E-Commerce Director

Black & Grey HR is partnering with a diversified holding company in the UAE. Our client is seeking a visionary, P&L-owning E-Commerce Director to lead the digital transformation and aggressive growth of our client's consumables business. This is a high-impact, highly confidential executive role. You will define the long-term digital roadmap, drive omni-channel market share expansion, and build a best-in-class online customer experience for high-frequency, low-discretionary-spend consumables categories. Key Responsibilities Strategic Leadership & P&L Ownership - Develop & Own the 3–5 Year Digital Strategy: Define the long-term vision, strategic pillars, investment priorities, and competitive positioning for the consumables category across all digital channels (owned e-commerce, marketplaces, quick commerce, social commerce). - Full P&L Accountability: Own the digital channel P&L end-to-end, including revenue, gross margin, trade spend, last-mile contribution, marketing efficiency (ROAS/MER), fixed and variable opex, and final segment EBITDA. - Annual & Quarterly Planning: Lead the integrated business planning (IBP) process for the digital channel, aligning sales, marketing, supply chain, finance, and category teams around a single set of aggressive but achievable targets. - Investment Prioritization: Make build-vs-partner, technology investment, and resource allocation decisions based on strategic value, ROI modeling, and competitive urgency. - Board & Executive Reporting: Present monthly and quarterly business reviews to the C-suite and board, articulating performance against KPIs, key strategic initiatives, risk mitigation, and new growth vectors. Advanced Analytics, Insights & Commercial Strategy - Customer & Behavioral Analytics: Lead the development of a unified customer data strategy, leveraging first-party data, purchase frequency analysis, lifetime value (LTV) modeling, cohort analysis, and churn prediction to drive decisions. - Pricing Architecture & Elasticity Modeling: Establish a dynamic pricing framework that optimizes between competitive positioning, customer price sensitivity, promotional lift, and margin health. Use A/B testing and causal inference to calibrate price changes. - Category & Assortment Analytics: Identify over-performing and under-penetrated sub-categories, supplier co-investment opportunities, and white-space assortment gaps using market basket analysis and adjacent-category affinity modeling. - Forecasting & Demand Sensing: Oversee the development of SKU-level demand forecasts (7-day, 30-day, seasonal) to minimize stockouts and overstock, integrating external signals (weather, promotions, competitor actions). - Competitive Intelligence System: Institutionalize a real-time competitive tracking framework covering pricing, promotions, assortment depth, delivery fees, and customer experience across all key rivals. Lead rapid response playbooks. Omni-Channel Marketing, Brand & Customer Growth - Holistic Marketing Strategy: Set the strategic direction for the full marketing mix: performance marketing (paid search, social, programmatic), owned channels (email, push, SMS), offline-to-online (O2O) integration, influencer, and loyalty. - Customer Acquisition & Retention: Drive the customer growth engine, balancing new customer acquisition (CAC) against retention and reactivation. Own key retention metrics: repeat rate, 90-day LTV, basket size evolution, and share of wallet. - Personalization & CRM Roadmap: Partner with product and engineering teams to implement AI-driven personalization across homepage, search results, recommendations, and promotional triggers. Own the CRM/loyalty strategy for high-frequency purchasers. - Promotional Effectiveness & ROI Governance: Develop a disciplined promotional calendar with pre-analysis guardrails and post-promotion ROI validation. Reduce discount dependency over time while maintaining volume targets. - Brand Equity Protection: Ensure brand positioning, tone of voice, and visual identity are consistently and powerfully represented across every digital touchpoint, from product detail pages to transactional emails. Executive-Level Platform & Partnership Management - Strategic Marketplace Relationships: Own C-level relationships with key third-party platforms (e.g., Amazon, Instacart, DoorDash, Deliveroo, Talabat, etc.) and emerging quick-commerce players. Lead quarterly joint business planning, negotiation of fee structures, co-marketing funds, and exclusive category placements. - Owned E-Commerce Platform Strategy: Lead the vision for the direct-to-consumer (DTC) owned channel, balancing investment between owned and third-party. Drive the technology roadmap for checkout conversion, site speed, search relevance, and mobile-first experience. - New Channel Evaluation: Proactively assess emerging channels (social commerce, livestream shopping, WhatsApp commerce, voice, etc.), running pilot-to-scale frameworks with clear success metrics. - Partner Governance & Compliance: Establish and monitor SLAs with all platform partners, including uptime, API reliability, inventory data accuracy, and customer support handoffs. Lead escalation resolution. Operational Excellence & Fulfillment Strategy - Fulfillment Model Design: In partnership with Supply Chain and Logistics leadership, define the optimal fulfillment network for high-frequency, lower-margin consumables—balancing dark stores, micro-fulfillment centers (MFCs), retrofitted stores, and hub-and-spoke models. - Speed & Freshness Guarantee: Set operational standards for cut-off times, delivery windows, on-time delivery rates, substitution accuracy, and quality compliance. Drive continuous improvement in unit economics per order. - Inventory Visibility & Availability: Lead the integration of real-time inventory visibility across all channels (DTC + marketplaces), minimizing oversell and out-of-stocks. Establish safety stock policies for fast-turnaround SKUs. - Reverse Logistics & Returns: Design a low-friction, cost-efficient returns process for consumables (damages, quality issues, incorrect items), balancing customer satisfaction with loss prevention. - Technology & Automation Roadmap: Partner with Product & Engineering to prioritize OMS, WMS, and last-mile routing tools that reduce cost-to-serve and improve delivery accuracy. Digital Merchandising & Customer Experience (CX) - Premium Digital Storefront Vision: Define and enforce best-in-class standards for product listings (imagery, copy, attributes, rich media), category navigation, search engine optimization (site search + SEO), and cross-sell/upsell logic. - Assortment Localization: Lead merchandising strategies tailored to geographic clusters based on local demand patterns, cultural preferences, and logistics constraints. - Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): Own a continuous testing roadmap (A/B tests on checkout flow, product tiles, pricing displays, delivery thresholds, etc.) to systematically lift conversion rates and average order value (AOV). - Quality Assurance: Establish governance processes to ensure 99.9% data accuracy across pricing, availability, promotions, and product content across all platforms. Competitive Intelligence & Market Leadership - 360° Monitoring Framework: Implement and manage tools (e.g., price tracking, assortment scraping, sentiment analysis) to track competitor moves daily across pricing, promotions, assortment, delivery fees, and customer ratings. - Rapid Response Playbooks: Develop pre-approved rapid response frameworks for competitor actions (price drops, free delivery, new service launches), enabling same-day or 24-hour competitive countermeasures. - Industry Thought Leadership: Represent the company at industry events, in analyst briefings, and through published content. Shape external conversations around the future of consumables e-commerce. Entrepreneurial & Cultural Leadership - Team Building & Development: Recruit, mentor, and scale a high-performing digital team across functions: platform management, merchandising, analytics, performance marketing, CRM, and marketplace operations. Build clear career progression paths. - Cross-Functional Influence: Serve as a key member of the executive leadership team, influencing corporate strategy, technology investment, supply chain transformation, and M&A considerations related to digital commerce. - Test-and-Learn Culture: Foster a culture of rapid experimentation, data-informed risk-taking, and post-mortem transparency. Celebrate learning from failures as much as success. - Resilience & Agility: Lead the organization through periods of high volatility (supply chain disruptions, platform policy changes, competitor aggression) with calm, clear decision-making and a bias for action. Requirements Experience - Bachelor's degree in Business, Economics, Engineering, or related field required. - MBA or Master's in Analytics/E-Commerce strongly preferred. - 12+ years of e-commerce experience, with at least 6+ years in a senior leadership role (Director/VP). - Proven experience leading the digital P&L for high-frequency, lower-margin consumables - Demonstrated track record of scaling a digital business from $50M+ to $250M+ (or equivalent) with improving unit economics. - Deep experience with marketplace ecosystems (Amazon, Instacart, DoorDash, Deliveroo, Talabat, etc.) and DTC owned commerce (Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify Plus, Magento, or similar). - Experience designing or scaling fulfillment models for time-sensitive or quality-sensitive goods (dark stores, MFCs, cold chain, scheduled delivery). Functional Expertise - Analytical Mastery: Expert proficiency in Looker, Tableau, Power BI, or similar. Strong understanding of attribution modeling (MTA, MMM), predictive forecasting, and causal inference. - Commercial Acumen: Deep understanding of trade spend optimization, promotional ROI, and category economics. - Marketing Technology: Familiarity with Braze, Klaviyo, Segment, Google Marketing Platform, Meta Ads Manager, programmatic buying. - Operational Systems: Exposure to OMS, WMS, TMS, and inventory management platforms (e.g., Manhattan, Blue Yonder, Tecsys, or bespoke). Core Competencies & Personal Attributes - Entrepreneurial ownership mindset. - Resilience and adaptability. - Exceptional communication & influence. - Intellectual curiosity. - High organizational rigor. Benefits - Competitive Salary + Benefits