Chalhoub Group Strategy and Operations Director

About Chalhoub Group

Founded in 1955 by Michel and Widad Chalhoub, Chalhoub Group has grown into a leading partner for luxury across the Middle East. Headquartered in Dubai, the family-owned group brings together international maisons and homegrown concepts across fashion, beauty and lifestyle, combining regional expertise with retail and distribution capabilities. As an employer, it offers career opportunities spanning client experience, brand management, merchandising, logistics and digital innovation. Its multicultural environment connects employees with the evolving expectations of luxury consumers, while its emphasis on learning, entrepreneurship and sustainability provides a distinctive setting for professionals seeking to shape the region’s luxury landscape.

Role & Responsibilities

• Lead integrated delivery and governance of the Chalhoub Capability Hub programme, coordinating workstreams against the roadmap, milestones and outcomes.
• Own the end-to-end programme plan, coordinating People, Finance, Real Estate, Legal, Technology Readiness and other workstreams against agreed milestones.
• Maintain the integrated programme roadmap, identify dependencies, sequence activities and align delivery plans with wider Technology & Data transformation milestones.
• Establish proactive risk mitigation and escalation, identify blockers, facilitate cross-workstream alignment and enable timely executive decisions.
• Align senior stakeholders across functions and geographies, resolve competing priorities and maintain agreement on programme outcomes.
• Design and maintain operating standards and acceptance criteria across programme tracks, ensuring site readiness, talent onboarding and infrastructure provisioning meet business requirements.
• Apply continuous improvement methods to resolve organizational friction, improve programme throughput and meet target timelines.
• Translate operational realities, site logistics and cross-workstream progress into clear commercial narratives for global executive leadership.
• Design and implement self-service dashboards and reporting cadences that give the C-suite and Steering Committee visibility into programme velocity, budget utilization and overall health.
• Produce executive-ready deliverables, including financial impact models, governance logs and Board decks.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience delivering large-scale, cross-functional programmes involving multiple functions, geographies and senior stakeholders.
• Experience establishing or scaling a GCC, capability centre, technology hub or comparable enterprise operation strongly preferred.
• Strong understanding of Technology & Data organizations and the dependencies involved in building technology capabilities; technical delivery leadership is not required.
• Strong commercial and analytical capability, including programme financials, workforce plans, dashboards and performance measures.
• Ability to influence senior stakeholders, challenge constructively and drive decisions in a matrix environment.
• Exceptional programme discipline, with the ability to move between strategic executive discussions and detailed delivery execution.
• Strong written and verbal communication, including the ability to synthesize complex information into clear recommendations and decisions.

Skills

Experience

15+ years leading complex enterprise programmes, transformation initiatives, PMOs or capability-centre programmes.

Benefits

Health care, child education contribution, remote and flexible working policies, exclusive employee discounts, learning and development opportunities, and exposure to different assignments within the role or through internal mobility.

Culture

Chalhoub Group combines its heritage as a family-owned business with the dynamism of the Middle East’s luxury sector, fostering a multicultural workplace rooted in collaboration and long-term relationships. Its culture emphasizes continuous learning, entrepreneurial initiative and excellence in customer experience, encouraging employees to develop their expertise while contributing to the evolution of luxury retail.

About Cerulean

Cerulean is the definitive career portal for the global luxury industry. We match exceptional professionals with exclusive opportunities at the world's most prestigious brands. From haute couture and fine watchmaking to prestige beauty, hospitality, and boutique retail, Cerulean centralises luxury employment to help you find the career for which you were destined.