Experience Delivery Lead – UAE & Cairo

Job Description

The Experience Delivery Lead owns the master delivery programme for every new KOFISI location, from concept sign-off to operational handover. The role drives the product swimlanes — Uniform, OS&E, Music & Scent, Art, F&B, Signage, Internal Comms, and Marketing — against a single timeline, sets and defends the budget for each swimlane alongside the Programme Director, and holds every department to the number and the date.

Key Responsibilities

1. Programme Leadership

• Own the master delivery programme for each new KOFISI location, from concept sign-off to operational handover, and the critical path within it.
• Build and maintain the swimlane view: every product department mapped against the same timeline, with dependencies, lead times, and float made visible rather than assumed.
• Maintain and communicate 12-, 6-, and 3-week critical paths per project, anticipating risk early enough that it is still cheap to fix.
• Sequence long-lead items — fabric and tailoring runs, art commissioning, kitchen equipment, scent and OS&E sourcing — against build milestones so nothing arrives after the doors open.
• Run the governance rhythm: weekly swimlane review, monthly programme review, and a live dashboard that gives one version of the truth across all workstreams.

2. Budget Definition & Financial Control

• Work with the Programme Director to define the budget for each swimlane at the outset, translating experience ambition into a number that survives contact with Finance.
• Track committed, spent, and forecast cost per swimlane, knowing the variance before the finance report does.
• Challenge specification and scope on cost grounds without allowing value engineering to quietly erode the experience.
• Build the cost model for repeat openings: what each swimlane costs per square meter and per seat, so the next location is priced from evidence rather than memory.
• Partner with Procurement on purchase orders, vendor payments, and payment timing so cash flow matches the programme.

3. Cross-Departmental Coordination

• Drive the product departments to a single delivery rhythm: Uniform, OS&E and Styling, Music & Scent, Art, F&B, Signage, and the Brand & Comms and Marketing teams that carry launch.
• Hold each department to its deliverables, dates, and budget without owning them on the org chart. Influence is the instrument; the programme is the authority.
• Align the product swimlanes with the parallel programmes: Environments Design, Operations, Finance, and Sales. Openings fail at the seams between teams, not inside them.
• Chair the weekly coordination forum: capture decisions, resolve conflicts, close actions, and escalate early and once.
• Give Sales and Marketing the dates they can sell against, and protect those dates or renegotiate them honestly and early.

4. Creative & Experience Integrity

• Partner with Environments Design and the Product team so experience intent survives the build.
• Translate design intent into build and procurement requirements specific enough that nothing is lost in interpretation.
• Act as the voice of experience through every trade-off: how members and staff will actually feel and function in the space.
• Hold the Signatures and Standards framework as the acceptance test for handover, not a nice-to-have.

5. Mobilization & Operational Readiness

• Lead the transition from build completion to opening: environment, systems, and people ready from day one.
• Coordinate with People, Operations, and Digital so recruitment, training, and service activation land against the opening date, not after it.
• Run snagging and acceptance to a documented standard, with a clear definition of done per swimlane.
• Maintain and evolve the Opening Playbook so each location is faster and cheaper to deliver than the last.
• Run post-occupancy reviews and feed findings back into Formation and the Improvement & Innovation process.

6. Team & Culture

• Mentor the coordinators across the product departments and raise the standard of programme practice across the division.
• Build a culture of clarity, accountability, and calm under pressure within the programme team.
• Make it normal to surface bad news early: a late date told in week two is a problem; told in week ten it is a crisis.

Requirements

Qualification & Skills

• Background:  Design and Build or Architectural Practice; Film, Set or Event Production; Luxury Retail or Hotel Development; Hospitality or Co-working Rollout; or Creative Agency and Experience Production. What matters is a track record of making complex, multi-workstream creative projects happen on a number with people who do not report to you.
• Programme Command: Demonstrated ability to hold many parallel workstreams in one timeline, see dependencies before they become delays, and maintain a 12-week critical path across multiple concurrent projects.
• Financial Fluency: Demonstrable budget ownership — you have held a capital or production budget, not just reported on one. Able to build a cost model, read a variance, and argue a cost case with Finance.
• Scheduling & Systems: Strong competency with scheduling tools, programme dashboards, cost trackers, and budget control systems. Advanced spreadsheet skill is assumed.
• Experience Sensibility: Appreciates craft, proportion, and experience quality, and protects design intent through to reality without being precious about it.
• Cultural Intelligence: Comfortable operating across geographies, cultures, and disciplines, from Nairobi to the GCC.
• Qualifications: Degree or diploma in Architecture, Interior Design, Project or Programme Management, Quantity Surveying, or a related field. Certification in project or programme management (PMP, PRINCE2, MSP, CAPM, or Agile) is preferred but not essential. Equivalent experience in creative or production management is highly valued.