Associate Director - Strategic Projects, White Label, Customer Experience Group (Based in Bangkok, Thailand | Relocation Provided)

About Agoda

At Agoda, we bridge the world through travel. Our story began in 2005, when two lifelong friends and entrepreneurs, driven by their passion for travel, launched Agoda to make it easier for everyone to explore the world.

Today, we are part of Booking Holdings [NASDAQ: BKNG], with a diverse team of over 7,000 people from 90 countries, working together in offices around the globe. Every day, we connect people to destinations and experiences, with our great deals across our millions of hotels and holiday properties, flights, and experiences worldwide.

No two days are the same at Agoda. Data and technology are at the heart of our culture, fueling our curiosity and innovation. If you’re ready to begin your best journey and help build travel for the world, join us.

Get to Know our Team

The Customer Experience Group (CEG) of Agoda serves our customers and partners to deliver satisfying results. This is accomplished with the support of our Global Service Verticals (GSV) team — the backbone of CEG’s global operations. Our team includes project managers, process owners, analysts, and talent management. Together we improve the quality and efficiency of our customer and partner support processes.

We are a data-driven environment, eager to move fast and learn through experimentation. A clear focus on supporting our customers and partners is bolstered by a strong, entrepreneurial culture that enriches us and Agoda’s business performance.

This role sits in the B2B Partnerships and Automation team, part of CEG’s Global Service Verticals. The team drives end-to-end customer experience and process improvements, and scales impact through automation, AI, and tooling across customer-facing and agent-facing journeys.

The Opportunity

This Associate Director role owns and leads the project management team for this area: setting direction, raising the delivery bar, and being accountable for the outcomes of the team’s portfolio.

The portfolio typically covers:

(i) automation, AI, and tooling that improve customer and agent experience, and

(ii) process optimization and CX improvements across the post-booking journey, including operational (CS) support and optimization.

You will combine strategic problem solving, hands-on data-driven execution, strong project management, and senior stakeholder and partner management. Commercial acumen is a real advantage: you will often be the CEG project counterpart to commercial and partner stakeholders, translating business needs into deliverable work without owning the commercial P&L.

In this Role, you’ll get to:

Lead the Project Management Team and its Portfolio

Own the PM team end-to-end: vision, structure, ways of working, hiring, coaching, performance, and succession of project managers (and people managers on the team, where applicable).

Set long-term direction and annual/quarterly OKRs for the team, aligned with CEG and Agoda-wide priorities.

Own the outcomes of the team’s portfolio of global initiatives — prioritization, quality, impact, risk, and delivery.

Prioritize and drive work that moves mission-critical metrics: customer satisfaction (e.g. CSAT), service levels, automation quality, productivity, cost efficiency, and employee/agent engagement.

Ensure CEG project readiness to support Agoda’s new business and product initiatives by working closely with Product, Data, Strategic Partnerships, Finance, Legal, Operations/Support, and other teams.

Drive Automation, AI, and Continuous Innovation

Identify opportunities to leverage automation, AI, and tooling across customer and agent journeys (e.g. self-service, workflow automation, AI quality testing, agent guidance).

Partner with Product, Technology, Data, and CEG teams to design, prioritize, and implement solutions — from experimentation through global rollout and impact measurement.

Oversee configuration and governance of operational flows and low-code/automation tools so solutions are robust, scalable, and aligned with CX standards.

Act as a natural innovator: reframe problems, pitch new approaches (tech/AI and non-tech process), and systematically improve how the team and CEG work — not only execute a pre-agreed roadmap.

Shape Process, CX, and Operational Support Improvements

Lead project work that improves CEG end-to-end processes across the post-booking journey, removing pain points and improving operational performance through targeted initiatives and data-driven insight.

Own and evolve frameworks and roadmaps for how we continuously improve internal SOPs and related processes, balancing CX/PX outcomes vs efficiency/cost.

Drive strategic project initiatives such as localization support in key growth markets, regulatory work, and operational (CS) support and optimization — in close partnership with ops and commercial teams, without taking line ownership of those functions.

Define clear problem statements and business cases; prioritize customer and partner pain points against success metrics.

Partner, Stakeholder, and Commercial Interface

Build trusted relationships with senior leaders across CEG, Agoda, Booking Holdings, and other functions; influence priorities and decisions as the owner of this PM team’s agenda.

Be a primary project counterpart for core partners and commercial stakeholders: understand commercial context, surface operable trade-offs, and land cross-functional alignment.

Present to CEG senior leadership with confidence and minimal supervision; act as the go-to person for this team’s domain.

Monitor milestones, risks, and dependencies; troubleshoot issues; implement mitigation — remaining the ultimate owner of the portfolio’s outcomes.

What you’ll Need to Succeed

Experience & Background

At least 8–10+ years in project/program management, operations, customer experience, process improvement, strategy, management consulting, or similar — with a strong project management core (this is non-negotiable).

Significant people leadership: building and leading a high-performing team of project managers (including people managers and individual contributors).

Proven track record of leading complex, cross-functional initiatives from idea to implementation, with clear, measurable business impact.

Experience working across operational CS / customer support environments (optimization, process, tooling, quality, or service delivery projects) is strongly preferred.

Experience as a counterpart to commercial or partner stakeholders, with genuine commercial acumen, is highly advantageous.

Experience working closely with Product, Technology, and Data on technical, automation, or AI-focused projects is highly advantageous.

Technical & Analytical Skills

Strong analytical mindset; comfortable with numbers and quantitative problem solving. Able to define analysis structures, interpret data, challenge existing metrics, and make recommendations.

Familiarity with data and analytics tools (e.g. SQL, Tableau, Metabase, or similar) and experience using them to drive decisions.

Comfort working with or overseeing workflow, automation, and agent-guidance tools, and the ability to engage in technical discussions with Product, Engineering, and Data. Coding ability is a plus; willingness to learn is expected.

Exposure to AI/ML-driven solutions in an operational or CX context (e.g. chatbots, routing, classification, quality testing, or decision-support tools) is a strong plus.

CX, Process, and Delivery Skills

Demonstrated experience in process improvement and CX transformation, ideally in operations or customer support environments.

Excellent project and stakeholder management: multiple initiatives in parallel, structured problem-solving, orchestration of cross-functional teams.

Experience defining and driving improvements in KPIs such as CSAT, NPS, SLAs, handle time, productivity, or cost-to-serve.

Leadership, Communication & Ways of Working

Excellent co