Head of Marketplace Operations & Growth (eCommerce Marketplaces)

Job description:

About the Role

Trojan Commerce, part of the Buy It Direct Group, operates a large multi-brand eCommerce business across Amazon, eBay and other major marketplaces for international brands.

We are looking for a highly experienced marketplace leader to take independent ownership of the commercial performance, operational quality, compliance and technical operation of approximately 30 marketplace stores.

This is a senior, hands-on role for someone who already has substantial experience operating marketplace businesses at scale. You will be expected to understand how successful marketplace operations work commercially, operationally and technically, and to use that experience to identify what needs to happen rather than waiting to be given a task list.

You will be expected to grow marketplace performance as well as protect it — identifying sales opportunities, ensuring stores participate in relevant promotions and programmes, improving listings and pricing, onboarding new clients and marketplaces, and using data to recommend actions that improve revenue and profitability.

You will also analyse operational performance, identify risks before they become issues, recommend solutions to senior management and work directly within marketplace platforms to deliver improvements.

A major part of the role will be proactive ownership. We expect you to identify underperformance, commercial opportunities, account-health risks, catalogue issues, fulfilment problems, process weaknesses and technical problems independently, investigate their root causes and recommend or implement the appropriate action.

You will support expansion into new UK and EU marketplaces, ensuring new stores, fulfilment arrangements and carrier configurations are set up correctly from day one.

You will work closely with senior management, account managers, clients, operations, warehouses and IT teams. You must therefore be comfortable translating marketplace data and technical issues into clear commercial recommendations, including the likely revenue, cost, operational or compliance impact.

This is not an administrative, VA or PPC role. We need someone who can independently identify what needs attention and take ownership of the commercial and operational outcome.

We are specifically looking for someone who can operate as a marketplace subject-matter expert within the business — someone senior management can rely on to understand marketplace performance, challenge existing ways of working where necessary, recommend improvements and drive those improvements through to completion.

Key Responsibilities

Marketplace Commercial Ownership

• Own the commercial and operational performance of approximately 30 marketplace stores and accounts.

Identify opportunities to increase sales, conversion and profitability across Amazon, eBay and other marketplaces.
Ensure stores participate in relevant marketplace promotions, campaigns, seasonal events and platform programmes.
Review marketplace performance and proactively recommend pricing, promotional, catalogue and operational actions to improve growth.

• Work with account managers and clients to ensure agreed commercial plans are executed correctly on each marketplace.

Ensure listings, pricing, stock availability and catalogue data are accurate and commercially effective.
Support onboarding of new clients, brands, marketplaces and countries.
Regularly identify products, categories, stores and marketplaces that are underperforming or have untapped commercial potential.

• Analyse marketplace traffic, conversion, Buy Box performance, pricing, availability, promotions, fees and other relevant commercial indicators to determine where action is required.

Identify missed marketplace opportunities rather than relying solely on account managers, clients or senior management to raise them.

• Evaluate the commercial impact of proposed changes and prioritise activity according to revenue, profitability, customer experience and operational risk.

• Develop practical recommendations to improve marketplace performance and clearly communicate the expected commercial benefit to management.

• Ensure marketplace growth does not come at the expense of account health, fulfilment performance or profitability.

Marketplace Health, Compliance & Risk

• Protect Amazon Account Health, Seller Fulfilled Prime and equivalent marketplace performance standards.
• Monitor critical KPIs, identify emerging risks and lead corrective action before thresholds are breached.
• Manage Plans of Action, appeals, policy violations, suppressed listings and other marketplace-performance issues.
• Maintain a detailed understanding of marketplace policies and proactively identify changes that could affect existing stores, listings or operating processes.
• Investigate account-health warnings, listing restrictions, intellectual-property complaints, fulfilment-performance issues and other marketplace risks.
• Personally lead or coordinate responses to serious marketplace issues where revenue or account status is at risk.
• Ensure corrective actions address the underlying root cause rather than simply resolving individual cases.
• Establish preventative controls where recurring compliance or performance risks are identified.
• Escalate material risks to senior management with a clear assessment of the potential commercial impact and recommended action.

Operational & Financial Performance

• Analyse returns, refunds, cancellations, fees and other operational data to identify root causes, financial leakage and improvement opportunities.
• Investigate abnormal trends in cancellations, late dispatches, refunds, returns, defects, claims, delivery performance and marketplace charges.
• Identify unnecessary marketplace costs, incorrect fees, operational inefficiencies and processes that are negatively affecting profitability.
• Work with relevant internal teams to resolve recurring operational problems affecting marketplace performance.
• Measure the effectiveness of corrective actions and ensure improvements are sustained rather than treated as one-off fixes.
• Understand the relationship between marketplace KPIs, operational processes and commercial performance and use this understanding to recommend priorities.

Marketplace Launches & Expansion

• Launch and configure new marketplace stores and support expansion into new countries.
• Manage marketplace configuration, fulfilment, carrier and warehouse changes.
• Coordinate operational readiness for new client, country and marketplace launches.
• Take ownership of marketplace launch requirements from initial planning through configuration, testing and go-live.
• Ensure new stores are commercially and operationally ready before launch, including listings, catalogue structure, pricing, inventory, shipping settings, returns configuration, fulfilment rules, carrier services and relevant compliance requirements.
• Support expansion across the UK and Europe, taking into account marketplace-specific operational requirements and differences between countries.
• Identify potential launch risks before go-live and ensure appropriate testing and contingency plans are in place.
• Conduct post-launch reviews to identify issues quickly and ensure new marketplace operations stabilise successfully.

Marketplace Systems, Technical Operations & Integrations

• Troubleshoot catalogue, order, fulfilment, feed and integration issues, working with internal IT teams and external platforms where required.
• Manage marketplace configuration, fulfilment, carrier and warehouse changes directly within marketplace platforms where - appropriate.
• Understand how marketplace platforms interact with internal order-management, inventory, warehouse, carrier and integration systems.
• Diagnose whether marketplace problems originate from platform configuration, catalogue data, feeds, integrations, warehouse processes, carrier configuration or another operational source.
• Work effectively with IT and development teams by clearly defining marketplace requirements, expected behaviour and business impact.
• Support testing and validation following technical changes to ensure marketplace orders, inventory, pricing and fulfilment information continue to flow correctly.
• Take ownership of marketplace-related i ---------- and coordinate the appropriate internal or external teams until the issue is resolved.

Performance Management & Reporting

• Maintain a clear Red / Amber / Green view of marketplace health and provide concise weekly management reporting covering growth opportunities, risks, recommended actions and financial impact.
• Develop a clear understanding of what “good” performance looks like for each marketplace and identify deviations before they become significant problems.
• Provide senior management with concise, decision-focused reporting rather than simply presenting raw marketplace data.
• Clearly distinguish between issues requiring immediate intervention, emerging risks that need monitoring and longer-term improvement opportunities.
• Quantify commercial impact wherever reasonably possible, including revenue at risk, potential revenue upside, cost savings or profitability improvements.
• Track agreed actions through to completion and report whether the expected improvement has been achieved.
• Use marketplace data to challenge assumptions and support evidence-based commercial and operational decisions.

Process Improvement & Scalability

• Continuously improve processes so the marketplace estate can scale effectively.
• Identify activities that are overly manual, inconsistent, poorly controlled or difficult to scale and recommend better processes.
• Develop standard operating procedures, controls and reporting where these will improve consistency across multiple marketplace accounts.
• Identify opportunities for automation or system improvements and work with technical teams to implement appropriate solutions.
• Ens