Operations Director Italy

If you’re here, it’s because you’re looking for an exciting ride. 

A ride that will fuel up your ambitions to take on a new challenge and stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone. 

We’ll deliver a non-vanilla culture built on talent, where we work to amplify the impact on millions of people, paving the way forward together. 

Not your usual app. We are the fastest-growing multi-category app connecting millions of users with businesses, and couriers, offering on-demand services from more than 170,000 local restaurants, grocers and supermarkets, and high street retail stores. We operate in more than 1500 cities across 23 countries. 

Together we revolutionise the way people connect with their everyday needs, from delivering essentials to connecting our ecosystem of users through innovative solutions powered by technology. For us, every day is filled with purpose.

What makes our ride unique? 

🤝 Our culture and strong values. 

💪 Our career development philosophy. 

🤝 Our commitment to being a force for good. 

We have a vision: Building the largest marketplace in your city, to give access to anything in minutes. And this is where your ride starts.

Your Mission 🚀

Location: Milan | Reports to: General Manager, Italy | Team Size: 20+ reports | Seniority: Executive Leadership Team

As Operations Director for Glovo Italy, you will lead the country’s end-to-end delivery operations, overseeing supply, fleet, and partner operations performance to ensure an exceptional customer experience in one of Glovo’s most strategic and complex markets. With a strong analytical mindset, leadership capability, and execution excellence, you will be responsible for driving operational efficiency at scale, supporting rapid growth, and continuously improving service levels.

You will lead a high-performing team that combines operational excellence with the right sense of business acumen, partnering with leaders across marketing, q-commerce, commercial, finance and more, ensuring that every initiative is value-generating.

The Journey 🇮🇹

• Lead an Operations team that delivers insights, proactively identifies opportunities, and challenges the status quo to shape the future of our business.
• Own and lead all operational metrics in Italy, from courier performance to restaurant and store reliability, ensuring the highest level of service quality and delivery speed.
• Build, coach, and empower a high-performing team of Operations Managers, Operations Associates and Specialists including Analysts (20+ FTEs), fostering a culture of ownership, data-driven execution, and continuous improvement.
• Deep-dive into operational data to detect trends, surface inefficiencies, and deploy impactful strategies that drive performance at country and city level.
• Design, roll out, and optimise core operational processes to support fleet growth, partner satisfaction, and profitability across the entire supply ecosystem.
• Oversee courier supply health, ensuring availability, balance, and compliance to deliver excellence at scale in both stable and high-pressure environments.
• Identify, analyse, and execute strategic growth opportunities to improve delivery times, lower cost per order, and improve customer satisfaction.
• Support and lead cross-functional projects with tech, commercial, and global operations teams, transforming insights into scalable solutions.
• Represent Glovo’s operational excellence in high-stakes negotiations and external stakeholder engagements, from major partners to local institutions.
• Partner with the Central Operations Team and the General Manager to align local initiatives with global priorities and to ensure alignment and best-in-class execution..
• Represent the country in international forums, sharing learnings and helping shape Glovo’s global playbook.

What You Will Bring to the Ride 📈

Experience & Background

• 10–15+ years’ experience in Operations, Supply Chain, Strategy Consulting, or equivalent high-impact environments.
• Proven experience in senior leadership roles, with full operations management and cross-functional business acumen.
• Track record in leading high-performing teams, including recruiting and developing top talent.
• Strong exposure to high-growth, tech, e-commerce, or marketplace environments.
• Background in industrial engineering, supply chain management and/or strategy consulting (e.g., MBB) in fast-paced companies is a strong plus.
• Fluency in Italian and English is required.

Skills & Leadership Competencies 🧠 

• Data Obsession & Analytical Rigor: You consistently extract actionable insights from complex data sets and base every decision on evidence.
• Strategic Thinking: You evaluate opportunities and challenges holistically, always aligning execution with long-term impact.
• Team Leadership: You have proven experience hiring, mentoring, and scaling high-performance teams that thrive under your guidance.
• Operational Expertise: You have 5+ years of experience in fast-paced, high-responsibility roles (consulting, operations, industrial engineering or tech platforms), ideally with on-demand or logistics exposure.
• Process Excellence: You create clarity out of chaos and are constantly looking for ways to standardise and improve how things are done.
• Customer-First Mindset: You care deeply about the experience of end-users, from customers to couriers to partners, and act on that empathy.
• Problem-Solving & Curiosity: You break down problems, go deep to understand root causes, and are always generating innovative solutions.
• High Ownership & Autonomy: You don't wait to be told what to do — you act, test, and iterate fast to make things better every day.
• Influence & Communication: You know how to clearly communicate priorities and motivate others, internally and externally, around shared goals.
• Flexibility & Resilience: You thrive in change, multitask with ease, and stay composed in fast-evolving environments.

Culture

• Ability to work in a high growth and high-performing environment with a fast pace while being hands-on and autonomous.
• Adaptable and positive mindset: possess a flexible attitude towards evolving roles within the finance domain; we value versatility & the ability to adapt to new challenges while ensuring a consistent job scope.
• A can-do attitude and endless curiosity, you wonder why something happened, spend hours figuring it out, and can’t stop thinking about solutions.
• Obsessed with continuous improvements, delivering value and allergic to manual tasks!
• An empathetic and inclusive attitude - you are always respectful, kind, and fair.

Why Glovo? ✨

• One of Europe’s fastest-growing tech companies in a global ecosystem with Delivery Hero.
• High-impact role with exposure to the leadership team & international scale
• Entrepreneurial culture, where ownership and velocity matter
• Exceptional growth potential—personal and professional
• Opportunity to shape the next chapter of Glovo Italy

Individuals representing diverse profiles, and abilities, encompassing various genders, ethnicities, and backgrounds, are less likely to apply for this role if they do not possess solid experience in 100% of these areas. Even if it seems you don't meet our musts don't let it stop you, we are all about finding the best talent out there! Skills can be learned, and embracing diversity is invaluable.

We believe driven talent deserves:

• 🌟 An enticing equity plan that lets you own a piece of the action.
• 💪 Top-notch private health insurance to keep you at your peak.
• 🍔 Monthly Glovo credit to satisfy your cravings!
• 💳 Discounts on transportation, food, and even kindergarten expenses.
• 🏊 Discounted gym memberships to keep you energized.
• 🏖️ Extra time off, the freedom to work from home two days a week, and the opportunity to work from anywhere for up to three weeks a year!
• 👪 Enhanced parental leave, and office-based nursery.
• 🧠 Online therapy and wellbeing benefits to ensure your mental well-being.

Here at Glovo, we thrive on diversity, we believe it enhances our teams, products, and culture. We know that the best ideas come from a mashup of brilliant diverse minds. This is why we are committed to providing equal opportunities to talent from all backgrounds - all genders, racial/diverse backgrounds, abilities, ages, sexual orientations and all other unique characteristics that make you YOU. We will encourage you to bring your authentic self to work, fostering an inclusive environment where everyone feels heard. 

Feel free to note your pronouns in your application (e.g., she/her/hers, he/him/his, they/them/theirs, etc).

So, ready to take the wheel and make this the ride of your life? 

Delve into our culture by taking a peek at our Instagram and check out our Linkedin and website!