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Director of Marketplace

  • Remote
    • Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
  • DeFi

Job description

Reports to: Group COO Function: Marketplace / Operations & Commercial
B2B Contract

About the role

We're looking for a Director of Marketplace to build, scale, and grow our premium Lifestyle & Travel vertical — with wellness at its core. Reporting directly to the Group COO, you'll own both the commercial growth and the operational foundation of a curated marketplace that connects discerning, experience-driven members with the best of wellness, travel, and lifestyle.

Wellness is the centre of gravity for this vertical. The most valuable experiences our members want — and the fastest-growing part of premium travel and lifestyle — are built around wellbeing: wellness retreats, spas and longevity clinics, fitness and recovery, mental health and mindfulness, and health-led travel. You'll own this category end-to-end alongside the broader travel and lifestyle services (hotels, flights, accommodations, eSIMs, and exclusive perks), and make it the reason members choose this product.

This is a commercial and operational leadership role. You'll grow the marketplace — acquiring premium supply, driving demand and conversion, and owning the economics — while turning a fragmented ecosystem of partners into a scalable, reliable, and genuinely premium offering. The ideal candidate has built and grown a premium travel, wellness, or lifestyle-services marketplace and knows what an exceptional, members-first standard of service actually feels like.

What you'll own

1. Marketplace growth & commercial

  • Own the growth and commercial performance of the vertical — GMV, revenue, take-rate, and unit economics

  • Acquire and curate premium supply across wellness, travel, and lifestyle, with wellness as the priority category

  • Drive the demand side: conversion, attach rate, repeat usage, and marketplace liquidity (balancing supply and demand)

  • Negotiate partner commercial terms — rates, inventory access, exclusivity, and co-marketing

  • Build the merchandising and curation strategy that makes premium wellness and travel experiences easy to discover and book

  • Identify and launch new wellness and lifestyle categories, partners, and markets to expand the offering

2. Operational leadership & strategy

  • Define and execute the operational strategy for wellness, lifestyle, and travel services

  • Build scalable processes, frameworks, and playbooks for partner onboarding and lifecycle management

  • Identify operational gaps and inefficiencies and implement structured improvements

  • Establish clear ownership, accountability, and KPIs across all operational streams

3. Partner operations & ecosystem management

  • Own onboarding, integration, and ongoing operations of partners (wellness retreats and clinics, spas, fitness and recovery providers, hotels, airlines, OTAs, eSIM providers, perks platforms, etc.)

  • Manage outsourced service providers, including concierge support and customer experience vendors, while protecting a premium, on-brand standard of service

  • Define SLAs, performance metrics, and accountability frameworks for external vendors

  • Ensure partners meet performance, SLA, and quality standards — and the curation bar for a premium audience

  • Build strong relationships with key partners and act as the primary operational and commercial escalation point

  • Continuously evaluate and expand the partner ecosystem to improve coverage, quality, and value

4. Premium member experience & service reliability

  • Own the end-to-end member journey across all wellness, lifestyle, and travel services

  • Set and protect a premium, members-first service standard — proactive, white-glove, and built around trust and care

  • Ensure high reliability across discovery, booking, fulfillment, and post-purchase support flows

  • Lead travel disruption and duty-of-care response (cancellations, delays, emergencies) with 24/7 readiness and rebooking at scale

  • Monitor and improve premium experience metrics (NPS/CSAT, conversion, success rate, cancellations, complaints, resolution time)

  • Work closely with Support teams to identify pain points and proactively resolve them before members feel them

5. Cross-functional coordination

  • Act as the central bridge between Operations, Product, Engineering, QA, Support, Compliance, and Partnerships

  • Ensure smooth integration of partner services into the product ecosystem

  • Drive alignment across teams so features are correctly implemented, tested, and launched

  • Create structured feedback loops between Support, QA, and Product teams to improve member experience

6. Issue resolution & escalation management

  • Build frameworks for identifying, triaging, and resolving operational issues

  • Oversee resolution of complex issues across bookings, payments, fulfillment, and partner failures

  • Partner closely with Finance teams to resolve payment-related issues including failed transactions, refunds, reconciliation gaps, and settlement discrepancies

  • Ensure strong coordination between Operations, Finance, Support, and Engineering for timely issue resolution

  • Establish escalation protocols across internal teams and external partners

7. Process optimization & internal efficiency

  • Streamline internal workflows between Operations, Support, QA, and Engineering

  • Reduce friction in partner integrations and service delivery

  • Introduce automation and tooling where possible to improve efficiency

  • Ensure documentation and SOPs are maintained and followed

8. Performance, analytics & member insight

  • Define and track KPIs for growth, partner performance, operational efficiency, and member experience

  • Build dashboards and reporting systems for visibility across stakeholders

  • Use member data and insight to drive personalization, offers, and lifetime value — not just reporting

9. Compliance, trust & risk management

  • Work with Legal and Compliance teams to ensure all partner agreements meet regulatory requirements

  • Own trust & safety and fraud risk across bookings and payments (booking fraud, fake inventory, chargebacks, refund abuse)

  • Ensure operational processes align with compliance standards, and identify and mitigate operational risks

What we're looking for

Required

  • Direct experience building and growing a premium travel, wellness, or lifestyle-services marketplace — a multi-sided platform connecting members with third-party providers (e.g., wellness retreats and clinics, spas, fitness, hotels, flights, accommodations, OTAs, eSIMs, or perks). This is a must-have: you should have personally owned both the operations and the growth of this kind of marketplace model.

  • A premium, members-first service instinct — a track record of delivering exceptional, high-touch experiences for an affluent or experience-driven audience

  • 8–12+ years of experience across operations and commercial/marketplace growth

  • Proven experience managing complex partner ecosystems and multi-sided platforms, including supply acquisition and commercial negotiation

  • Strong leadership experience with the ability to build and scale teams and processes

  • Deep understanding of operational workflows across product, engineering, and customer support

  • Commercial fluency — comfortable owning GMV, take-rate, and unit economics

  • Highly member-centric mindset focused on delivering seamless, premium experiences

  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, plus excellent stakeholder management and communication

Strong plus

  • Background in wellness, hospitality, luxury travel, or affluent consumer brands

  • Experience in fintech, super apps, or high-growth consumer tech environments

Success in this role looks like

  • The wellness-led Lifestyle & Travel vertical grows in supply, demand, and revenue — with healthy unit economics

  • Members choose product for premium wellness and travel experiences, and come back

  • Wellness, lifestyle, and travel services operate reliably with minimal member friction

  • Strong coordination across Product, Engineering, QA, and Support teams

  • Clear visibility into growth, operational performance, and partner quality

  • Fast issue resolution, strong duty of care, and reduced operational incidents

  • Scalable processes that support rapid expansion of services, partners, and markets

  • Continuous improvement driven by member feedback and data insight

Hiring process

  • Intro Call with a recruiter

  • Call with CPO/COO

  • Call with Co-founder (optionally)

  • Offer

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