Senior Operational Excellence Specialist

About us

Founded in 2015 in Athens, Greece, Welcome redefines the way people travel by going above and beyond the commoditized transfer service and being the first company to deliver a complete, personalised, in-destination travel experience. From the moment a traveler arrives at a new destination, until their return journey home, Welcome accommodates all their travel needs, including transfers, sightseeing trips, and local information, in the easiest, friendliest, and most personalised way possible.

Welcome's drivers are experts in the area and share their local know-how to make travellers feel at home wherever they are. The company has also introduced contactless rides, thorough cleaning protocols, and protective equipment to make every journey safe.

Being a travel tech startup, Welcome continues to grow and scale its operations and is quickly becoming a global category leader for in-destination travel services.

• One of the highest-rated global transportation companies with a rating of 4.9/5 stars.
• Expanded from 200 destinations last year to 350, achieving our ambitious 2024 growth target.
• Over 4,000 travel partners including 2,500 hotels, numerous vacation rentals, and travel agents, adding 50+ new ones every month.
• Over 2.5 million happy travellers every year.

⭐️ If you want to dive deeper into the awesomeness of Welcome's culture, on to check our TikTok account.⭐️

The Team

We are a group of vibrant, diverse people who love travelling and never settle on quality. Each one of us didn’t join Welcome by chance and believes deeply in what Welcome is trying to achieve, so we work relentlessly to make that happen. We challenge common logic, focus on design, put simplicity and usability first, and create memorable experiences. We keep learning and exploring better ways to serve our community and grow personally and professionally in our respective fields.

We stay humble along the way, with a “pay it forward” mentality, but with big and bold goals.

We are looking for a Senior Operational Excellence Specialist to operational improvements that make the journey clearer, more reliable and more welcoming for travelers. The role focuses on pre-arrival communication, pickup clarity, meet-and-greet, driver readiness and service recovery. Takes a priority problem, diagnoses it, designs the fix, pilots it, rolls it out and measures what changed.

Defines the requirements for Product and Operations Systems when a fix needs building, and runs pilots with the operational teams in live destinations.

Traveler Journey and Opportunity Identification

• Map the operational traveler journey and combine complaints, reviews, support contacts, driver feedback and operational data to identify recurring points of confusion, friction or service failure.
• Maintain a focused improvement backlog with the Operational Excellence Manager and relevant team owners, prioritising problems by traveler impact, frequency, effort and expected benefit.

Experience and Process Design

• Design practical service improvements, including clearer pickup instructions, proactive communication, driver preparation and recovery handoffs, with explicit standards and exception paths.
• Translate designs into workflows, business rules, data requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Surfaces traveler-facing changes: what needs to change, in what order, and what it takes to implement.
• QA what gets built: test it against the acceptance criteria, report what's broken, retest the fixes and sign it off before launch.

Pilot Delivery and Experimentation

• Lead a small portfolio of traveler-experience pilots from scoping to evaluation, using selected destinations and Welcome Plus where appropriate. Agree owners, delivery capacity and success measures before launch.
• Coordinate dependencies and resolve delivery blockers across teams. Use pilot evidence to recommend whether to scale, refine or stop an intervention.
• Do the administrative work that pilots require, hands-on and without support: briefs, data and build requests, trackers, weekly updates, destination briefings and post-pilot write-ups. This is a significant part of the week, not an afterthought.

Rollout and Adoption

• Plan user acceptance testing, operational readiness, training and playbooks with Quality, Support, Live Ops, Destination Operations and Service Partner Management.
• Support adoption after launch, verify that the new workflow is used consistently, and hand over sustained execution to named operational owners.

Measurement and Continuous Improvement

• Define baselines and assess changes in pickup failures, communication-related contacts, service compliance and traveler feedback, alongside the cost of delivering the service.
• Work with Analytics on trustworthy measurement and with Internal Systems on automation.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of relevant experience in operational excellence, customer or traveler experience, service design or business operations, with evidence of implementing service improvements.
• A track record of independently leading initiatives across teams, from diagnosing a problem through rollout, adoption and measurable outcomes.
• Strong process and service-design

Skills

able to connect traveler needs with practical workflows, decision rules, exception handling and operational constraints.

• Hands-on analytical ability using spreadsheets, BI tools and SQL (optional); able to validate findings and distinguish service issues from gaps in the data.
• Experience defining pilot success criteria, evaluating results and making clear recommendations on what to scale or change.
• Ability to write clear requirements, work effectively with Product and technical teams, and influence operational stakeholders without direct management authority.
• Practical experience using AI or automation to improve analysis or workflows, with sound judgement about accuracy and responsible use of traveler data.
• Excellent written and verbal English, clear communication and a strong sense of ownership. Experience in travel, mobility, hospitality, logistics or a service marketplace is an advantage.

Benefits

• Vibrant and fresh work environment
• Flexible work-from-home policy
• The tools you need to perform your daily tasks successfully
• L&D personal budget
• Private Insurance Plan
• +4 extra PTO days annually
• The unique opportunity to join “the next big thing” at ground level