Director - Product

About the company:

Almosafer (part of Seera Group) Saudi Arabia’s Leading Travel Company

Elevating the journey for travelers from Saudi Arabia, the region & beyond, while harnessing Seera Group’s 40+ years of expertise, Almosafer supports Saudi Arabia’s vision as a national champion for tourism. Almosafer creates opportunities for outbound, leisure, and religious travel, whilst serving B2C and B2B customers, partners, and suppliers with state-of-the-art travel solutions, a digital-first mindset, and travel advisory.

About the Role:

​We are looking for a visionary and strategic Product Director for our Core Teams (Payments and Accounts) .

You must be deeply product/tech-driven and an advocate of critical product thinking in the organization. The position reports to the Chief Digital & Technology Officer. The primary mandate of the role is to lead product strategy, discovery, and delivery for the Core product team and be a key facilitator with business stakeholders and other critical teams (revenue, supplier relations, customer care, fulfillment, finance, etc)

It is expected that you must have a deep understanding of eCommerce (having knowledge of consumer online travel (OTA) is a significant bonus, but not a must) and have worked on payments, loyalty products and solutions before. This is a strategic and execution role for the organization. The successful candidate in the role is to first understand the current state of each product offering, and technology development, develop a tailored digital product plan to address the current needs of customers, and create a roadmap for future product and growth opportunities.

Responsibilities:

• Leading, coaching, and growing the Core product management teams - Payments Loyalty and Accounts Establishing a product vision, product innovation, product development, product design, and deployment plans

• Conceptualize and build products that solve relevant customer problems/needs and also innovate to create delightful booking and post-booking experiences.

• Be the Voice of the Customer – uncover market problems, study market trends and collaborate with business partners to understand customer pain points and opportunities.

• Work collaboratively with Marketing, Finance, Customer Service, Fulfillment, UX, and Engineering to prioritize the roadmap and deliver on the product vision.

• Manage roadmaps, requirements, and design process while ensuring alignment with internal stakeholders as well as external customers.

• Work directly with UX and engineers to execute and deliver enhancements through an agile development process.

• Utilize data to define and execute A/B tests which optimize conversion, customer acquisition and/or user engagement.

• Drive innovation where possible to leapfrog the competition, increase efficiencies/reduce costs and improve conversion rates.

• Collaborate with all teams across the organization to meet business objectives & budget goals

• Drive a compelling customer-centric value proposition almosafer customers.

• Responsible for creating and increasing customer retention, loyalty & value, offering, launching, and introducing products to meet strategic business objectives.

• Responsible for market & competitive research and developing long-term product strategy & roadmaps.

• Developing product design through fully compliant user stories and wireframes creating compelling and effective user experiences.

• Building world-class products that set the benchmark for the online travel industry.

• Designing and developing digital product plans, business cases, and budgetary and financial forecasts.

• Analysis of activity related to technical development and project plans to launch products.

• Manage the discovery and delivery teams, motivating and assessing their performance.

• Assess talent gaps and further build a strong product & technology team and develop leaders for the future.

• Managing stakeholder engagement, ensuring strategic alignment, and effectively communicating upwards, across, and down to the team.

• Establish ambitious, but realistic and achievable goals and implement technology & product strategies to meet them.

• Focus on continuous improvement and innovation. Create a culture of experimentation and learning within the team and the organization.

• Leverage data for product designs to reach a variety of addressable look-alike customer audiences as well as for personalization.

• Developing a metrics tracking plan, ideating around future growth opportunities, and prioritizing key features and tests.

• Be in tune with key quantitative and qualitative performance indicators, including but not limited to NPS, customer satisfaction, repeat & loyalty booking growth, transactional and margin growth budget goals & targets, profitability, and strategic objectives.

• Develop profit for the company and provide financial and revenue support to the rest of the organization.

• Advising the senior leadership team on a variety of issues.

• Participating in the formulation of general management policies as a member of the executive management team.

• Defining the necessary level of knowledge on existing and emerging business requirements across the organization.

• Guiding the product teams in a productive, professional way.
   

Profile Requirements:

• Minimum of 8+ plus years in product design, technology, and digital space.

• Solid knowledge of e-commerce products and services design and deployments.

• Solid knowledge of payment processing, loyalty and user accounts management.

• An eCommerce background is required. Preferred experience at an OTA (but not a must).

• Technology and product background is a must.

• An educational background in Computer Science or Engineering will be preferred.

• An MBA and/or Consultancy experience is a plus.

• Demonstrated ability to successfully manage a large product team through continuous product discovery & delivery:

• Objectives & Key Results:

  • Understand the customer and business objectives

  • Translate objectives into measurable and attainable key results

  • Outcome-oriented mindset and approach.

• Product/customer/business discovery.

  • Research and discover problem statements/opportunities that create value for the customer and for the business

  • Display both qualitative and quantitative evidence-based methods for identifying problems/opportunities

  • Prioritize problems/opportunities using an effective and defensible framework, ensuring we deploy resources to high probability bets

  • Define the riskiest assumptions (value, useability, feasibility, and viability)

• Define appropriate methods to validate and test risky assumptions

• Take feedback on proposals and adopt recommendations.

• Communicate and persuade partners and stakeholders effectively

• Proven track record of experimentation (A/B Testing, Prototyping, Useability testing, customer interviewing & user research)

• Product delivery.

  • Translate prioritized discovery findings into a product roadmap

  • Translate roadmap into agile design and technology development artifacts (e.g. epics, stories, user story maps, etc)

  • Collaboratively groom delivery epics and stories into development readiness

  • Work with technical counterparts to identify solutions and technical feasibility constraints and adapt the implementation plan accordingly

  • Work with product design counterparts in defining the right problems to solve and the right way to solve problems through effective customer journeys and feature useability

  • Plan delivery and execution with the team to ensure timely and impactful delivery

• Continuous product improvement.

  • Define the right KPIs/Metrics to measure success for the customer and for the business (Lead metrics and lag metrics)

  • Define appropriate methods to test and clearly measure the impact of solutions/features

  • Identify iterative and continuous improvement opportunities

• Ability to provide competent business advice to senior executives on a wide range of issues.

• Ability to communicate and interact with officials at all levels of government.

• Ability to supervise, coach, and train employees, including organizing, prioritizing, and scheduling work assignments.

• Ability to foster a cooperative work environment.

• Ability to deliver results through effective execution of strategies.

• Employee development and performance management skills.

• Ability to develop and deliver presentations.

• Negotiating skills.

• Knowledge of compliance and regulatory requirements.

• Knowledge of financial/business analysis techniques.