Senior Business Operations Associate

At 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 make. The journeys you take. The sights you see. And the food you sample. Through our products, partners and people, we make it easier for everyone to experience the world.

Within FinTech, our BusOps Portfolio & Client Management team is the glue that connects strategy, portfolio decisions and day-to-day execution. We help the department run in the most effective way possible and enable leadership to make better, faster, data-driven investment decisions.

As a Senior Business Operations Associate - Portfolio Management, you will design, drive and continuously improve the portfolio governance, planning rhythms and tooling for one of our FinTech sub-departments. You will orchestrate key processes such as Quarterly and Annual Planning, Quarterly Business Reviews and demand intake, ensuring our portfolio, roadmap and capacity remain aligned with strategic priorities. You thrive in a dynamic, product-led environment, are comfortable working across Product, Tech and Operations, and enjoy rolling up your sleeves to turn complex problems into pragmatic solutions.

We are looking for a hands-on, experienced professional who combines strong stakeholder management with analytical thinking and is eager to innovate how we work - including through the smart use of AI-powered tools (e.g. Glean, Gemini, Claude, and others).

Key Responsibilities

1. Portfolio planning, reviews and intake

• Own and support the preparation and follow-up of Quarterly and Annual Planning cycles, as well as Quarterly Business Reviews, for your FinTech sub-department - in line with the company-wide planning framework.
• Co-design and maintain the department's portfolio and roadmap view (in Jira and related plugins), ensuring initiatives are clearly defined, prioritised and mapped to strategic objectives.
• Drive the Portfolio Sync process: prepare materials with the relevant Fintech stakeholders, ensure high-quality input data, and facilitate the follow-up on trade-off and prioritisation decisions made by the leadership team.
• Track and follow up on agreed actions and decisions, ensuring that owners are clear and progress is visible to stakeholders.

• Shape and champion the effective use of Jira, Confluence and related tooling for planning, tracking and reporting across the portfolio (e.g. capacity planning views, status dashboards).
• Define and build portfolio insights and dashboards (in collaboration with Central Tech and/or using self-service tools) that give stakeholders a clear view on demand, progress, risks, dependencies and outcomes.
• Implement and monitor Jira "hygiene" and maturity standards, including dashboards and checks that help teams keep data accurate and actionable.
• Experiment with AI-powered tools (e.g. Glean, Gemini, Claude, etc.) to automate reporting, improve data quality, summarise portfolio information and streamline planning & review activities - and roll out successful approaches across the team/department.

• Act as the central point of contact in the sub-department for topics related to portfolio governance, planning processes, tooling and reporting.
• Influence up to Senior Management level and productively interact with Director level by providing clear, data-driven insights and well-structured recommendations.
• Partner with Product, Tech, Operations and other stakeholders to ensure they understand and get value from the portfolio processes, tools and ways of working.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with relevant central teams (e.g. Central Tech, FP&A, central BusOps) to ensure alignment and leverage shared capabilities.

• Co-define and drive the implementation of a Portfolio Management improvement roadmap for the sub-department (e.g. prioritisation criteria, metrics, cadences, decision forums).
• Identify opportunities to simplify and standardise processes to increase efficiency and effectiveness while preserving necessary flexibility for teams.
• Contribute actively to the broader Business Operations craft: share best practices, and participate in cross-departmental improvement initiatives or communities.

• 7+ years of experience in relevant roles (e.g. Business Operations, Lean Portfolio Management, PMO, Project/Program Management, Consulting, Chief of Staff or similar) in fast-paced, technology-driven organisations.
• Proven experience supporting or running portfolio / roadmap governance processes, such as demand intake, prioritisation, quarterly planning, portfolio roadmapping and/or portfolio metrics & reporting.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, with crisp, business-oriented language and the ability to tailor messages to different audiences (from individual contributors to Directors).
• Service-oriented and customer-driven mindset, with a focus on solving for the whole system rather than optimising for a single function.
• Excellent problem-solving and interpersonal skills; able to break down complex problems into clear, actionable steps and to bring people along to solutions.
• Strong experience with Jira and Confluence; experience with Jira plugins such as OBoard, Structure or equivalent dashboarding tools is a plus.
• Demonstrated analytical capability: comfortable working with data to create and interpret portfolio dashboards, KPIs and performance insights.
• Understanding of and affinity with AI tooling.
• Strong influencing and stakeholder management skills; experienced in working with and balancing the needs of Product, Tech, Operations and other partners simultaneously.
• Experience in Tech/Product-driven companies is preferred.