Head of Merchant Operations

About Local

Read The Following Sections In Full

• As Head of Merchant Operations, you own everything that happens after a merchant signs: onboarding, go-live, activation, success, retention, and support — across three markets.
• You’ll build the systems and SOPs that let this function scale, and you’ll personally be in restaurants making it happen while you do it.
• This is a player-coach role, and we want to be honest about that.
• You will architect the playbook and you will also be the person who drives to a merchant at 8pm because their QR code tore and payments are failing during dinner service.
• You’ll hire and lead a team — and you’ll lead it by being the highest standard in the field, not by delegating from above.
• If you’re looking for a purely strategic seat, this isn’t it.
• If the idea of being hands-on with merchants every week is the part that excites you, keep reading.
• What you’ll own
• **Onboarding & go-live —**
• get signed merchants from contract to first transaction fast (our target is under 14 days for restaurants), and build the repeatable system that makes that the norm in every market.
• **In-person merchant relationships —**
• you and your team are physically with merchants: solving problems on-site, reading the room with a 22-year restaurant owner who’s nervous about new tech, and building trust face to face.
• **Merchant success & GMV growth —**
• own merchant health and daily GMV.
• Spot a drop before the merchant does, find the cause, and fix it — often by walking into the restaurant.
• **24/7 support operations —**
• stand up responsive support across markets and time zones.
• Merchants run during dinner, on weekends, and at 3am.
• Reachability and urgency are the job, not the exception.
• **Systems & SOPs —**
• replace founder-headspace and heroics with documented, scalable processes and the tooling to run them — without hiding behind process when speed is what’s needed.
• **Team —**
• hire, develop, and lead a growing Merchant Success and Operations team, holding a high bar and lifting up the most junior people while you do it.
• **Cross-market execution —**
• adapt the model to the realities of the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia while keeping one coherent standard.
• **Metrics & reporting —**
• define the operational scorecard, report on it honestly, and use it to drive decisions.
• What you bring
• **6+ years**
• in operations, merchant/customer success, or account management — ideally in fintech, payments, SaaS, marketplace, or restaurant tech.
• A track record of building operational functions from messy to systematic — and staying hands-on while doing it.
• A genuine bias for action and urgency. When something breaks, your instinct is to pick up the phone and go, not to schedule a kickoff for next week.
• Customer obsession that shows up physically — you go to the merchant, you don’t wait for the merchant to come to you.
• Strong commercial instinct — you understand GMV, take rates, and what actually drives merchant growth and retention.
• Comfort with ambiguity and the intensity of an early-stage, 24/7 environment. This role includes regular evening, weekend, and on-call work for merchant emergencies — as a baseline, not an exception. Some people are wired for that; some aren’t, and neither is wrong.
• Fluency in data — you make decisions with numbers and build the dashboards if they don’t exist yet.
• Integrity under pressure and real kindness to the people you lead.
• **Arabic language skills.**
• Nice to have
• Experience operating across GCC markets (UAE, Bahrain, KSA) and familiarity with the regional restaurant or payments landscape.
• Direct experience with QR payments, POS, or restaurant operations.
• Prior early-stage / Series A-stage startup experience.

Why Local

• Real ownership of a core function at a company that’s scaling — and the chance to build the operating system for an entire category across three markets.
• A direct line to the founding team and visible impact on the trajectory of the business.
• A team that moves fast, sweats the details, and genuinely cares about doing right by merchants.
• Competitive salary and equity.