Lead Agile Coach - Tech Standards

About Us: Booking.com, data drives our decisions. Technology is at our core. And innovation is everywhere. But our company is more than datasets, lines of code or A/B tests. We're the thrill of the first night in a new place. The excitement of the next morning. The friends you encounter. The journeys you take. The sights you see. And the memories you make. Through our products, partners and people, we make it easier for everyone to experience the world.

About the team: Our Agile Coaching function embeds agile values and principles across the organisation. We lead transformational change by guiding teams and departments through shifts in mindset, culture, and ways of working. We foster a culture where continuous improvement, collaboration, and customer‑centricity are at the heart of everything we do, leveraging fast flow, fast feedback, and a strong climate for learning.

We're passionate about building community, nurturing vibrant communities of practice that enable knowledge sharing, peer support, and ongoing learning, ensuring innovation stays at the core of how we work.

Role Description: As a Lead Agile Coach (Manager), you lead and develop a team of Agile Coaches and own the coaching strategy, roadmap, capacity, and operating model to deliver measurable impact across Booking.com.

You partner with delivery leadership, strategy and Product and Engineering to enable continuous delivery of working software through data‑informed practices, while building psychologically safe, high‑performing teams and driving organisational health via clear governance, prioritisation, risk management, and consistent ways of working.

In addition to people leadership, you operate hands‑on as an individual contributor for part of your time, leading complex, multi‑team engagements and directly supporting delivery across teams, tracks, areas, and business units to model modern agile practices and ground strategy in real delivery contexts.

Key Job Responsibilities and Duties:

• Lead and grow a team of Agile Coaches: inspire, develop capabilities, manage performance, and build a strong learning culture aligned to Booking.com values.
• Own the Agile Coaching strategy, roadmap, capacity, governance and impact; plan and execute initiatives, define operating mechanisms, and report outcomes to leadership.
• Build organisational health: create diverse, psychologically safe, high‑performing teams; establish scalable processes, reduce risk and single points of failure, and drive continuous improvement with meaningful metrics.
• Partner with Product and Engineering, Business Operations to enable effective delivery of working software: shape data‑informed flow and feedback, remove impediments and dependencies, and reinforce practices that improve predictability and outcomes.
• Influence and align stakeholders at all levels: teams, tracks, areas, and business units, creating buy‑in, designing change management approaches, and sustaining behavioural change beyond direct involvement.
• Operate hands‑on as a coach for part of your time, leading complex multi‑team engagements and modeling practices at scale across tracks/areas/BUs to accelerate delivery and improvement.
• Mentor coaches and leaders; nurture knowledge sharing and communities of practice to elevate craft standards and amplify impact across the organisation.
• Own Agile Coach hiring and onboarding; define role profiles, run selection processes, and ensure new hires are set up for success.

• Broad Job Knowledge (5 - 8 years)
• Proven experience managing and developing coaches or similar roles, including talent and performance management.
• Strong stakeholder influence skills and change leadership across different levels of an organisation.
• Full understanding of agile values and principles,
• Working knowledge of multiple agile methodologies (e.g., Scrum, Kanban, XP, Lean, LeSS, SAFe).
• Relevant background in Engineering or Product.

• Annual paid time off and generous paid leave scheme including: parent, grandparent, bereavement, and care leave
• Hybrid working including flexible working arrangements, and up to 20 days per year working from abroad (home country)
• Industry leading product discounts - up to 1400 per year - for yourself, including automatic Genius Level 3 status and Booking.com wallet credit
• Living and working in Amsterdam, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe
• Contributing to a high scale, complex, world renowned product and seeing real-time impact of your work on millions of travelers worldwide
• Working in a fast-paced and performance driven culture
• Opportunity to utilize technical expertise, leadership capabilities and entrepreneurial spirit
• Promote and drive impactful and innovative engineering solutions
• Technical, behavioral and interpersonal competence advancement via on-the-job opportunities, experimental projects, hackathons, conferences and active community participation
• Competitive compensation and benefits package and some great added perks of working in the home city of Booking.com

• Let's go places together: How we Hire
• This role does not come with relocation assistance.