams.
- Prior experience in a Chief of Staff, Business Operations, or Strategy & Operations capacity within a large, global organization.
Your Traits:
- Independently manages multiple complex projects/programs from start to finish, with deadlines.
- Structured and strategic thinker who thrives in complexity and ambiguity.
- Obsessively data-driven; you balance qualitative insights while trusting numbers over opinions.
- Energized by technology and AI—actively explores how emerging tools can make the business smarter, faster, and more effective.
- A natural connector who brings the right people together.
- High bar of excellence, and equally at home in the big picture and the details (strategically minded, yet execution-focused).
- Calm and resilient under pressure, able to manage competing priorities and adapt quickly in fast-moving environments.
- A clear and persuasive communicator who presents with impact and adapts style effectively to suit any audience.
Your Operating Style:
- Simplifier: You simplify the complex and make the implicit explicit.
- Influencer: You have the ability to lead through influence, effectively aligning stakeholders at all levels (including VPs/SVPs), even in the face of competing priorities.
- Biased for Action: You are biased toward action but measured in judgment. Possesses the intellectual curiosity of a consultant and the grit of an operator.
- Trusted Partner: You build trust quickly, maintain it over time, and default to collaboration rather than silos.
- Highly Organized: You make sure all processes/projects/programs run smoothly and reliably, designing effective tools and resources to drive optimization and meet internal partners' expectations.
Benefits & Perks - Global Impact, Personal Relevance:
Booking.com’s Total Rewards Philosophy is not only about compensation but also about benefits. We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, as well unique-to-Booking.com benefits which include:
Annual paid time off and generous paid leave scheme including: parent, grandparent, bereavement, and care leave
Hybrid working including flexible working arrangements, and up to 20 days per year working from abroad (home country)
Industry leading product discounts - up to 1400 per year - for yourself, including automatic Genius Level 3 status and Booking.com wallet credit
Inclusion at Booking.com:
Take it from our Chief People Officer, Paulo Pisano: “At Booking.com, the diversity of our people doesn’t just create a unique workplace, it also creates a better and more inclusive travel experience for everyone. Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do. It’s a place where you can make your mark and have a real impact in travel and tech.”
Read all about Inclusion and the Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) at Booking.com here
Career Development Opportunities
Learn more about Your Career Journey here.
Become a Mentee and benefit from a mentoring relationship with a more experienced person to help you identify and achieve your professional and personal development goals.
Booking.com is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We strive to move well beyond traditional equal opportunity and work to create an environment that allows everyone to thrive.
Pre-Employment ScreeningIf your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.
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