The Role

The fan experience after the buy button is where Gametime wins or loses. When things go wrong (a late delivery, a bad transfer, a confusing refund), the cost shows up in three places at once: direct support spend, chargeback and cancellation rates, and a customer who doesnt come back. Right now, the operating intelligence and tooling to prevent those moments is fragmented across multiple teams.

Were hiring a Vice President, Marketplace Operations to own the full arc from post-purchase to resolution, and to rebuild how that arc works, from the ground up, with AI at the center. This is not a manage the support queue role. Its an executive hire to redesign the operating model: build AI-powered systems that deflect volume before it becomes a ticket, create product feedback loops that eliminate root causes, and drive the margin improvement that comes when your post-purchase operation is genuinely excellent.

This person reports directly to the CEO, sits on the leadership team, and has the authority and expectation to influence across Product, Product Ops, Supplier Ops, and Marketplace to get outcomes that matter.

What Youll Own

AI-Powered CX System Design

• Architect the deflection layer. Build and own the conversational AI systems (chatbots, email automation, voice, and proactive outreach) that resolve fan issues without human intervention. Youre not deploying off-the-shelf tooling; youre designing the system, writing the product requirements, and driving implementation through Engineering and Product.
• Own the product feedback loop. Translate CX signal into ranked product work. If a transfer flow is generating 200 contacts a week, thats your spec. Partner with the Vice President of Product to get it prioritized and shipped.
• Instrument the post-purchase experience. Build the metric tree, dashboards, and alerting that make the post-purchase funnel observable in real time: cancel rate, contact rate, CSAT, resolution time, and the cost-per-order they drive.

Operating Margin Through CX Excellence

• Drive structural cost reduction. Own the unit economics of post-purchase ops. Reduce CX cost-per-order through a combination of AI deflection, process redesign, and root-cause elimination, without sacrificing fan experience. These are not in tension; great CX is how you get margin.
• Fulfillment & post-purchase reliability. Drive cancel rate, on-time delivery, and CX contact rate to a step-change new normal. Tighten dispute resolution and transfer reliability. Catch issues before fans see them.
• Org design for leverage. Re-architect how the team operates so that headcount grows slower than capability. Fewer people doing higher-leverage work, augmented by AI.

Cross-Functional Influence

• Product. The biggest driver of CX volume is product gaps. You own the relationship with the product org on post-purchase and build the prioritization case for fixes that move the needle on contact rate and satisfaction.
• Supplier Ops. Supplier behavior is the upstream cause of a large share of fan pain. Work with the Supplier Ops team to connect fulfillment failure to supplier accountability: scorecard inputs, escalation triggers, and the data that makes the case.
• Product Ops. Align operating cadence, tooling, and process improvements across the marketplace ops function so that the systems you build connect to how the rest of the operation runs.

What Youll Deliver in Year One

• A deployed AI deflection system. Measurable reduction in human-handled contact volume, with documented fan satisfaction maintained or improved.
• A post-purchase metric tree the exec team can run a board off of. Instrumented, real-time, with clear ownership of each number.
• Structural margin improvement. Meaningful reduction in CX cost-per-order driven by deflection, process redesign, and product fixes, not headcount cuts.
• A credible product roadmap for post-purchase. Ranked, sized, and actively moving through Engineering, driven by CX signal.
• A reshaped team. Higher leverage per person, clear leadership bench beneath you, AI embedded in daily operations.

What Were Looking For

• AI-native operator, not a future one. You have personally built or driven implementation of AI-powered CX systems (chatbots, automated resolution, proactive deflection) at a company at scale. You know what good looks like, you can write the requirements, and you can hold an engineering team accountable to shipping it.
• Product instinct and influence. You have shaped product roadmaps from CX signal. You know how to take a contact-driver analysis and turn it into a prioritized engineering ask. Youre comfortable partnering with the Vice President of Product as a peer, not a supplicant.
• Track record on post-purchase metrics. You have personally moved cancel rate, contact rate, CSAT, or comparable post-purchase reliability metrics by meaningful amounts in roles youve owned. Not overseen. Owned.
• Margin fluency. You understand the unit economics of CX operations and have driven cost-per-order improvement through system design, not just staffing levers. You can speak the language of a CFO.
• Marketplace or two-sided platform experience. 7+ years operating in consumer marketplaces, ticketing, travel, or similar businesses where post-purchase experience is a retention and margin driver. You understand the supply-side root causes of fan problems.
• Executive presence. Comfortable on the leadership team, owning a board narrative, and making the case for investment in CX infrastructure as a margin lever, not a cost center.

Bonus Points

• Live events, ticketing, or experiential commerce background.
• Direct experience standing up a CX AI platform from scratch: vendor selection, integration, prompt design, QA, iteration.
• Youve built the operating cadence of a function from scratch: metric tree, WBR, QBR, escalation paths.
• Youve led a CX or ops org of 2550 people; this team will get there.
• You have experience connecting supplier behavior data to post-purchase outcomes.

Whats Not in Scope

To set expectations clearly: this role does not own demand-side growth or paid acquisition (CMO/Marketing), supplier acquisition or commercial deal terms (Chief Commercial Officer), pricing strategy or pricing algorithms (Data + Algos), marketplace data science build (Data), or Fraud & Payments (a peer function in Finance). You will partner deeply with all of them.