Senior Financial Operations Consultant (For independent contractors)

Role Overview

Senior Financial Operations Consultant – Flights & Aviation Settlement

Booking.com is building up its new Flights platform from the ground up. While our Product and Tech teams are scaling the software, we need an elite operational architect to bridge the gap between aviation-specific settlement logic and Booking.com’s massive, centralized corporate finance infrastructure.

We are seeking an elite, independent FinOps Consultant / Interim Head of Flight Settlement to lead the early-stage discovery and definition of our global financial operations framework. This is a "zero-to-one" initiative. You will design the target operating model, map complex flow-of-funds, ensure global clearinghouse compliance, and deliver the operational blueprint that our tech team will build against. We have a small team managing our flight finance workflows, alongside a world-class, extensive corporate finance department, your role will be highly collaborative and matrixed. You will audit our legacy setup, map out the net-new operational flows required, you might also be asked to support building the business cases required to secure future headcount and operational support structures.

Key Responsibilities & Deliverables

During this 6–9 month engagement, your responsibilities will split between aviation domain architecture and enterprise stakeholder management. You will be responsible for defining how money moves securely, compliantly, and efficiently between Booking.com, global clearinghouses, and airlines.

Flights Settlement architecture:

• Financial Target Operating Model (TOM): Design the end-to-end operational blueprint for both Merchant of Record (MoR) and Agency/Pass-Through payment models.

  
  

• Clearinghouse & IATA Mapping: Define the operational requirements for onboarding Booking.com onto ARC (Airline Reporting Corporation) and IATA BSP (Billing and Settlement Plan) globally.

  
  

• Exception & Leakage Architecture: Map out the operational workflows for high-risk, high-complexity aviation financial events, including involuntary refunds, schedule changes, chargebacks, and Agency Debit Memos (ADMs) mitigation.

  
  

• Cross-Functional Translation: Act as the domain expert translating archaic airline finance regulations into clear, logical business requirements for our internal Core Tech, Product, Treasury, Tax, and Legal teams.

  
  

• Risk & Collateral Framework: Support our Treasury team with your Flight industry expertise into assessing financial exposure risks and outline requirements for bank guarantees, cash floats, and multi-currency FX management within the settlement cycle.

Enterprise Integration & Stakeholder Alignment

• Corporate Finance Bridging: Partner closely with Booking.com’s centralized Treasury, Tax, Internal Audit, Accounting and Order to Cash teams to ensure the new flight settlement flows align with corporate accounting principles and financial controls.

  
  

• Legacy Evaluation: Audit current flight-specific legacy workflows to determine what can be re-used

Operational Gap Sizing & Business Case Definition

• Capacity & Capability Analysis: Evaluate the wider Booking.com finance ecosystem to identify gaps in tools, systems, headcount, or expertise needed to support complex airline cash cycles (e.g., IATA BSP weekly remittance, ADM disputes).

  
  

• Business Case Creation: Author executive-level business cases and organizational "Target Team Topologies" to justify and secure headcount/budget for missing internal operational support teams and tools.

Required Experience & Expertise

• We are looking for a heavy-hitter who combines deep niche travel-fintech knowledge with the corporate diplomacy required to operate across a matrixed enterprise.

  
  

• Aviation FinTech Background: 10+ years of senior financial operations experience specifically within travel distribution (e.g., a major global OTA, airline distribution finance team, a GDS like Amadeus/Sabre, or a major flight consolidator).

  
  

• Clearinghouse Mastery: Comprehensive up-to-date knowledge of global IATA BSP, ARC, and modern aviation frameworks (including NDC and modern settlement-with-order frameworks).

  
  

• Enterprise Matrix Navigation: Proven track record of successfully consulting within massive corporate environments, moving cross-functional finance teams (Treasury, Tax, General Ledger) toward a shared goal.

  
  

• Sizing & Strategy Toolkit: Strong analytical skills with a background in operational capacity planning, process cost optimization, and writing formal corporate business cases for executive approval.

  
  

• Proven Zero-to-One Track Record: Demonstrable experience setting up a flight financial back-office or reconciliation ecosystem from scratch as a consultant or interim leader.

  
  

• Exceptional Documentation Skills: Ability to turn complex, ambiguous global regulations into pristine, structured Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and process maps.

  
  

• Business translator: Ability to translate business/finance processes into product and tech requirements

This is not a role for a generalist e-commerce manager. We are paying for immediate, deep domain expertise. You must hit the ground running on Day 1.

Expected Milestone Deliverables (Contract Timeline)

Months 1–2

• Discovery & Alignment

  
  

• Global Regulatory, IATA/ARC, & Legal Compliance Requirement Map.

  
  

• As-Is Audit & Compliance Map: Detailed analysis of legacy flight tech vs. corporate finance capabilities, outlining cross-functional dependencies (Tax, Treasury, Tech).

Month 3-4

• Target Operating Model

  
  

• End-to-End Flight TOM: Completed cash-flow architecture, currency-hedging frameworks, and settlement procedures aligned with corporate finance constraints.

  
  

• Work alongside product to translate operating model into product and tech requirements

Months 5–6

• Transition to Delivery, Gap analysis and Business Case

  
  

• Support Delivery: Finalization of operational SOPs for the engineering team, readiness training for internal teams, and handover to permanent flight ops leads.

  
  

• Operational Gap & Resource Sizing Report: A formal business case outlining exactly what teams, headcount, or automated tools Booking.com needs to hire/build to support the new flows.

Months 7–9

• Handover

  
  

• Handover to permanent Ops lead

What We Offer

• The opportunity to shape the financial foundation of one of the largest flight-scaling projects in global e-commerce.

  
  

• A highly collaborative environment working alongside elite product and engineering talent.

  
  

• A clean slate—no legacy operational debt to clean up; you write the rules.