Lead, Experience Development
Position Summary
The Lead, Experience Development serves as the Product Owner for guest experiences, shaping the future of Silversea by transforming product vision into high-quality, guest-centric journeys. The Lead partners with cross-functional teams to define, prioritize, and deliver innovative concepts across ships and/or destinations — ensuring every sensory touchpoint is seamless, intuitive, and aligned with the brand’s promise.
Essential Duties And Responsibilities
Core Responsibility: Take approved concept strategies and business cases and own them through launch — breaking them into detailed, actionable plans and driving cross-functional execution to achieve the north star vision as fully as possible.
Product Definition: Leads all aspects from experience ideation, development, documentation, and execution with cross-functional partners including, but not limited to, Design, Operations, F&B, Entertainment, Onboard Revenue, Revenue Management, Marketing, Finance, Procurement, Legal, etc.
Create guest experience briefs and playbooks (in the form of detailed presentations) outlining the detailed guest journey and direction on each component needed to bring the vision to life.
Partner with our cross-function teams to define the requirements needed to deliver the ambition and ensure every need to support the experience is being accounted for throughout the development execution.
Identify opportunities throughout the development process to further the products being created.
Lead the documentation, review and approvals of briefs and any support material throughout the development process.
Understand and deliver to the project management framework such as communicating changes and updates or priority shifts to cross-functional teams while keeping their direct management up to speed on progress with regular pro-active check points.
Work closely with operations and design teams on run-of-show events to showcase programming and ensure the guest experience will be delivered in line with the product vision.
Collaborate with Marketing, Public Relations, and Revenue Management to ensure, the latest information is accurately depicted in the brand’s communication and systems.
Establish startup plans and training materials to ensure each concept/experience is flawlessly executed.
Tracks and monitors startup plans by developing training materials, SOPs or playbooks to ensure each concept/experience is flawlessly executed onboard our ships.
Ensure onboard and onshore product delivery is consistent with the vision and playbooks of new products.
Own and manage the product and experience audit and post-delivery success monitoring of new products and experiences.
Lead the efforts to ensure the product standards, practices, and experience design guidelines of the product are consistent across the brand.
Defines success criteria for products and experiences and coordinates post-delivery audit of the product through metrics and KPI.
Willing to travel up to 20% of time onboard ships or shipyard.
Operational Excellence: Support the process and governance for guest facing product changes in line with the Operational Excellence standard assigned to Product Development.
Personnel Management: Responsible for all aspects of personnel management (e.g., hiring, training, and development) of direct reports, if any.
Enhance and evolve the Product Development team direct reports, if any, by coaching and developing the required skills, roles, and responsibilities needed to concept and execute experiences for the brand.
Qualifications, Knowledge And Skills
Minimum 2 to 3 years in a product, design or other similar role developing physical products or customer experiences required
Bachelor’s degree required, Master’s degree a plus
Experience working with Architects/Designers/Creative & Innovation Consultants a plus
Experience in the travel industry a plus
Proven track record of success in fast-paced environment with demanding timelines
Ability to effectively communicate across a large ecosystem of partners and builders, that spans product definition, design and construction
Exceptional verbal and written communication and project/program leadership skills, including the ability to communicate effectively to the executive levels of the company
Ability to assemble, lead and influence cross-functional teams to execute against a vision
Ability to craft and tell a compelling and influential story for partners and collaborators
Obsessive attention to detail and follow-through – every detail matters
Proven ability to collaborate with and achieve actionable results through others, plus the ability to build strong and sustainable relationships
Proven ability to creative problem solve and drive ideas into action, with a positive outlook and willingness to take personal initiative
Methodical in research, order, prioritization, and implementation
Obsessive attention to detail and follow-through
Ability to travel up to 20% of the time