Director of Product, Foundations

• Background in travel, marketplaces or large consumer digital products, working at the intersection of platform capabilities, content systems, front‑end/design systems, AI / ML systems and the experience teams that consume them.

• Own Experience Infrastructure as the reliable, scalable runtime, rendering, delivery and experimentation foundation that consuming experiences are built on, spanning: Data Access - the federated data mediation layer that gives product teams governed, discoverable, privacy‑compliant data and reduces cognitive load; Gateway & Traffic Enrichment - the unified entry, routing and deep‑linking layer that enriches traveller traffic with standardised Common Request Context for consistent, secure, observable handling across verticals; and App Build & Release - the end‑to‑end mobile delivery pipeline (CI/CD, release orchestration and SRE) that drives reliability, self‑service releases and faster, safer mobile delivery at 125M+ MAU scale.
• Own Experience Content platforms so content can be authored once and delivered consistently across surfaces and locales, spanning: Content Moderation - scalable integrity, compliance and governance workflows that keep user‑ and partner‑generated content safe and legally compliant; Localization - the translation and multilingual delivery infrastructure that powers locally relevant experiences at scale; and Content Generation - large‑scale text and visual content, GenAI creation workflows and writing systems that deliver relevance and consistency efficiently across journeys.
• Own Experience UI - the reusable component library, design system, screen composition and front‑end frameworks - so teams build consistent, accessible, high‑quality interfaces faster, with consistency across web and app.
• Own the orchestration layer that lets infrastructure, content and UI capabilities be composed into experiences, exposing clear contracts and self‑service tooling so consuming teams can assemble experiences quickly.
• Steward the conversational foundations that bring Conversational AI across the traveller journey, providing the shared, reusable building blocks (and integration into the MP AI north‑star architecture) that let conversational experiences be built and scaled consistently rather than rebuilt per use case.
• Make AI a first‑class platform capability, partnering with Engineering, Data and ML leaders to embed AI/ML and GenAI into infrastructure, content, UI and conversational foundations with responsible‑AI guardrails, so consuming teams inherit safe, scalable AI by default.
• Establish shared platform principles, adoption playbooks, versioning and deprecation discipline, and a feedback loop with consuming teams so the platform continuously improves against real usage.

Established in 1996 in Amsterdam, Booking.com has grown from a small Dutch start-up to one of the largest ecommerce companies in the world. Booking.com is the largest business within Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG) and accounts for the vast majority of Booking Holdings' total revenue. Booking Holdings is a leading Fortune 500 e-commerce conglomerate with a market cap of roughly $166 billion (2025). Booking.com currently employs approximately 13,000 employees in 140 offices in 70 countries worldwide.

With a mission to make it easier for everyone to experience the world, Booking.com invests in digital technology that helps take the friction out of travel. Booking.com connects travelers with the world's largest selection of incredible places to stay, including everything from apartments, vacation homes, and family-run B&Bs to 5-star luxury resorts and even tree houses. The Booking.com website and mobile apps are available in over 44 languages, offer more than 28M total reported listings, and cover over 174,000 destinations in 229 countries worldwide. Offering 30 different types of places to stay, including homes, apartments, B&Bs, hostels, farm stays, bungalows, even boats, igloos, and treehouses. So whether travelling for business or leisure, customers can instantly book their ideal accommodation quickly and easily, without booking fees and backed up by its promise to match. Via the customer experience team, customers can reach Booking.com 24/7 for assistance and support in over 44 languages, any time of the day or night.

At Booking.com, we are all involved in making hundreds of decisions every day. The decisions we make are a reflection of our Values - they reflect what is important to us, both as individuals and as an organisation.

When Values are made explicit, they provide clarity on what "good" looks like. And when they are shared, they build unity in a group. They build culture.

• Think customer first. We obsess about adding value for our customers - guests, partners, colleagues - to make it easier for everyone to experience the world.
• Own it. We deliver on our promises, make informed decisions and prioritize to get the important things done today.
• Learn forever. We are resilient, take time to reflect, and seek to learn - from colleagues, from the outside world and from our failures.
• Succeed together. We celebrate team success, through making connections, building trust and valuing the diverse perspectives of others.
• Do the right thing. We get the right results the right way. For each other, our communities and the world around us.

As Director of Product, Foundations, you will lead the Foundations product organisation within Marketplace Product Experience, owning the strategy and direction for the shared digital experience platform that every Booking.com experience team builds on. The mission is simple and high‑leverage: enable other teams to move faster by providing reliable, reusable, AI-first platform capabilities - so missions and verticals spend their energy on differentiated customer value rather than rebuilding undifferentiated infrastructure.

Operating at Product Director scope, you are responsible for multiple platform product groups: Experience Infrastructure, Experience Content and Experience UI, plus cross‑platform orchestration - and accountable for customer impact, business impact and Product Quality / Excellence across the portfolio. Because Foundations is a horizontal enabler, your success is measured as much by the leverage, adoption and velocity you create for consuming teams as by the platforms themselves.

• Own the Foundations platform strategy and set a clear 18 month direction for the shared digital experience platform, translating company, Marketplace and Tech Enablement strategy into a prioritised platform portfolio with sharp build/buy/reuse trade‑offs.
• Define the strategic narrative and sequencing of major platform bets across Experience Infrastructure, Experience Content, Experience UI and orchestration, including where AI becomes a first‑class platform capability.
• Own department‑level outcomes and a measurable performance narrative built on platform leverage metrics - adoption, consuming‑team velocity, reuse, reliability, total cost of ownership and reduction of duplicated logic - linked to the customer and business outcomes the platforms enable.

• Lead the Foundations organisation across multiple platform product groups, driving multi‑year planning and resource allocation while balancing near‑term enablement needs with long‑term architecture investment.
• Ensure delivery excellence and raise the bar on product quality - reliability, maintainability, compliance, cost efficiency, operational health and adherence to NFRs - for capabilities that the whole company depends on.
• Lead the migration from fragmented, team‑specific infrastructure, content and UI toward shared, reusable platforms, ensuring capabilities are operationally ready, well‑documented and adopted, and that duplicated and legacy implementations are deprecated.

• Partner with Engineering leadership on multi‑year architectural investment decisions that shape the experience platform, the content stack, the UI/design‑system foundations and the orchestration layer, and their fit within Booking.com's broader technology direction.
• Run a disciplined platform‑as‑a‑service operating model with consuming teams: clear contracts, SLAs, intake and prioritisation, roadmaps and adoption commitments, so platform investment tracks real consuming‑team demand and company‑level leverage.
• Lead complex cross‑BU initiatives where platform decisions intersect with missions, verticals and platform teams across the company, and represent Foundations in VP / SVP‑level forums with clear options, trade‑offs and decision requests.

• Develop leaders, design and evolve the organisation structure so scope, decision ownership and accountability are clear, and hire, coach and performance‑manage senior PMs and GPMs for strong team and portfolio health.
• Lead as a true people manager with clear delegation and direct feedback, and contribute beyond core scope to Marketplace PX, platform craft and the wider PM craft - including platform product standards, AI product thinking and reusable practices.

• Extensive product leadership experience (10+ years), including several years leading multiple PM teams and managers at Product Director scope (multiple product groups, multi‑year strategy, complex cross‑BU initiatives) in a complex, global environment.
• A track record in platform, infrastructure, developer‑tooling, content platform or design‑system / UI platform product at scale, ideally where the customers were internal teams and success was measured in adoption, leverage and velocity.
• Strong platform product thinking: comfortable running a platform‑as‑a‑service model with contracts, SLAs, intake/prioritisation and adoption strategy, and reasoning in terms of reuse, total cost of ownership, build/buy/reuse and duplication reduction.
• Strong Applied AI Product Proficiency and Tech Fluency: able to evaluate where AI becomes a platform capability, govern responsible AI use, and partner deeply on architecture, reliability, maintainability and long‑term technical health.
• Excellent stakeholder leadership and Strategic Thinking, able to influence senior leaders and consuming teams through structured narratives, options and clear decision framing. Strong command of English, written and spoken.

If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.