Head of Merchant Operations Full Time

Local is building the payments and operations layer for restaurants across the Gulf. Our QR-enabled platform lets diners pay in seconds and gives merchants the tools to run a tighter, faster operation. We’re venture-backed, live across the UAE and Bahrain, expanding into Saudi Arabia, with restaurants as our core vertical and healthcare next.

We’re a small, high-ownership team that moves fast and treats every merchant’s revenue as our own. This role is for someone who wants to build the operation and run it on the ground — not from a desk.

The role

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As Head of Merchant Operations, you own everything that happens after a merchant signs: onboarding, go-live, activation, success, retention, and support — across three markets. You’ll build the systems and SOPs that let this function scale, and you’ll personally be in restaurants making it happen while you do it.

This is a player-coach role, and we want to be honest about that. You will architect the playbook and you will also be the person who drives to a merchant at 8pm because their QR code tore and payments are failing during dinner service. You’ll hire and lead a team — and you’ll lead it by being the highest standard in the field, not by delegating from above. If you’re looking for a purely strategic seat, this isn’t it. If the idea of being hands-on with merchants every week is the part that excites you, keep reading.

What you’ll own

• Onboarding & go-live — get signed merchants from contract to first transaction fast (our target is under 14 days for restaurants), and build the repeatable system that makes that the norm in every market.
• In-person merchant relationships — you and your team are physically with merchants: solving problems on-site, reading the room with a 22-year restaurant owner who’s nervous about new tech, and building trust face to face.
• Merchant success & GMV growth — own merchant health and daily GMV. Spot a drop before the merchant does, find the cause, and fix it — often by walking into the restaurant.
• 24/7 support operations — stand up responsive support across markets and time zones. Merchants run during dinner, on weekends, and at 3am. Reachability and urgency are the job, not the exception.
• Systems & SOPs — replace founder-headspace and heroics with documented, scalable processes and the tooling to run them — without hiding behind process when speed is what’s needed.
• Team — hire, develop, and lead a growing Merchant Success and Operations team, holding a high bar and lifting up the most junior people while you do it.
• Cross-market execution — adapt the model to the realities of the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia while keeping one coherent standard.
• Metrics & reporting — define the operational scorecard, report on it honestly, and use it to drive decisions.

What you bring

• 6+ years in operations, merchant/customer success, or account management — ideally in fintech, payments, SaaS, marketplace, or restaurant tech.
• A track record of building operational functions from messy to systematic — and staying hands-on while doing it.
• A genuine bias for action and urgency. When something breaks, your instinct is to pick up the phone and go, not to schedule a kickoff for next week.
• Customer obsession that shows up physically — you go to the merchant, you don’t wait for the merchant to come to you.
• Strong commercial instinct — you understand GMV, take rates, and what actually drives merchant growth and retention.
• Comfort with ambiguity and the intensity of an early-stage, 24/7 environment. This role includes regular evening, weekend, and on-call work for merchant emergencies — as a baseline, not an exception. Some people are wired for that; some aren’t, and neither is wrong.
• Fluency in data — you make decisions with numbers and build the dashboards if they don’t exist yet.
• Integrity under pressure and real kindness to the people you lead.
• Arabic language skills.

Nice to have

• Experience operating across GCC markets (UAE, Bahrain, KSA) and familiarity with the regional restaurant or payments landscape.
• Direct experience with QR payments, POS, or restaurant operations.
• Prior early-stage / Series A-stage startup experience.

Why Local

• Real ownership of a core function at a company that’s scaling — and the chance to build the operating system for an entire category across three markets.
• A direct line to the founding team and visible impact on the trajectory of the business.
• A team that moves fast, sweats the details, and genuinely cares about doing right by merchants.
• Competitive salary and equity.