vpteam
Director of Marketplace
Job description
Reports to: Group COO Function: Marketplace / Operations & Commercial B2B Contract
About the role
We're looking for a Director of Marketplace to build, scale, and grow our premium Lifestyle & Travel vertical — with wellness at its core. Reporting directly to the Group COO, you'll own both the commercial growth and the operational foundation of a curated marketplace that connects discerning, experience-driven members with the best of wellness, travel, and lifestyle.
Wellness is the centre of gravity for this vertical. The most valuable experiences our members want — and the fastest-growing part of premium travel and lifestyle — are built around wellbeing: wellness retreats, spas and longevity clinics, fitness and recovery, mental health and mindfulness, and health-led travel. You'll own this category end-to-end alongside the broader travel and lifestyle services (hotels, flights, accommodations, eSIMs, and exclusive perks), and make it the reason members choose this product.
This is a commercial and operational leadership role. You'll grow the marketplace — acquiring premium supply, driving demand and conversion, and owning the economics — while turning a fragmented ecosystem of partners into a scalable, reliable, and genuinely premium offering. The ideal candidate has built and grown a premium travel, wellness, or lifestyle-services marketplace and knows what an exceptional, members-first standard of service actually feels like.
What you'll own
- Marketplace growth & commercial
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Own the growth and commercial performance of the vertical — GMV, revenue, take-rate, and unit economics
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Acquire and curate premium supply across wellness, travel, and lifestyle, with wellness as the priority category
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Drive the demand side: conversion, attach rate, repeat usage, and marketplace liquidity (balancing supply and demand)
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Negotiate partner commercial terms — rates, inventory access, exclusivity, and co-marketing
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Build the merchandising and curation strategy that makes premium wellness and travel experiences easy to discover and book
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Identify and launch new wellness and lifestyle categories, partners, and markets to expand the offering
- Operational leadership & strategy
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Define and execute the operational strategy for wellness, lifestyle, and travel services
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Build scalable processes, frameworks, and playbooks for partner onboarding and lifecycle management
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Identify operational gaps and inefficiencies and implement structured improvements
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Establish clear ownership, accountability, and KPIs across all operational streams
- Partner operations & ecosystem management
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Own onboarding, integration, and ongoing operations of partners (wellness retreats and clinics, spas, fitness and recovery providers, hotels, airlines, OTAs, eSIM providers, perks platforms, etc.)
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Manage outsourced service providers, including concierge support and customer experience vendors, while protecting a premium, on-brand standard of service
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Define SLAs, performance metrics, and accountability frameworks for external vendors
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Ensure partners meet performance, SLA, and quality standards — and the curation bar for a premium audience
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Build strong relationships with key partners and act as the primary operational and commercial escalation point
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Continuously evaluate and expand the partner ecosystem to improve coverage, quality, and value
- Premium member experience & service reliability
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Own the end-to-end member journey across all wellness, lifestyle, and travel services
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Set and protect a premium, members-first service standard — proactive, white-glove, and built around trust and care
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Ensure high reliability across discovery, booking, fulfillment, and post-purchase support flows
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Lead travel disruption and duty-of-care response (cancellations, delays, emergencies) with 24/7 readiness and rebooking at scale
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Monitor and improve premium experience metrics (NPS/CSAT, conversion, success rate, cancellations, complaints, resolution time)
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Work closely with Support teams to identify pain points and proactively resolve them before members feel them
- Cross-functional coordination
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Act as the central bridge between Operations, Product, Engineering, QA, Support, Compliance, and Partnerships
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Ensure smooth integration of partner services into the product ecosystem
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Drive alignment across teams so features are correctly implemented, tested, and launched
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Create structured feedback loops between Support, QA, and Product teams to improve member experience
- Issue resolution & escalation management
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Build frameworks for identifying, triaging, and resolving operational issues
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Oversee resolution of complex issues across bookings, payments, fulfillment, and partner failures
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Partner closely with Finance teams to resolve payment-related issues including failed transactions, refunds, reconciliation gaps, and settlement discrepancies
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Ensure strong coordination between Operations, Finance, Support, and Engineering for timely issue resolution
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Establish escalation protocols across internal teams and external partners
- Process optimization & internal efficiency
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Streamline internal workflows between Operations, Support, QA, and Engineering
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Reduce friction in partner integrations and service delivery
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Introduce automation and tooling where possible to improve efficiency
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Ensure documentation and SOPs are maintained and followed
- Performance, analytics & member insight
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Define and track KPIs for growth, partner performance, operational efficiency, and member experience
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Build dashboards and reporting systems for visibility across stakeholders
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Use member data and insight to drive personalization, offers, and lifetime value — not just reporting
- Compliance, trust & risk management
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Work with Legal and Compliance teams to ensure all partner agreements meet regulatory requirements
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Own trust & safety and fraud risk across bookings and payments (booking fraud, fake inventory, chargebacks, refund abuse)
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Ensure operational processes align with compliance standards, and identify and mitigate operational risks
What we're looking for
Required
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Direct experience building and growing a premium travel, wellness, or lifestyle-services marketplace — a multi-sided platform connecting members with third-party providers (e.g., wellness retreats and clinics, spas, fitness, hotels, flights, accommodations, OTAs, eSIMs, or perks). This is a must-have: you should have personally owned both the operations and the growth of this kind of marketplace model.
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A premium, members-first service instinct — a track record of delivering exceptional, high-touch experiences for an affluent or experience-driven audience
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8–12+ years of experience across operations and commercial/marketplace growth
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Proven experience managing complex partner ecosystems and multi-sided platforms, including supply acquisition and commercial negotiation
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Strong leadership experience with the ability to build and scale teams and processes
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Deep understanding of operational workflows across product, engineering, and customer support
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Commercial fluency — comfortable owning GMV, take-rate, and unit economics
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Highly member-centric mindset focused on delivering seamless, premium experiences
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Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, plus excellent stakeholder management and communication
Strong plus
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Background in wellness, hospitality, luxury travel, or affluent consumer brands
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Experience in fintech, super apps, or high-growth consumer tech environments
Success in this role looks like
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The wellness-led Lifestyle & Travel vertical grows in supply, demand, and revenue — with healthy unit economics
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Members choose product for premium wellness and travel experiences, and come back
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Wellness, lifestyle, and travel services operate reliably with minimal member friction
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Strong coordination across Product, Engineering, QA, and Support teams
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Clear visibility into growth, operational performance, and partner quality
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Fast issue resolution, strong duty of care, and reduced operational incidents
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Scalable processes that support rapid expansion of services, partners, and markets
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Continuous improvement driven by member feedback and data insight
Hiring process
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Intro Call with a recruiter
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Call with CPO/COO
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Call with Co-founder (optionally)
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Offer


