Senior Financial Operations Consultant

Role Overview

Senior Financial Operations Consultant – Flights & Aviation Settlement

Booking.com is building up its new Flights platform from the ground up. While our Product and Tech teams are scaling the software, we need an elite operational architect to bridge the gap between aviation-specific settlement logic and Booking.com’s massive, centralized corporate finance infrastructure.

We are seeking an elite, independent FinOps Consultant / Interim Head of Flight Settlement to lead the early-stage discovery and definition of our global financial operations framework. This is a "zero-to-one" initiative. You will design the target operating model, map complex flow-of-funds, ensure global clearinghouse compliance, and deliver the operational blueprint that our tech team will build against. We have a small team managing our flight finance workflows, alongside a world-class, extensive corporate finance department, your role will be highly collaborative and matrixed. You will audit our legacy setup, map out the net-new operational flows required, you might also be asked to support building the business cases required to secure future headcount and operational support structures.

Key Responsibilities & Deliverables

During this 6–9 month engagement, your responsibilities will split between aviation domain architecture and enterprise stakeholder management. You will be responsible for defining how money moves securely, compliantly, and efficiently between Booking.com, global clearinghouses, and airlines.

Flights Settlement architecture:

• Financial Target Operating Model (TOM): Design the end-to-end operational blueprint for both Merchant of Record (MoR) and Agency/Pass-Through payment models.

  
  

• Clearinghouse & IATA Mapping: Define the operational requirements for onboarding Booking.com onto ARC (Airline Reporting Corporation) and IATA BSP (Billing and Settlement Plan) globally.

  
  

• Exception & Leakage Architecture: Map out the operational workflows for high-risk, high-complexity aviation financial events, including involuntary refunds, schedule changes, chargebacks, and Agency Debit Memos (ADMs) mitigation.

  
  

• Cross-Functional Translation: Act as the domain expert translating archaic airline finance regulations into clear, logical business requirements for our internal Core Tech, Product, Treasury, Tax, and Legal teams.

  
  

• Risk & Collateral Framework: Support our Treasury team with your Flight industry expertise into assessing financial exposure risks and outline requirements for bank guarantees, cash floats, and multi-currency FX management within the settlement cycle.

Enterprise Integration & Stakeholder Alignment

• Corporate Finance Bridging: Partner closely with Booking.com’s centralized Treasury, Tax, Internal Audit, Accounting and Order to Cash teams to ensure the new flight settlement flows align with corporate accounting principles and financial controls.

  
  

• Legacy Evaluation: Audit current flight-specific legacy workflows to determine what can be re-used

Operational Gap Sizing & Business Case Definition

• Capacity & Capability Analysis: Evaluate the wider Booking.com finance ecosystem to identify gaps in tools, systems, headcount, or expertise needed to support complex airline cash cycles (e.g., IATA BSP weekly remittance, ADM disputes).

  
  

• Business Case Creation: Author executive-level business cases and organizational "Target Team Topologies" to justify and secure headcount/budget for missing internal operational support teams and tools.

Required Experience & Expertise

… lees de volledige omschrijving bij Booking.com.