Head of Retail, Strategy & Operations

The Role:

We are on a mission to revolutionise the retail e-commerce industry. We are a tech-driven company, committed to delivering innovative solutions that redefine the shopping experience for millions of customers worldwide. We are at the forefront of something massive, and we're looking for an experienced leader who can help us shape the future of retail e-commerce.

Retail (non-food Shopping) is how Deliveroo and Wolt grow beyond restaurants and grocery. As the Head of Retail, Strategy & Operations, you will lead the direction of Deliveroo and Wolt’s newest vertical. Reporting to the Director of Strategy & Operations, New Verticals EMEA, you will shape our approach across commercial, operations, marketing and customer experience. This role owns the strategy and operating rhythm for the business: where we play, which retailers we need in each market, whether they succeed after launch, and whether revenue and profit are on the plan.

This is an individual contributor (IC) role, meaning you won’t have any direct reports. You will set the agenda that Product, Commercial, Marketing, Operations, and country teams execute, and you will need to work cross-functionally with teams to ensure plans are delivered.

The NV Strategy & Operations team is responsible for the end-to-end strategy and performance management of New Verticals EMEA as a whole, including target-setting, goals and OKRs, and the weekly and monthly business reviews. Within that, this role owns the Retail strategy.

The role is hybrid in London, with 3 days per week in the office and potential for quarterly travel to offices in the US and EMEA as required.

Responsibilities:

• Define our future strategy for Retail, including "where we play" and "how we win" to grow revenue and drive customer acquisition.
• Identify future elements of our customer and partner value proposition and the required capabilities to deliver them in collaboration with the NV tech teams, and lead deployment of these across EMEA.
• Establish a roadmap to becoming the preferred delivery provider for our Retail partners. Develop an understanding of Retail partner needs and advocate for them across teams.
• Ensure detailed implementation plans are developed across markets and teams, with a strong follow-up on execution through robust tracking and issue resolution.
• Lead delivery of revenue growth by identifying partner growth levers for Retail and supporting local teams to deploy them across their partner portfolios.
• Manage the P&L and all financial investments to realise or exceed our annual financial goals. Set annual plans including resource allocation, budgets and market targets for the EMEA portfolio.
• Lead performance management and forecasting routines to ensure in-year delivery and course-correction to meet revenue and profit targets.
• Support negotiations with the largest partners and ensure teams approach all negotiations following our Retail commercial framework regarding rate structure and return on investment.
• Ensure that local teams can build joint business plans with the most important Retail partners. Collaborate with the global Merchant organisation on the partners with an international footprint.
• Create a compelling vision with a sense of unity and a desire to perform together. Provide reporting, best-practice guides, playbooks and training so teams can run the plan effectively.
• Foster collaboration throughout the organisation, understanding the benefit and importance of central / local collaboration.

Leadership Capabilities & Behaviours:

• Performance-focused: A drive to understand what happened, why it happened and what to do next. Owns a recurring operating rhythm with fixed deadlines, holds a high bar for accuracy, and sets escalation routes when goals are off track.
• Structured: Brings structure to recurring processes and complex problems. Manages multiple workstreams across regions and follows actions through to closure.
• Influential and collaborative: Builds trust with stakeholders and functional leads. Challenges assumptions and pushes for clear decisions and owners, even when data is incomplete. Adapts their style to the audience and is a trusted advisor to senior partners and teams.
• Commercial and analytical: Connects customer, operational and financial metrics to explain performance. Understands the trade-offs between growth and profitability.
• Solution finding and strategy: Identifies commercial opportunities and issues in complex situations, and turns them into clear commercial choices.
• Thought-leadership: Uses data and insight from across the market to shape a clear vision for the future that is recognised internally and externally as industry leading.
• Change Management: Role-models a continuous improvement mindset that embraces change and deploys best-practice approaches to win hearts and minds, so changes embed in the organisation.
• Community-Building: A team player who readily collaborates across teams and will sponsor or lead programmes that inspire an engaged, diverse, winning organisation.

Experience & Skills:

• Demonstrated track record in strategy consulting or similar (ideally 4-6 years of experience).
• Experience in grocery, retail or quick commerce is preferred.
• Highly analytical mindset with strong modelling skills, and the ability to break down large data sets and turn them into actionable insights. Comfortable with P&L metrics.
• Experience running performance management processes, such as business reviews, KPI reporting and plan tracking, for senior audiences.
• Strong problem-solving skills, including identifying root causes, assessing risks and impacts, and determining effective solutions.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with experience working with regional and functional teams inside complex, matrixed organisations.
• Strong written and verbal communication, including concise, numbers-led commentary for senior leadership.

Key questions the role supports:

• What is our strategy for growing non-food retail across EMEA?
• How do we win in retail quick commerce, and what is our value proposition?
• Which product features and capabilities do we need to succeed?
• Which hero retailers do we need to onboard in each market?
• How do we make those retailers successful after launch?
• Which consumer missions and moments are we relevant to?
• How are we pacing against the long-term plan, and what is driving performance?

Key interfaces:

• NV EMEA leadership, and other cross-functional senior stakeholders
• NV functional leads (Product, Commercial, Marketing and Operations, at regional and global level)
• US DoorDash Global Retail teams (S&O, Product, Commercial, Finance)
• Regional General Managers (RGMs) and their regional and country commercial teams across Deliveroo & Wolt markets.