Senior Manager, Safety

The Community You Will Join:

No global movement springs from individuals. It takes an entire team united behind something big. On the Delivery team at Airbnb, we're proud to be at the forefront of the sharing economy. We recognize that we are the leaders of a new, worldwide phenomenon, and that's why we're working so hard to build the world's most loyal travel community.

Together, our team provides support to more than 100 million lifetime guests and 3 million listings in over 191 countries. Our India Global operations hub delivers several of Community Support's most sensitive and complex specialty services, working as one team with our global process leads. We are looking for an agile, operationally strong leader who knows how to motivate and inspire teams in a cutting-edge and fast-paced environment.

The Difference You Will Make:

As a Senior Manager, Safety you will own end-to-end delivery for a portfolio of Global Operation's most sensitive and highest-severity specialty services, spanning close to 200 team members across Specialists, Team Specialists, Supervisors and Managers. You will be accountable for KPIs, people and the overall health of the business, with direct exposure to user-safety, regulatory and financial-loss risk and the authority to make final calls on complex, irreversible decisions. 

You will act as senior delivery partner to the global process leads for your services — translating global agendas into on-the-ground execution and giving those leads a single accountable counterpart at site. You will be expected to build and maintain trusted relationships with senior stakeholders while constantly looking for opportunities to streamline and optimize our operations. As our portfolio evolves, you should expect the mix of services in scope to change, and be comfortable picking up new skills and queues as the business requires.

A Typical Day:

Drive delivery performance across the portfolio:

• Manage the day-to-day operations of the services in scope, driving the highest level of performance from the teams and establishing the right performance management and coaching structure and cadence in collaboration with Delivery leaders and Quality teams
• Define, monitor, report and improve efficiency and quality metrics for each service based on its performance scorecard, keeping Global operations in India aligned to global standards while accounting for local nuance
• Adapt and pre-empt adaptations of the performance management structure based on shifting business priorities, volume patterns and peak planning
• Bring a data-driven lens to occupancy, SLA, capacity and workforce decisions, and make timely calls when the numbers move

Lead and grow a multi-layered leadership team:

• Lead a mixed layer of leadership — a Manager alongside Supervisors reporting in directly — which means being comfortable leading junior leadership hands-on rather than only through a manager layer
• Coach Supervisors on daily performance management as readily as you set quarterly direction, and stay close enough to the floor to spot execution gaps early
• Support Managers and Supervisors to ensure high employee engagement and delivery of a world class experience for both our community and our internal stakeholders
• Oversee team structure, recruitment, onboarding, training and upskilling plans, and build a credible succession and cross-skilling pipeline across the portfolio
• Be a focused, visible leader who creates supportive connections across the whole team through open communication, and who carries teams through change and periods of instability

Partner with global process leads and eliminate functional silos:

• Stay ahead of global Ops priorities and make sure ACC delivery is set up to execute them — owning the on-the-ground landing of global programmes to timeline and quality
• Surface operational pain points early enough to influence global design rather than after the fact, and carry ACC best practice back into the global forums
• Work across services and with Quality, Training, Business Process Improvement, Analytics and WFM to eliminate functional and working silos, so process changes land consistently rather than function by function
• Feed insights into process, policy and tooling improvements, and drive relationships and coordinate requests with shared services teams
• Support the global consolidation agenda where ACC is scaling towards becoming the primary or sole servicing site for a skill, ensuring transitions land without disruption to the community

Manage senior and executive stakeholders:

• Be responsible and accountable for executive and senior leadership stakeholder management, adapting your communication to the audience and remaining flexible and available to our leaders
• Have a deep understanding and expertise of our operations, workflows, policies and systems, so you can assess cases yourself and make the right call on what needs to be done to solve our users' issues
• Represent ACC credibly in global forums, holding policy, quality and risk conversations independently

Work with the long term in mind to reduce the volume and severity of complex cases:

• Track and understand the common themes behind complex cases and escalations, close the loop, and set up the right forums to solve root causes with cross-functional teams across Global Ops
• Partner with cross-functional Airbnb teams to champion improvements to our process, policies and product that improve the customer experience and reduce community escalations

Your Expertise:

• Strong end-to-end frontline operations management experience in a customer-facing environment, with a track record of owning KPIs, people and business health for a large team; overall experience of minimum 13 years.
• Highly agile — able to pick up new skills, services and queues quickly, and to re-prioritize as the portfolio and global agenda shift
• Advanced people leadership, performance management, coaching and mentoring experience, including leading through both a manager layer and direct supervisor relationships
• Comfortable operating hands-on with junior leadership: coaching Supervisors on daily execution while holding a longer-term agenda
• Ability to work in a high-pressure environment with visibility to sensitive, confidential and potentially traumatic content, and to support a team working with the same
• Experience in complex case management with VP-level stakeholders and above preferred; crisis management or Trust & Safety experience in a marketplace business is an advantage
• Strong influencing, presentation, interpersonal and teamwork skills — able to work collaboratively and consultatively across expansive business partner organizations, including global process leads and shared services
• Ability to handle multiple complex, fast-moving situations at once and make sound decisions with incomplete information
• Highly organized with strong project management skills, able to switch between very tactical, urgent work and long-term planning or programme management
• Strong analytical skills and a data-driven approach to operations
• High energy, strong attention to detail, and the ability to prioritize and deliver in a fast-paced environment
• Strong communication skills and the ability to take a team through significant change
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent required; MBA or other Master's degree preferred
• Ability to flex working hours to respond to global business demand; a high level of reactivity is expected
• Comfortable to work in 24*7 rotational shifts with your team, and work from office in Gurugram.

Our commitment to inclusion & belonging

Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible. We believe diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement, and allow us to attract creatively-led people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.