Collinson is the global, privately-owned company dedicated to helping the world to travel with ease and confidence. The group offers a unique blend of industry and sector specialists who together provide market-leading airport experiences, loyalty and customer engagement, and insurance solutions for over 400 million consumers.
Collinson is the operator of Priority Pass, the world’s original and leading airport experiences programme. Travellers can access a network of 1,500+ lounges and travel experiences, including dining, retail, sleep and spa, in over 650 airports in 148 countries, helping to elevate the journey into something special. We work with the world’s leading payment networks, over 1,400 banks, 90 airlines and 20 hotel groups worldwide.
We have been bringing innovation to the market since inception – from launching the first independent global VIP lounge access Programme, Priority Pass to being the first to sell direct travel insurance in the UK through Columbus Direct and creating the first loyalty agency of its kind in the travel sector with ICLP. Today we still invest heavily in innovation to ensure that we continue to deliver superior customer experiences.
Key clients include Mastercard, American Express, Cathay Pacific, British Airways, LATAM, Flying Blue, Accor, EasyJet, HSBC, Chase, HDFC.
Our mission is focused on doing good beyond profit, which for us means we seek out opportunities for our people to share in our success and that we give back to the communities and people within which we work.
Never short of ambition, the success of our business is delivered through the diverse and talented team of over 2,200 global colleagues.
Purpose of the job
The Director of Customer Platform leads the strategic vision, architecture, implementation and continuous improvement of Collinson’s customer platform. This is primarily a Salesforce endeavour Salesforce is the core of the platform alongside a number of adjacent tools and ecosystem components, including Salesforce ecosystem and integration technologies.
The role owns the customer platform craft end-to-end and leads a team of specialists whose work spans multiple customer lenses including consumer, client, partner, foundations, data platform and AI with team members embedded across a number of squads.
This is an architecture-led leadership role. It combines strong, hands-on solution and technical architecture with the people leadership, governance and operational discipline needed to run a distributed team well. The Director sets the architectural designs and principles for the platform, raises the quality and consistency of solutioning, and ensures the platform is built and integrated to a high standard wherever it is used.
The role covers the full customer platform footprint including (but not limited to) Salesforce CRM, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Revenue Cloud, Loyalty Management and Data Cloud, together with adjacent suppliers such as LINK Mobility and other ecosystem components.
The Director ensures platform governance, regulatory compliance and the application of technology best practice including resilience, recovery and security and owns the vendor relationships. The objective is to continuously improve the platform to support business goals and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Platform Architecture and Solutioning
Own the architectural designs and principles for the customer platform: Salesforce at its core, plus adjacent tooling and ecosystem components, setting solution and technical standards that raise the quality and consistency of delivery.
Provide senior, hands-on architectural leadership to strengthen the design, scalability and performance of implementations, including Revenue Cloud, Loyalty Management, Service Cloud and Data Cloud.
Provide architectural governance for the platform, approving integration patterns, guardrails and cross-team design decisions, including integrations with tools such as LINK Mobility.
Team Leadership and People Management
Lead and look after a team of specialists, including architects, developers, administrators and consultants, often with Salesforce skills, whose work spans multiple customer lenses including consumer, client, partner, foundations, data platform and AI.
Operational and Delivery Management
Manage the team operationally, including planning, prioritisation, capacity and ways of working across the squads the specialists support.
Stakeholder Engagement and Collaboration
Foster collaboration across departments, including business solutions, data, engineering, operations and client services, to maximise the value of platform implementations.
Security, Governance and Compliance
Performance and Optimisation
Monitor and track critical business and financial KPIs, ensuring benefits realisation for the platform investment is identified, tracked, realised and communicated.
Commercial and Vendor Management
Own the vendor relationships and renewals, including Salesforce, LINK Mobility and other ecosystem partners, and oversee third-party engagements to ensure cost-effectiveness and alignment with business objectives.
Knowledge, skills and experience required
Deep, demonstrable Salesforce solution and technical architecture expertise, ideally Salesforce-certified at Application and/or System Architect level, with CTA an advantage, and with a track record of designing large, multi-cloud Salesforce estates.
Proven track record leading Salesforce services across CRM, Marketing, Data Services, Revenue Cloud/CPQ, billing and Loyalty.
Extensive experience delivering programmes and products powered by Salesforce, including CRM, Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Revenue Cloud and Customer Data Platform.
Strong leadership qualities, able to motivate, mentor and lead a diverse team, and to empower each member to contribute meaningfully.
Strong people-management and operational skills, including planning, prioritisation, capacity management and ways of working.
Self-motivated, goal- and outcome-oriented, with thoroughness, attention to detail and a commitment to continuous learning.
Collinson is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes differences in all their forms including: colour, race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, neurodivergence, family status, age, individuals with disabilities and people from all backgrounds, cultures and experiences as we strongly believe this contributes to our on-going success.
We are focused on continually evolving our purpose driven, high performing culture, providing an environment where our people have the opportunity to achieve their full potential and do interesting and meaningful work. Our company values are: Take Action, Do the right thing, One team and Be insight led. These help guide everything we do internally in terms of how we think, act and interact, right through to how we deliver value to our customers and clients.
In your application, please feel free to note which pronouns you use (For example - she/her/hers, he/him/his, they/them/theirs, etc).
If you need any extra support throughout the interview process, then please email us at [email protected]
