Head of Operations - GCC

Overview

Regional Operations Leadership

• Lead end-to-end GCC operations strategy aligned with business growth, profitability, and customer experience goals.
• Oversee operations across all GCC markets including UAE, KSA and Qatar.
• Build scalable operating models to support expansion into new cities and markets.
• Drive standardization of SOPs while adapting to local market needs.

Fresh Production & Fulfillment

• Oversee daily production operations for flowers, bouquets, cakes, hampers, gift assembly, and personalized products.
• Ensure production planning aligns with demand forecasts and order cut-off timelines.
• Maintain freshness standards, product quality, packaging excellence, and dispatch readiness.
• Optimize production manpower productivity, wastage control, and turnaround times.

Warehousing & Inventory Management

• Manage warehouses, fulfillment centers, dark stores, and regional hubs.
• Lead inventory planning for flowers, cakes, gifts, packaging materials, and consumables.
• Ensure optimum stock levels with minimal expiry, wastage, or stock-outs.
• Improve inventory accuracy, replenishment cycles, and stock deployment across markets.

Logistics & Last Mile Delivery

• Lead in-house fleet and third-party delivery partner performance across GCC.
• Ensure same-day, express, scheduled, and peak-period deliveries are executed efficiently.
• Optimize route planning, rider productivity, delivery cost, and SLA adherence.
• Improve customer handover experience and reduce delivery failures.

Peak Season & Event Readiness

• Own operational readiness for key occasions such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Eid, Ramadan, Diwali, National Days, Christmas, and other campaigns.
• Develop capacity plans for manpower, inventory, fleet, vendor support, and production throughput.
• Ensure zero service disruption during demand spikes.

Cost Control & Profitability

• Manage operational budgets across warehousing, production, manpower, logistics, and fleet.
• Drive cost per order reduction without compromising service quality.
• Improve productivity metrics across hubs, warehouses, riders, and production teams.
• Identify automation and efficiency opportunities.

Customer Experience & Quality

• Ensure operations directly support customer promise and brand reputation.
• Minimize cancellations, delays, substitutions, damages, and complaints.
• Maintain service excellence across order journey from placement to delivery.

Vendor & Stakeholder Management

• Manage relationships with logistics partners, manpower vendors, packaging suppliers, and operational service providers.
• Partner with Procurement, Commercial, Finance, HR, Technology, and Country Heads.
• Act as key operations stakeholder in regional leadership planning.

Technology & Performance Management

• Drive use of ERP, OMS, WMS, routing tools, dashboards, and operational automation systems.
• Monitor KPIs and drive performance through daily / weekly reviews.
• Build a data-driven operations culture.

Team Leadership

• Lead country operations heads and regional functional teams.
• Build strong ownership culture, discipline, and execution excellence.
• Coach and develop future leaders across GCC.

Experience

• 12+ years of progressive experience in Operations / Supply Chain / Fulfillment.
• Minimum 5 years in senior leadership role managing multi-city or multi-country operations.
• Strong GCC experience preferred.
• Experience in gifting, flowers, bakery, food delivery, e-commerce, retail, quick commerce, or perishable operations.

Technical Expertise

• Fresh production operations management.
• High-volume fulfillment and last-mile delivery.
• Inventory planning for short shelf-life products.
• Workforce planning and productivity management.
• Budgeting and cost control.
• SOP creation and process optimization.
• Technology-led operations management.

Leadership Skills

• Strong people leadership and team development.
• Excellent problem-solving and decision-making ability.
• Commercial mindset with strong ownership.
• Ability to perform under pressure during peak seasons.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.