General Manager - Global Rider Support Operations (Onsite)

Key Responsibilities

• Strategic Leadership & Vision
• Set the long-term vision.
• Define and own the multi-year (1–5 year) strategic roadmap, aligned to company-wide expansion goals, revenue targets, and the evolving autonomous mobility landscape.
• Shape enterprise strategy.
• Contribute to broader operations and commercial strategy as a member of the senior leadership team; anticipate how market expansion, fleet growth, and product evolution will reshape support needs — and get ahead of them.
• Drive organizational transformation.
• Architect the operating model, organizational design, and capability roadmap required to scale support from a growing service into a global, always-on operation.
• Champion innovation.
• Identify and sponsor emerging capabilities — AI-assisted resolution, predictive support, and self-service — that redefine what rider support can be and position as the category benchmark.
• Report and influence at the top.
• Represent Rider Support in executive and board-level forums; translate operational performance into clear business narratives and secure investment for strategic initiatives.
• Commercial Growth & Value Creation
• Turn support into a growth engine.
• Reposition the function from a cost center into a driver of retention and revenue.
• Lead initiatives that recover at-risk riders, grow rider lifetime value (LTV), and maximize trip completion rates.
• Own the voice of the rider.
• Act as the ultimate advocate for riders across the company, converting support insights into influence over app design, vehicle features, pricing, and routing logic.
• Protect and grow trust.
• Ensure every interaction reinforces confidence, directly supporting brand equity and adoption in new and existing markets.
• Operational Excellence & Cost Optimization
• Architect an efficient footprint.
• Build a scalable operating model that leverages AI routing, self-service automation, and strategic offshore/nearshore BPO partnerships to lower cost per contact without compromising quality or safety.
• Own capacity & workforce strategy.
• Direct capacity planning and workforce management to ensure SLA adherence through peak demand, new-market launches, and rapid volume growth.
• Institutionalize continuous improvement.
• Embed Lean/Six Sigma discipline and data-driven problem solving to eliminate friction at its root and continuously raise the bar on efficiency and quality.
• Organizational & People Leadership
• Lead at scale.
• Manage a large, distributed workforce of support specialists, team leads, and operations managers across multiple sites and partners.
• Build the bench.
• Develop leadership pipelines, succession plans, and continuous skill development so the organization scales its talent as fast as its footprint.
• Set the culture.
• Serve as the senior site leader, fostering a culture of accountability, empathy, safety, and high performance that reflects our mission and values.
• Cross-Functional Influence & Stakeholder Management
• Partner across the business.
• Build tight, trusted relationships with Product, Engineering, Legal, Safety, and Market Operations to align support strategy with company priorities.
• Govern strategic vendors.
• Own BPO partner relationships end to end — selection, contract negotiation, and performance governance.
• Crisis & Escalation Management
• Lead through the hardest moments.
• Act as the senior escalation point for high-profile rider incidents, safety-critical events, and network-level disruptions, ensuring swift, empathetic, and compliant resolution.
• Own readiness.
• Establish escalation frameworks, on-call structures, and cross-functional response protocols so the organization responds decisively under pressure.

Leadership Competencies

• Visionary thinking.
• Sets a compelling long-term direction and connects day-to-day execution to a larger strategic narrative.
• Executive presence & influence.
• Commands credibility with senior stakeholders and drives alignment across functions without relying on direct authority.
• Business & commercial acumen.
• Understands the levers of growth, retention, and unit economics, and runs the function with an owner's mindset (P&L / budget stewardship).
• Change leadership.
• Ledes through ambiguity and rapid growth, mobilizing teams through transformation and scale.
• Decisiveness under pressure.
• Makes sound, high-stakes decisions with incomplete information — and stands behind them.
• Talent multiplier.
• Attracts, develops, and retains exceptional leaders, building an organization that outlasts any single contributor.
• Systems thinking.
• Sees the whole board — connecting rider experience, fleet operations, product, and cost into one coherent strategy.

SLA & KPI Accountability

• As GM, you will own a balanced scorecard across Rider program experience, Efficiency, and Agent Effectiveness — maintaining top-tier CSAT and NPS while scaling volume, driving down Average Handle Time without compromising First Contact Resolution, and upholding strict QA adherence to safety and brand standards.
• You will be measured against defined SLA targets for each metric and expected to proactively identify tooling, process, or training gaps that put SLA delivery at risk.

Required Experience

• 5+ years of senior leadership experience in customer support, scaled operations, or trust & safety, preferably within mobility, ride-hailing, or high-growth technology.
• Strategic leadership.
• Demonstrated success setting and executing multi-year strategy for a large function or business unit, ideally with P&L or significant budget ownership.
• Scale.
• Proven track record managing large, distributed teams (500+ headcount) and overseeing multi-million-dollar BPO contracts.
• Analytical rigor.
• Deep fluency in workforce management (WFM) dynamics, support-Center economics, and using data to diagnose and resolve operational bottlenecks.
• Continuous improvement.
• History of applying Lean/Six Sigma principles or driving technical integrations (e.g., AI assistants, CRM overhauls) to streamline operations at scale.
• Cross-functional influence.
• Track record of partnering with and influencing Product, Engineering, and executive stakeholders.
• Leadership under pressure.
• Calm, decisive, and authoritative in high-stakes and crisis-management scenarios.

Preferred (Advantageous)

• Autonomous Vehicle (AV) industry experience will be a strong advantage — familiarity with the operational, safety, and rider-trust dynamics unique to autonomous mobility.
• Rapid-scale expansion.
• Experience scaling a support or operations organization through fast geographic or market growth.
• Regulated environments.
• Exposure to safety-critical or highly regulated operating contexts.

Education

• Advanced degree (MBA or equivalent) or comparable strategic-leadership experience.

Legal Authorization

• Cognizant will only consider applicants for this position who are legally authorized to work in the United States without requiring company sponsorship now or at any time in the future.