About Us: At Booking.com, data drives our decisions. Technology is at our core. And innovation is everywhere. But our company is more than datasets, lines of code or A/B tests. We’re the thrill of the first night in a new place. The excitement of the next morning. The friends you encounter. The journeys you take. The sights you see. And the memories you make. Through our products, partners and people, we make it easier for everyone to experience the world.
About our team:
The Process Improvement & Tooling (PInT) team as part of Tech Standards is a cross-functional enablement team that brings together business operations, program management, product management, engineering/TPM, Jira SMEs, and data/analytics capabilities to support how Booking.com plans, executes, and steers work.
In structure, the team is organized around work spanning planning and reporting, Jira and related tooling governance, process improvement and enablement, and data/analytics, with the remit to set standards, shape roadmaps, and drive adoption across teams and departments.
Its purpose is to reduce friction in delivery by improving tools and processes, making reporting more reliable, and helping teams use a more consistent, data-driven way of working through the Jira and planning ecosystem.
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Role overview:
The Operational Excellence Lead is responsible for improving how Booking.com plans, prioritises, governs, and executes work through Jira and related planning processes. Rather than focusing only on rollout governance, this role drives sustainable operational excellence by designing scalable ways of working, simplifying processes, improving process health, and enabling teams to use Jira as a reliable operating model for planning, delivery, dependency management, and reporting.
This role partners with business, product, technology, and operational stakeholders across departments to identify friction, map current and future state processes, define standards, and implement measurable improvements. The Operational Excellence Lead uses data, stakeholder insight, and continuous improvement methods to improve flow, increase adoption of standard practices, and help leaders make better decisions at scale.
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**Key Job Responsibilities and Duties: **
- Lead high-complexity, strategically important cross-functional initiatives that improve Jira-supported planning, reporting, dependency management, intake, and governance across Booking.com.
- Scope, design, and deliver operational excellence initiatives end to end, including problem framing, current-state assessment, future-state design, success criteria, implementation, and adoption.
- Translate operational excellence best practices into scalable standards, playbooks, frameworks, and “paved road” ways of working for teams using Jira and related planning tooling.
- Identify process inefficiencies, bottlenecks, duplicate work, and non-value-adding steps across planning and delivery workflows, and drive simplification and standardisation.
- Establish and monitor process health metrics, adoption measures, and qualitative and quantitative signals to identify root causes and prioritise continuous improvements.
- Facilitate planning, prioritisation, retrospective, and improvement sessions with teams and leaders, ensuring outcomes are converted into clear actions, standards, and tool-supported workflows.
- Partner with Business Operations, Product, Engineering, Data, and central functions to ensure Jira structures, workflows, and reporting patterns support business needs while remaining scalable and consistent.
- Enable better decision-making by improving visibility of risks, dependencies, trade-offs, and progress, and by providing structured recommendations to governance forums and senior stakeholders.
- Influence stakeholders up to Director and VP level through clear, compelling communication and strong operational reasoning, building alignment around priorities and improvement opportunities.
- Drive change enablement through documentation, workshops, office hours, training, and stakeholder engagement so that process and tooling changes are adopted in practice, not only documented.
- Act as a senior operational excellence partner for complex Jira-related requests, helping teams distinguish between real process problems, tooling gaps, education needs, and local exceptions.
- Coach and mentor more junior peers on process design, standardisation, stakeholder management, and continuous improvement practices.
- Support annual and quarterly planning cycles by ensuring the relevant Jira standards, planning patterns, and governance practices are in place and continuously improved.
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Role Qualifications and Requirements:
- Proven experience leading large-scale Jira Cloud or Atlassian-related process and tooling initiatives in a complex, global environment.
- Strong background in operational excellence, lean thinking, continuous improvement, process design, or business transformation.
- Experience designing and standardising operating models, planning processes, governance practices, or team ways of working.
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional initiatives independently in ambiguous environments and deliver measurable business impact.
- Strong analytical skills, including the ability to use data and stakeholder insight to diagnose problems, define root causes, and shape practical recommendations.
- Experience influencing senior stakeholders and aligning multiple teams without direct authority.
- Strong facilitation, communication, and change enablement capabilities.
- Ability to balance standardisation and pragmatism, knowing when to scale a pattern, when to simplify, and when to challenge local complexity.
- Experience coaching peers and helping raise craft quality through reusable frameworks, documentation, and best practices.
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Nice-to-Have Skills:
- Teams increasingly use standard Jira planning and reporting patterns instead of local one-offs or parallel tracking.
- Planning and delivery workflows become simpler, clearer, and more consistent across departments.
- Leaders have better visibility into dependencies, risks, and progress, and can make decisions with more confidence.
- Process health, adoption, and data quality improve through measurable operational excellence interventions.
- Teams are able to identify and implement continuous improvements more systematically.
- Jira is experienced as an enabling platform for better ways of working, not just a mandated tool
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Benefits & Perks - Global Impact, Personal Relevance:
Booking.com’s Total Rewards Philosophy is not only about compensation but also about benefits. We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, as well unique-to-Booking.com benefits which include:
- Annual paid time off and generous paid leave scheme including: parent, grandparent, bereavement, and care leave
- Hybrid working including flexible working arrangements, and up to 20 days per year working from abroad (home country)
- Industry leading product discounts - up to 1400 per year - for yourself, including automatic Genius Level 3 status and Booking.com wallet credit
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Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) at Booking.com:
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion have been a core part of our company culture since day one. This ongoing journey starts with our very own employees, who represent over 140 nationalities and a wide range of ethnic and social backgrounds, genders and sexual orientations.
Take it from our Chief People Officer, Paulo Pisano: “At Booking.com, the diversity of our people doesn’t just build an outstanding workplace, it also creates a better and more inclusive travel experience for everyone. Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do. It’s a place where you can make your mark and have a real impact in travel and tech.”
We ensure that colleagues with disabilities are provided the adjustments and tools they need to participate in the job application and interview process, to perform crucial job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment.
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**Application Process: **
This role does not come with relocation assistance.
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- Application and CV Review
- Recruitment Phone Screen
- Business Interview 1
- Business Interview 2
- FIT Interview
- Hiring Decision
Let’s go places together: How we Hire
Booking.com is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We strive to move well beyond traditional equal opportunity and work to create an environment that allows everyone to thrive.
Pre-Employment Screening
If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.