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Head of Merchant Operations
Local
Dubai, UAE
Full Time
Director
Hybrid
1 months ago
Merchant OperationsOnboardingCustomer SuccessSOP DevelopmentData AnalysisArabic
Free
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Merchant OperationsOnboardingCustomer Success
About the Role
Local is seeking a Head of Merchant Operations to own onboarding, go-live, activation, success, retention, and support across UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. This player-coach role requires building scalable systems while being hands-on with merchants.
Key Skills for This Role
Merchant OperationsOnboardingCustomer SuccessSOP DevelopmentData AnalysisArabic
Responsibilities
- Own onboarding & go live: get signed merchants from contract to first transaction fast (target under 14 days for restaurants), and build the repeatable system
- Manage in person merchant relationships: physically with merchants solving problems on site and building trust face to face
- Own merchant success & GMV growth: monitor merchant health and daily GMV, spot drops before the merchant does, find the cause, and fix it
- Stand up 24/7 support operations across markets and time zones
- Build systems & SOPs to replace founder headspace and heroics with documented, scalable processes
- Hire, develop, and lead a growing Merchant Success and Operations team
- Adapt the model to the realities of the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia while keeping one coherent standard
- Define the operational scorecard, report on it honestly, and use it to drive decisions
Requirements
- 6+ years in operations, merchant/customer success, or account management — ideally in fintech, payments, SaaS, marketplace, or restaurant tech
- A track record of building operational functions from messy to systematic — and staying hands on while doing it
- A genuine bias for action and urgency
- Customer obsession that shows up physically — you go to the merchant, you don’t wait for the merchant to come to you
- Strong commercial instinct — you understand GMV, take rates, and what actually drives merchant growth and retention
- Comfort with ambiguity and the intensity of an early stage, 24/7 environment
- Fluency in data — you make decisions with numbers and build the dashboards if they don’t exist yet
- Integrity under pressure and real kindness to the people you lead
- Arabic language skills
Full Job Posting
About Local
- Local is building the payments and operations layer for restaurants across the Gulf.
- Our QR enabled platform lets diners pay in seconds and gives merchants the tools to run a tighter, faster operation.
- We’re venture backed, live across the UAE and Bahrain, expanding into Saudi Arabia, with restaurants as our core vertical and healthcare next.
- We’re a small, high ownership team that moves fast and treats every merchant’s revenue as our own.
The Role
- As Head of Merchant Operations, you own everything that happens after a merchant signs: onboarding, go live, activation, success, retention, and support — across three markets.
- You’ll build the systems and SOPs that let this function scale, and you’ll personally be in restaurants making it happen while you do it.
- This is a player coach role: you will architect the playbook and you will also be the person who drives to a merchant at 8pm because their QR code tore and payments are failing during dinner service.
What you’ll own
- Onboarding & go live — get signed merchants from contract to first transaction fast (our target is under 14 days for restaurants), and build the repeatable system that makes that the norm in every market.
- In person merchant relationships — you and your team are physically with merchants: solving problems on site, reading the room with a 22 year restaurant owner who’s nervous about new tech, and building trust face to face.
- Merchant success & GMV growth — own merchant health and daily GMV. Spot a drop before the merchant does, find the cause, and fix it — often by walking into the restaurant.
- 24/7 support operations — stand up responsive support across markets and time zones. Merchants run during dinner, on weekends, and at 3am. Reachability and urgency are the job, not the exception.
- Systems & SOPs — replace founder headspace and heroics with documented, scalable processes and the tooling to run them — without hiding behind process when speed is what’s needed.
- Team — hire, develop, and lead a growing Merchant Success and Operations team, holding a high bar and lifting up the most junior people while you do it.
- Cross market execution — adapt the model to the realities of the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia while keeping one coherent standard.
- Metrics & reporting — define the operational scorecard, report on it honestly, and use it to drive decisions.
What you bring
- 6+ years in operations, merchant/customer success, or account management — ideally in fintech, payments, SaaS, marketplace, or restaurant tech.
- A track record of building operational functions from messy to systematic — and staying hands on while doing it.
- A genuine bias for action and urgency. When something breaks, your instinct is to pick up the phone and go, not to schedule a kickoff for next week.
- Customer obsession that shows up physically — you go to the merchant, you don’t wait for the merchant to come to you.
- Strong commercial instinct — you understand GMV, take rates, and what actually drives merchant growth and retention.
- Comfort with ambiguity and the intensity of an early stage, 24/7 environment. This role includes regular evening, weekend, and on call work for merchant emergencies — as a baseline, not an exception.
- Fluency in data — you make decisions with numbers and build the dashboards if they don’t exist yet.
- Integrity under pressure and real kindness to the people you lead.
- Arabic language skills.
Nice to have
- Experience operating across GCC markets (UAE, Bahrain, KSA) and familiarity with the regional restaurant or payments landscape.
- Direct experience with QR payments, POS, or restaurant operations.
- Prior early stage / Series A stage startup experience.
Why Local
- Real ownership of a core function at a company that’s scaling — and the chance to build the operating system for an entire category across three markets.
- A direct line to the founding team and visible impact on the trajectory of the business.
- A team that moves fast, sweats the details, and genuinely cares about doing right by merchants.
- Competitive salary and equity.
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