About Booking.com

Established in 1996 in Amsterdam, Booking.com has grown from a small Dutch start-up to one of the largest ecommerce companies in the world. Booking.com is the largest business within Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG) and accounts for the vast majority of Booking Holdings’ total revenue. Booking Holdings is a leading Fortune 500 e-commerce conglomerate with a market cap of roughly $75 billion (2022). Booking.com currently employs approximately 10,000 employees in 120+ offices in 70 countries worldwide.

With a mission to make it easier for everyone to experience the world, Booking.com invests in digital technology that helps take the friction out of travel. Booking.com connects travelers with the world’s largest selection of incredible places to stay, including everything from apartments, vacation homes, and family-run B&Bs to 5-star luxury resorts and even tree houses. The Booking.com website and mobile apps are available in over 40 languages, offer more than 28,984,513 total reported listings, and cover 142,259 destinations in 229 countries worldwide. Each day, more than 1,550,000 room nights are reserved on its platform. So whether travelling for business or leisure, customers can instantly book their ideal accommodation quickly and easily, without booking fees and backed up by its promise to price match. Via the customer experience team, customers can reach Booking.com 24/7 for assistance and support in over 40 languages, any time of the day or night.

At Booking.com, we are all involved in making hundreds of decisions every day. The decisions we make are a reflection of our Values - they reflect what is important to us, both as individuals and as an organisation.

When Values are made explicit, they provide clarity on what “good” looks like. And when they are shared, they build unity in a group. They build culture.

Think customer first. We obsess about adding value for our customers - guests, partners, colleagues - to make it easier for everyone to experience the world.

Own it. We deliver on our promises, make informed decisions and prioritize to get the important things done today.

Learn forever. We are resilient, take time to reflect, and seek to learn – from colleagues, from the outside world and from our failures.

Succeed together. We celebrate team success, through making connections, building trust and valuing the diverse perspectives of others.

Do the right thing. We get the right results the right way. For each other, our communities and the world around us.

Senior Director Software Development - Marketing

As a Senior Director Software Development, you are responsible for leading the Marketing technology strategy and execution areas focused on Performance, Partnerships, Growth, Brand and Social Media Marketing, a department of self steering teams who develop products and constantly innovate to delight our customers.

As Booking.com envisions a future in which it will serve customers a one-stop solution for all travel-related needs, we are working towards offering a fully ‘Connected Trip’, in which every aspect of the travel experience can be planned and booked through us.

As our business is constantly growing, we are looking for a senior leader to join our team, impact our users every day and take our product and technology to the next level.

We hire the best and the brightest professionals, and we empower them to innovate, in the Marketing department you need to have:

• Led large technology organisations at scale
• Senior leaderships experience at driving B2B and B2C platforms including API Ecosystems and interoperability between platforms
• Strong technology thought leadership to marry up the Business, Commercial, Traveller and Partners needs
• Demonstrable experience of building technology shared services to support the wider organisation
• Strong commercial awareness to lead the technology for our customer acquisition and retention capabilities and new market segments
• Strong understanding for the need for operational health & compliance

Your focus will be on:

• Building a unified Engineering department in the Marketing department, these teams have historically been embedded in the channels, you will set up the new operating model for technology across the department and with cross departmental teams also.
• Representing the department as part of the company wide Technology leadership group, working with the CTO and Engineering leaders from Accommodation, Trips, Marketplace and Fintech.
• Designing and completing a technology plan that is aligned with the Marketing department strategy. That has buy-in and approval from the Marketing leadership team, this role will report into the Chief Marketing Officer.
• Lead the modernization efforts required for the Marketing department

In your role you will lead the Senior Technology team for Marketing making a marked contribution in defining the direction of new products, processes or operational plans in line with the Booking.com vision and strategy. Your role will operate in the mid to long term strategic narrative of the organisation ensuring that the organisation is set up for success through building a fantastic team, excellent ways of working and great technology. You can hold your own in a technical argument, but you know getting out of the way is often the best option. You get things done via influence not authority. You unlock the creativity of your team and inspire them to build the best for our customers. You work closely with your product and channel counterparts to ensure we are always working towards what’s most important for our customers and to achieve high business impact.

You take full end to end responsibility for your area.

Responsibilities:

People & Function Leadership

• Lead, inspire and motivate your Engineering function through leading by example and setting expectations around what success looks like, giving ownership and providing clarity when necessary
• Line manage Directors and Senior Managers as well as top technical talent, such as Principals
• Communicate strategy in a compelling manner to multiple teams and relevant stakeholders
• Foster inclusion by holding self and others accountable
• Drive people centric initiatives that enable workforce diversity
• Organisational design, strategy and budget to ensure we are set up to deliver on our strategic agenda
• Partner in and outside of our Business unit to lead and shape the people agenda across Booking.com
• Create a learning environment by coaching, two-way feedback, helping people extract and share personal learnings, and support teams to constantly adapt
• Foster a positive engineering culture who innovate, work as a team and celebrate success
• Build a world class team through nurturing, attracting, and retaining tech talent from around the world
• Empower your teams to do their best work at Booking.com
• Be curious, learn, iterate and shape our culture

Technology, Craft & Delivery Leadership

• Create long-term plans that align with the overall focus of the business
• Lead, influence and own delivery within your function including department goals
• Partner with other functions and business units to deliver on our strategic agenda
• Maintain focus on the end goal, minimise risk and remove roadblocks for our strategic agenda
• Ensure clear and effective communication at all levels: proactively keep all stakeholders informed of what’s happening, upcoming changes, projects, issues and risks
• Develop mastery in engineering craftsmanship across Booking.com including shaping ways of working
• Own Technology-wide topics and help lead and grow the department
• Embed Agile ways of working and values within the organisation
• Identify problems and significantly improve, change or adapt existing methods and techniques drawing from personal experiences and feedback
• Drive a DevOps culture

Technology, Architecture & Product Strategy

• Shape, define and build new products, processes and operational plans in alignment with the commercial and financial needs of the business
• Lead, take ownership and shape the technology strategic objectives and roadmaps
• Be a strategic thought partner and influence senior stakeholders across Marketing and the broader business to set and align the strategic direction of your function
• Make decisions in complex and ambiguous situations, and guide others in their decision making by recognizing and challenging assumptions, introducing relevant data and multiple perspectives
• Ensure that the Booking architecture principles and engineering practices are adhered to, and that there is direction and alignment for each product
• Anticipate the need for changes based on context, and set renewed courses of action to engage teams and achieve goals, while aspiring to make the impact clear and understandable
• Drive innovation in your function
• Be responsible for the architecture across your function

Ideal Experience & Skills:

• Substantial years of Tech Leadership experience
• Experience with large scale platforms and high traffic (100,000+ visitors per day), preferably E-commerce sites or marketplace companies
• Demonstrable experience of building, shaping and leading a cross functional Engineering function or business unit at scale (150/200+ people)
• Must understand technology and have a consistent track record of designing and building high quality web and mobile applications especially high volume consumer facing applications
• Demonstrable experience of working in Agile environments and more importantly an Agile culture and ethos
• Demonstrable experience of setting, leading and influencing both the Engineering and Business strategy to the medium and long-term
• Experience with leading and coaching teams of senior tech leaders including building and growing teams
• Independent, pragmatic and proactive work attitude
• Well versed in Engineering Craftsmanship
• Cloud based technologies
• Building a DevOps culture
• Be humble and human
• Excellent communication skills
• Strong commercial savvy

Other Personal Characteristics

• Character traits: open mind, learning attitude, clear behavior, positive, overachiever, strong communicator, proactive and collaborative.
• Strategic problem solver yet focused on execution; able to roll up sleeves to get things done.
• Able to function in a fast-moving entrepreneurial environment.
• Data driven, experimental, ready to learn and open to change.
• Keep the customer at the centre of everything you do.
• Good cultural and organizational sensitivity.
• Committed to build