Director of Marketplace Operations

• Lead and develop a team of 6-8 direct reports (including managers), setting clear expectations, coaching performance, and clarifying ownership and handoffs across functions
• Own the end-to-end merchant operational experience, ensuring merchants are onboarded efficiently, operationally enabled, supported day-to-day, and positioned to grow successfully on the marketplace
• Design and run operating cadences (triage, prioritization, escalations, queue health reviews, reporting) to ensure predictable performance at scale
• Lead the response to merchant-impacting incidents, including cross-functional coordination, clear internal and external communication, root cause analysis, and preventative follow-ups
• Design and own proactive monitoring and early-warning systems that identify emerging merchant and marketplace-level risks and enable preventative action ahead of peak periods and volume spikes
• Enable and lead teams to proactively support merchant operational growth, including adding new products, expanding shipping days, increasing volume, and scaling categories responsibly
• Own and evolve merchant-facing communication across channels (email, SMS, chat), including standards, tone, templates, and consistency
• Serve as the merchant advocate in cross-functional forums, balancing merchant needs and operational realities
• Translate merchant feedback and operational insights into clear requirements and priorities for Product, Engineering, Operations, and Logistics

• Bachelor’s degree required
• MBA or advanced degree a plus
• 8-10+ years in operational leadership spanning merchant/vendor support, marketplace operations, or supply-side partner management (ecommerce, perishables or logistics strongly preferred)
• Proven experience managing both individuals and managers in high-volume, SLA-based operations with strong escalation and quality frameworks
• Deep understanding of marketplace dynamics, including supporting supply-side partners producing inventory, SKUs, or experiences
• Track record of building scalable processes, operating models, and preventative systems that reduce issues and improve partner outcomes
• Strong project and program management skills
• able to lead multi-threaded initiatives across teams
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• sets a high bar for external merchant communication
• Analytical and metric-driven, with the ability to translate data into operational and strategic action
• Experience designing and scaling multi-channel merchant support strategies (email, SMS, chat)
• Proven experience owning the strategy, implementation, and ongoing optimization of support and operational platforms (e.g., Zendesk, Salesforce, Monday, Sigma and similar), within a marketplace environment, ensuring accurate intake, clean data flow, and operational scalability
• Experience leveraging AI and automation to improve operational systems in a high volume or marketplace environment

MBA or advanced degree a plus