Road Freight Commercial Manager - UAE

Role purpose

Commercial strategy and pricing

• Develop the UAE commercial strategy and support regional growth, customer acquisition, retention, and strategic account development.
• Lead pricing, tenders, and RFQs from bid/no-bid decisions through solution design, costing, commercial review, submission, and follow-up.
• Improve RFQ hit ratio, win rates, margins, and turnaround; review won and lost quotations and competitor price gaps.
• Establish costing methodology and improve automated costing, pricing tools, rate databases, and quotation processes.

Solutions and trade lanes

• Develop commercial strategies for intra-Gulf and cross-border corridors covering UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia.
• Design LTL, FTL, domestic, cross-border, consolidation, multi-country, milk-run, dedicated-fleet, and multimodal customer solutions.
• Check operational feasibility and profitability; develop services and trade lanes with Operations and Procurement.

Vendor and performance management

• Manage transporter selection, onboarding, rate negotiation, capacity commitments, contracts, scorecards, and performance reviews.
• Analyze vendor spend, rates, cost competitiveness, and concentration; identify savings and alternative capacity.
• Monitor profitability, pricing, margins, volumes, and commercial KPIs; support budgeting, forecasting, and corrective action.
• Lead and develop the Pricing team and provide regular performance updates to management.

Qualifications and experience

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Logistics, Supply Chain, Transportation, or a related discipline.
• More than 10 years' experience, primarily in freight forwarding; significant commercial or pricing experience in freight forwarding, transportation, or logistics.
• Strong UAE/GCC road-freight knowledge, including FTL, LTL, and cross-border transportation.
• Experience in RFQs, tenders, costing, commercial negotiations, vendor management, spend analysis, and vendor performance management.
• Experience designing customer solutions and implementing or managing automated costing or pricing tools.
• Understanding of transport costs, margins, and profitability; experience collaborating with Sales, Operations, and Procurement.
• Strong quantitative and analytical skills, proficiency in Excel and commercial reporting tools, and excellent English communication and presentation skills.
• Previous team-management experience is strongly preferred.

Offer

• The employer describes opportunities to contribute ideas and skills and possible further career development.
• Competitive salary is mentioned, but no amount or pay cadence is specified.