Senior Business Operations Director
Perk (TravelPerk) · Barcelona, Catalonia
About Us
Perk (formerly TravelPerk) is the intelligent platform for travel and spend management. Built to tackle the time-consuming, manual work that gets in the way of real work, our tools automate everything from travel bookings to expenses, invoice processing, and more. By eliminating this shadow work that wastes hours, erodes morale, and saps innovation, we're on a mission to power real work, with real impact.
We're trusted by more than 12,000 companies worldwide, including Bolt, GoCardless, and Fabletics, and we're tackling the 7 hours of lost productivity per employee each week, a $1.7 trillion problem https://www.perk.com/shadow-work-report.
Founded in 2015, Perk has grown into a global company of more than 1,800 people across 12 offices globally, with headquarters in London and Boston. We combine innovation, control, and simplicity to transform how businesses work and how people feel at work.
At Perk, we're driven by our values, like being an owner, delivering a 7-star experience, and working as one team. We value curiosity, purpose, and mindset, not just knowledge, to unlock the power in your potential. Our talent team brings together leading minds from the travel, fintech, and SaaS industries, representing over 70 countries. If you're excited about having a real impact and shaping how millions of people experience work, we'd love you on the team.
Visit www.perk.com http://www.perk.com to learn more.
ABOUT THE ROLE
Perk is growing fast, and we need great leaders who can scale our operations as quickly as our revenue.
We are looking for a world-class operator to tackle Perk's most complex operational challenges. This role functions as an 18-to-24-month leadership incubator / launch pad. Your mandate is to join the team, ramp quickly, take on our largest, most entangled operational initiatives, prove your impact, and then transition into the broader business to run a major operational function, geography, or business unit. If you are successful, you won't be in this role in two years.
There is no business-as-usual in Strategy & Ops. You will be deployed against the company’s most urgent, high-stakes operational priorities. You will report to the VP of Business Operations under the Office of the President and have direct, unfiltered visibility with our Leadership Team and functional leads.
We are explicitly looking for an Operational Architect: someone who excels at running complex, multi-threaded programs (e.g., post-merger integrations, global operating model redesigns, cross-functional system migrations). You carry the program on your shoulders, manage severe dependencies across functions, and force alignment to get the company's highest-stakes, board-level initiatives over the finish line.
Let’s be clear: we do not want PMOs, governance trackers, or slide-deck architects. We want someone who gets in the mud to move things and makes Perk move faster. We need smart, grounded people who thrive with high autonomy and come ready to make an immediate, tangible business impact.
WHAT YOU’LL DO
- Architect and Execute Complex Initiatives: Take full accountability for massive, multi-threaded operational programs that materially shape the trajectory of Perk. When you lead a program, Perk's problems are your problems; the buck stops with you.
- Deconstruct Bottlenecks: Take on messy, fragmented operating models. You bring structure to chaos, identify failure points early, and fix operational root causes before they become organizational bottlenecks.
- Drive Strategic Alignment: Align resources and functions when and where they are needed. You frame complex trade-offs and operational risks clearly, defending decisions directly to the Executive Leadership Team.
- Use Data to Drive Decisions: You don't wait for dashboards; you pull your own data and use it to uncover operational realities and build consensus. You tell simple, rigorous, data-driven stories that force executive decisions and align teams behind the critical path.
- Influence for Speed: Build genuine credibility with the functional leaders you support by providing undeniable value. You aren't here to monitor their work—you are here to help them execute their hardest cross-functional dependencies at pace.
WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR
- Experience: 8–12+ years of experience combining top-tier strategy consulting and/or deep operational leadership inside high-growth scaling tech or SaaS environments.
- Skin in the Game: You left consulting or corporate advisory to build and operate. You have owned the actual outcome of major operational initiatives where your reputation was on the line.
- Large-Scale Operational Architecture: Proven track record leading massive, complex cross-functional transformations, post-merger integrations (M&A), or operating model redesigns end-to-end.
- Data Skills & Tooling: You don't wait for analysts. You can pull your own data (Looker, Salesforce), manipulate complex datasets (Advanced Sheets/Excel), and build rigorous models to uncover operational truth.
- Executive Storytelling: You distill messy, multi-layered operational programs into sharp, clear narratives that give executive leadership full conviction on decisions and resource allocation.
- AI Fluency (Massive Plus): Highly beneficial if you have a strong working knowledge of leveraging LLMs and AI tools to automate workflows, accelerate analysis, and force-multiply operational efficiency.
- Impact-First: You care about actual business progress, not status reports or governance overhead. Where you are deployed, execution speeds up and operational roadblocks disappear.
- Ego-Less & Hands-On: You tackle massive ambiguity head-on and are never afraid of getting in the mud to move things forward. You take pride in execution, regardless of how unglamorous the task is—you would mop the bathrooms if it helped the company win.
- Healthy Obsession: You don't have an off switch when a critical puzzle remains unsolved. You find it difficult to stop thinking through an operational problem over the weekend simply because a broken process bugs you.
- Strong Bias for Action: You prefer a solid, decisive call made today over a perfect plan made next week. You don't wait for universal consensus to get moving.
- Decisive: You know how to bring cross-functional leaders along, but you also know when debate has run its course and it is time to mandate action.
- A Healthy Chip on Your Shoulder: You take ownership like it's second nature, operating with the scrappy, relentless hunger of someone who still has something to prove.
WHAT WE OFFER
- Receive competitive compensation and equity ownership in Perk
- Rest and recharge with our generous allocation of vacation days plus public holidays
- Take control of your physical health with your choice of private healthcare or a gym allowance
- Know that your loved ones are protected financially through your Life Insurance if the worst were to happen
- Join our unforgettable Perk events, including our spectacular annual summer party
- Always feel supported with Spring Health, our market-leading wellbeing partner, providing fast, comprehensive access to 12x therapy and 12x coaching sessions for you and your loved ones
- Make your money go further with our flexible compensation plan
- Focus on your family with 17 weeks’ paid parental leave during your child’s first year
- Contribute to your community with 16 paid hours per year to spend volunteering for your dearest charitable causes
- Broaden your horizons with up to 20 "Work from Anywhere" days per year
- Nurture your language skills with in real-life English, Spanish and Catalan lessons
- Follow your passions and take a four-week, fully paid sabbatical once you reach 5 years
- Let us help you move to one of our hubs with relocation support
INTERVIEW PROCESS
Our goal is to move you from first call to final offer in under a month. If you are the right fit, we will not waste your time.
- Talent Acquisition Interview – 30 mins Virtual
- Interview with the Hiring Manager (VP of Business Operations) – 45 mins Virtual
- Case Study / Assessment Interview with a panel of BizOps Alumni (leaders who started in this exact seat and graduated into the business) – 1 hour Virtual
- Team Fit Interview with the Strategy & Ops Team – 30 mins Virtual
- Executive Interview with the President / Leadership Team – 30 mins
AI at Perk
AI is embedded in how we work across every function. The tools you'll use day-to-day are AI-enabled so you can move faster and spend more time on the work that matters. In practice, that means using AI to research and prioritise accounts, draft and refine outreach, handle customer interactions more effectively, synthesise information, and cut through shadow work - the invisible tasks that pull people away from the work only they can do - so you can focus on relationships and outcomes.
How We Work
At Perk, we take an IRL-first approach to work, where our team works together in-person 3 days a week. As such, this role requires you to be based within commuting distance of our hubs. We fundamentally believe in the value of meeting in real life to improve connectivity, productivity, creativity and ultimately making us a great place to work.
For certain roles, we can help with relocation from anywhere in the world, English is the official language at the office. Please submit your resume in English if you choose to apply. Do not forget to submit an updated portfolio and/or resume.
Perk is a global company with a diverse customer base, and we want to make sure the people behind our product reflect that. We’re an equal opportunity employer, which means you’re welcome at Perk regardless of how you look, where you’re from, or anything else that makes you, well, you.
Protect Yourself from Recruitment Scams
All official communication from Perk will always come from email addresses ending in @perk.com http://perk.com or @externalperk.com http://externalperk.com, our verified social media channels, or recruiters listed on our official LinkedIn page. We will never ask you to pay for equipment, training, or fees, request sensitive personal information such as bank details early in the process, or communicate through unofficial apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal. If you receive a message claiming to be from Perk that seems suspicious, please do not respond. Forward it to security [at] perk .com, and we will confirm whether it is legitimate.
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