Senior Business Programs Manager

We are looking for a highly skilled and growth-oriented Business Programs Manager with strong problem-solving and analytical skills along with communication and interpersonal skills. In this role, you will be responsible for understanding the business needs and challenges of customers within Expedia Group and driving opportunities that leverage technology and data to create business value. You will drive the analysis and execution of complex commercial portfolio dependencies, business programs, and technical projects requiring coordination across Expedia Group and 3rd party vendor teams to unlock and deliver strategic priorities and capabilities for the Travel Partners & Media Organization. You will. The ideal candidate will bridge the gap between business stakeholders and technology ensuring solutions align with requirements and deliver value while driving continuous improvement in data, content, tools, and programs.

What you’ll do

• Analyze, consult, and develop problem statements while executing initiatives aimed at streamlining workflows, increasing efficiencies, and growing revenue.

• Identify opportunities and make data-driven recommendations for improving business processes using cross cutting tools and technologies to eliminate waste.

• Partner directly with stakeholders to document and understand business problems, evaluate use cases and new technologies aimed at enabling commercial business teams and suppliers.

• Utilize analytics methodologies to provide deeper insights into business performance and future operations. Analyze inputs, outputs, objectives, challenges, data models and situations to deliver logical conclusions.

• Apply techniques such as sampling, model building, and structured analysis to ensure solutions are efficient, cost-effective, and financially feasible.

• Gather, compile, and vet relevant data; develop and execute quantitative analyses with (potentially incomplete) data, cross-check results to identify potential inconsistencies or limitations.

• Develop hypotheses, conduct gap analysis, impact analysis, support business case development, and define detailed functional requirements.

• Create and maintain accurate, up-to-date detailed documentation including business requirements, data analysis, process flows, and user stories.

• Propose innovative and practical solutions to address business challenges, ensuring proposals align with organizational goals and desired capabilities.

• Collaborate with project or program managers to define project scope and execute deliverables and technology teams to test, design, deploy, and validate business solutions meet business needs.

• Identify potential risks and understand business implications of observations or analyses.

• Participate in or lead system testing, user testing, and validate solutions delivered meet specified requirements and quality standards.

• Integrate timelines and milestones across projects, identifying areas of synergy or dependency.

• Determine actual or potential gaps in resourcing and recommend strategies to mitigate.

• Define and implement processes to improve team execution and delivery.

• Build basic program structure (when needed) including Business case/ROI, requirements, prioritization alignment, trade off recommendations, team engagement, identifying sponsors and stakeholders, pitch decks for leadership, budget, or roadmaps.

• Proactively contribute to cross team collaboration and lead alignment of work with broader initiatives tailoring messaging to audience and providing relevant communication.

• Lead proactive identification and mitigation of issues and risks. Leverages experience to anticipate risks in advance of impacts.

• Evaluate existing patterns in and across systems to identify & implement improvements.

• Coordinate with team to define measures of success, phase milestones, and priorities.

• Lead increasingly adaptive, ambiguous programs or highly complex technical projects.

• Keep relevant stakeholders informed of progress toward or changes to task timing that impacts the project schedule.

• Establish effective working relationships with stakeholders and build rapport to become a trusted advisor.

• Demonstrate critical understanding of business processes and challenge to recommend and develop solutions to meet unique business needs and achieve objectives.

Who you are

• 10+ years of professional experience working in a data-driven commercial technology business with proven experience as a Senior Business Programs Manager or related role.

• Bachelor’s degree in business administration, Information Technology, or a related field

• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills

• Detail oriented and able to interpret the needs of customers, analyze data, document, and translate business requirements for technical teams.

• Knowledgeable of existing technology platforms and emerging technologies with ability to identify and determine potential outcomes that can be achieved through current applications and new offerings.

• Experience in business optimization and problem-solving with progressive responsibility, preferably within the travel and technology industry.

• Skilled in facilitating collaboration with different stakeholders with varied perspectives to develop effective solutions to issues.

• Experience working in B2B environment with background in data-driven business models.

• Knowledgeable of relevant program methodologies and tools such as Miro, JIRA, Confluence, MS PowerPoint, MS Excel, SQL, Tableau, etc.

• Able to work within an agile framework and collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams, business leaders, product managers, engineers, and analytics to transform business opportunities into solutions.

• Demonstrated experience gathering and synthesizing requirements, use cases, narratives, and business case rationale for validation and delivery with cross-functional groups including finance.

• Strives for optimum organizational efficiency by applying systems thinking across boundaries and making recommendations about policies/ processes.

• Takes whole systems approach to analyze issues and implement holistic solutions by ensuring that linkages between structure, people, process and technology are made.

• Exhibits storytelling techniques that build trust with team and partners and establish long-term relationships.

• Possess excellent verbal/written communication and data presentation skills, including an ability to effectively communicate with both business and technical teams.