Senior Strategy & Operations Partner (For independent contractors)

The Opportunity

Booking.com is one of the world's largest digital travel platforms. A $22B+ revenue company serving hundreds of millions of travellers. Marketplace is its engine room: 1,500+ people across Product, Engineering, Data & AI, Design and Commercial, turning company strategy into customer reality. The decisions made here determine how billions in investment flow. The complexity is real, the stakes are high, and the right person will thrive in it.

The Marketplace mission is to truly understand traveller needs and behaviour across multiple verticals, design and implement common traveller-facing product experiences, steward travellers to the right vertical offering, and grow Connected Trips, where travellers not only book hotels or homes, but also flights, car rentals, rides, and local attractions with us. The long-term mission of Marketplace is to grow traveller loyalty through delivering phenomenal product experience, by evolving our customer loyalty programme, and by ensuring Booking.com supports our travellers in the right way throughout their trip. Marketplace Business Unit runs the common parts of our website and app, as well as is responsible for key Booking.com-wide capabilities, such as the User Experience, Experimentation Platform, Measurement, and operational Predictive ML models.

The Role

You will be the right hand to a Marketplace Vice President. The person who makes a 400+ person organisation easier to steer, faster to decide, and harder to derail. You will build a trusted partnership with the VP. Investing in the relationship, proving your value through delivery, and deepening into the sparring partner they rely on for every major decision. You will develop the content mastery to follow every discussion the VP is in, represent their perspective when they are not in the room, and design the operating system that turns strategic intent into execution at scale. You will frame the trade-offs before the meeting, prepare the decisions before the forum, sense the organisation before the crisis, and build the portfolio view that turns fragmented information into leadership clarity.

What You Will Do

• Own the VP's operating system, translate strategy into priorities, run the leadership cadence (planning, performance reviews, all-hands, offsites, key leadership moments), ensure every forum produces decisions with clear owners and follow-through, and actively retire or reformat meetings that no longer add value

  
  

• Ensure the VP's organisation defines and executes its strategy. Facilitate strategic direction-setting, act as a trusted sounding board and sparring partner, and challenge assumptions with a point of view. Help shape the VP area's contribution to strategic initiatives, whether company-wide priority programmes, Marketplace-level strategy or VP-specific direction. Project-manage strategic workstreams through to delivery. This role does not define strategy. It enables, shapes and drives it, from trade-offs to commercial decisions

  
  

• Frame complex trade-offs as decision-ready options with clear recommendations, delivered ahead of key forums. Build the portfolio and performance visibility that enables leadership to prioritise, invest and course-correct with confidence

  
  

• Surface risks, team health signals and cross-functional friction before they escalate. The value is in what leaders don't have to chase

  
  

• Drive cross-functional alignment across Product, Tech, Data & AI, UX and commercial functions in Marketplace and other Business Units. Connect people, topics and decisions across cultural and organisational boundaries, flex your communication style to the audience, and advise when to escalate, align or act

  
  

• Set the VP up for success. Read the room, adapt your style, and know when to support and when to challenge. Prepare the VP for key forums and decision moments, ensure they are always well-briefed with the right people in the room, play good cop / bad cop with their directs and stakeholders when needed

  
  

• Design the governance, cadence and best practices that the wider organisation adopts, setting the bar for how planning, decision-making and performance management work

What You Bring

• 10+ years in Chief of Staff, Strategy & Operations, Business Operations, management consulting or senior programme management, ideally in Product or Technology organisations at scale

  
  

• Proven experience as a trusted sparring partner to a VP or equivalent leader of a 500+ person organisation

  
  

• You have designed and run leadership operating systems, not just contributed to them

  
  

• You frame trade-offs as decisions, not presentations. You think in terms of decision velocity and organisational leverage, not tasks and tracking

  
  

• You invest in relationships. Building trust with the VP and their leadership team through consistent delivery, discretion and genuine value-add. You can hold them accountable to quality and timelines because you have earned the right to do so

  
  

• You manage 5+ teams in a matrix where nobody reports to you

  
  

• You read the room. Credible in front of executives, adaptive across cultures and communication styles, and comfortable adjusting your approach between Dutch directness and international diplomacy

  
  

• You design governance, cadence and standardised processes, not just execute existing ones

  
  

• You are skilled in strategy execution: problem identification, scoping, building recommendations, consensus building and executive communication

  
  

• You see around corners. You connect the dots, develop deep content understanding across the VP's portfolio, and enable proactive approaches rather than reactive firefighting

  
  

• You are AI-savvy: you actively look for ways to use AI and automation to scale, improve and reduce manual effort across operations, reporting and decision support

  
  

• You deliver under pressure with hard deadlines, competing stakeholders and genuine ambiguity

  
  

• You can work effectively in a global environment; sensitivity to and an understanding of cultural differences

Nice to Have

• Booking.com experience: former employee or contractor who knows the culture and tools

  
  

• Product & Technology domain fluency

  
  

• Management consulting background (McKinsey, BCG, Bain or equivalent)

  
  

• OKR frameworks, Jira, portfolio management tools

  
  

• FP&A partnership and budget cycle experience

  
  

• Hands-on experience applying AI tools (e.g. Glean, Gemini, Claude) to streamline operations, reporting or decision preparation

Why This Role

The impact is real: you will shape how a VP steers one of the most complex and consequential departments in European tech. Decisions that affect how a $22B+ company invests, prioritises and delivers

The work is rare: you will operate at the intersection of strategy and execution, where the problems are intellectually demanding, politically nuanced and genuinely consequential. This is not a support role dressed up as strategy. It is the real thing

The legacy is yours: you will build systems that outlast you. The leadership operating rhythm should be more effective when you leave than when you arrived

The challenge is real: this is a new role that you will build from the ground up. You will design, shape and mature it over time, together with the hiring manager. If you are excited by the prospect of creating something, not inheriting a playbook, this is for you. The maturity path is clear, from reliable operator to trusted strategic counsellor, and you will have the backing to get there

The environment is world-class: Amsterdam-based, one of Europe's most iconic tech companies, a genuinely international culture, and direct partnership with VPs, Directors and Senior Directors across Product, Tech, Data & AI, UX and Commercial