Role Description:
As the Director of Technology for Customer Service (CS), you will own the technology vision and lead all product build and integration teams responsible for powering the Customer Service department at Booking.com.
Your technology decisions will enable our 10,000+ agents to deliver on our 24/7 promise to support every customer, resulting in millions of successful trips and happy travelers.
As a global, industry-leading company which offers customer service for an expanding product range through a multitude of channels from live chat and messaging to voice, our Customer Service teams have a promise to support every customer, with any query, the first time around. This requires an exceptional ecosystem of tools, services and technologies in support of that.
Challenges and opportunities for the Director of Technology role range from driving delivery and innovation on this wide ecosystem, to implementing best in class third party software and in-house built services ensuring we maintain impressive service levels on our technology stack. Achieving this with a mix of in-house and external development teams.
Building and maintaining an outstanding partnership with business and product stakeholders from the Customer Service leadership team is essential to ensure successful delivery of all products and services.
This role is central in leading our Technology strategy for our Customer Service platform and covers:
Overall CS Technology platform within Booking.com including the Enterprise Architecture
Integrations between our CS platform and third parties
API Ecosystem connecting the platform
Bespoke Booking.com CS Agent tools, services and capabilities
Technical relationship with third parties
Management of in-house and third party development staff.
CS provides technology and services for all of Booking.com across many BU’s and verticals including Accommodations & Trips.
AI for Agent support within the Unified Agent Desktop (co-pilot, summarisation, AQM)
AI for Customer support including voice and chat bots.
Required Qualifications: to be successful in this role, you need to have:
Strong understanding of technology and have a proven track record of designing and building high quality services, web and mobile applications, especially high volume consumer facing applications
Experience with 3rd party vendor relationships and integrations are must-haves.
Ideal candidates will have experience with building or integrating technology systems for Customer Service organisations.
Experience with Amazon Connect, Pega, Parloa and or other similar systems are must-haves.
At least 10 years of multi-level leadership experience is critical for this role
Senior-level stakeholder management experience, including VP and SVP level experience
People & Function Leadership
Lead, inspire and motivate your Engineering function through leading by example and defining what success looks like, giving ownership & providing clarity when necessary
Line manage Senior Managers as well as top technical talent, such as Principals.
Communicate strategy in a compelling manner to multiple teams and stakeholders
Foster inclusion by holding self and others accountable
Drive people centric initiatives that enable workforce diversity
Partner in and outside of our Business unit to lead and shape the people agenda
Create a learning environment by coaching, maintaining two-way feedback, helping people extract & share personal learnings, and supporting teams to constantly adapt
Foster the engineering culture; innovate, work as a team and celebrate success
Build a world class team through nurturing, attracting, and retaining tech talent from around the world
Empower your teams to do their best work at Booking.com
Be curious, learn, iterate and shape our culture
Technology, Craft & Delivery Leadership
Lead, influence and own delivery within your function including department goals
Partner with other functions and business units to deliver on our strategic agenda
Maintain focus on the end goal, minimise risk and remove roadblocks for our strategic agenda
Ensure clear and effective communication at all levels: proactively keep all stakeholders informed of what’s happening, upcoming changes, projects, issues and risks
Foster mastery in engineering craftsmanship across Booking.com including shaping ways of working
Own Technology-wide topics and help lead and grow the department
Embed Agile ways of working and values within the organisation
Identify problems and significantly improve, change or adapt existing methods and techniques drawing from personal experiences and feedback
Drive a DevOps culture
Technology, Architecture & Product Strategy
Shape, define and build new services, processes and operational plans in alignment with the commercial and financial needs of the business
Lead, take ownership and shape the technology strategic objectives and roadmaps
Be a strategic thought partner and influence stakeholders across the Accommodations and the broader business to set and align the strategic direction of your function
Make decisions in complex and ambiguous situations, and guide others in their decision making by recognizing and challenging assumptions, introducing relevant data and multiple perspectives
Ensure that the Booking architecture principles and engineering practices are adhered to, and that there is direction and alignment for each product.
Anticipate the need for changes based on context, and set renewed courses of action to engage teams and achieve goals, while striving to make the impact clear and understandable
Drive innovation in your function
Own the architecture across your function
Overall Requirements:
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Industry experience at fast moving, innovative global technology companies
Experience operating large, Internet scale applications and distributed systems spanning multiple languages, platforms, front and back end services, networks and public cloud platforms.
Deep understanding of technology, with a proven track record of designing and building platforms at scale
Highly familiar with the topology of their environment and all of their systems
Proven ability to contribute to system design, architecture, and problem solving conversations. Ability to get deep into technical details when needed.
Able to provide technical direction to the teams (driving tech strategy, making build v buy decisions, prioritising etc.)
Great collaboration on technology topics; the successful candidate should be able to spar with their counterparts in other organisations, including Senior Architects and Fellows.
Demonstrable experience of working in Agile environments and more importantly an Agile culture and ethos
Demonstrable experience of setting, leading and influencing both the Engineering and Business strategy to the medium and long-term
Experience with managing and coaching teams of senior tech leaders including building and growing teams
Independent, pragmatic and proactive work attitude
Well versed in Engineering Craftsmanship
Building a DevOps culture
Be humble and human
Excellent communication skills
Strong commercial acumen
