Road Freight Commercial Manager - UAE

Role purpose

Commercial strategy and pricing

• Develop UAE Road Freight commercial strategy and support strategic customer development, acquisition, retention, and growth.
• Lead pricing and RFQ management, including bid/no-bid decisions, solution design, costing, commercial review, submission, and follow-up.
• Improve hit ratio, margins, win rates, quotation turnaround, costing methodology, pricing tools, and automated costing.
• Review major quotations and analyze won and lost bids, competitor price gaps, customer results, and trade-lane performance.

Trade lanes and customer solutions

• Develop pricing strategies for corridors connecting the UAE with Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia.
• Work with Operations and Procurement to develop services, expand trade lanes, improve LTL consolidation, and address complex customer requirements.
• Design feasible, profitable solutions such as consolidation, multi-country and milk-run models, dedicated fleets, network-based LTL, and multimodal combinations.
• Capture customer and market feedback and promote successful solutions and practices across Gulf countries.

Vendor and performance management

• Manage transporter selection, onboarding, rate negotiation, capacity commitments, and contract terms with Transport Procurement.
• Use vendor scorecards covering cost, service, timeliness, capacity, claims, and compliance; review performance and drive improvement.
• Analyze vendor spend, rates, savings, concentration, and capacity alternatives by country, trade lane, and service type.
• Monitor portfolio pricing, margins, volumes, profitability, budgets, forecasts, and KPIs; report performance and initiate corrective actions.
• Lead and develop the Commercial Center and Pricing team, setting objectives, priorities, and performance expectations.

Experience and education

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Logistics, Supply Chain, Transportation, or a related discipline.
• More than 10 years of experience, primarily in freight forwarding, with 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 transport or logistics customer solutions, implementing or managing automated costing tools, and working across Sales, Operations, and Procurement.
• Strong understanding of transport costs, margins, and profitability; strong quantitative and analytical capability, including Excel and commercial reporting.
• Excellent English communication and presentation skills. Previous team-management experience is strongly preferred.

Capabilities

• Commercial negotiation, contract management, business acumen, business development, and opportunity management.
• Vendor and carrier negotiation, vendor performance management, spend analysis, solution design, and innovation.
• Quantitative KPI measurement, hit-ratio analysis, cost and margin analysis, and commercial reporting.
• Pricing tools and costing automation; ability to work across multiple countries and cultures.

About DHL Global Forwarding

Offer

• The employer describes opportunities to contribute ideas, potential career development, and a competitive salary.