Careem is building the Everything App for the greater Middle East, making it easier than ever to move around, order food and groceries, manage payments, and more. Careem is led by a powerful purpose to simplify and improve the lives of people and build an awesome organisation that inspires. Since 2012, Careem has created earnings for over 2.5 million Captains, simplified the lives of over 70 million customers, and built a platform for the region’s best talent to thrive and for entrepreneurs to scale their businesses. Careem operates in over 70 cities across 10 countries, from Morocco to Pakistan.
Careem Groceries is on a mission to reinvent the way people shop for grocery, pharmacy and retail products. As an exciting new vertical within Careem (a startup within a startup), we’re in the early stages of building our product and have plenty of interesting and fundamental challenges to solve in order to achieve our ambitious growth goals in this burgeoning space.
Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Reporting to: Abdulla Elyas, Chairman/ CEO KSA, with a dotted line to the VP of Groceries, Chase Lario
What you’ll do
The General Manager for our Grocery business in KSA will spearhead the next phase of growth for Careem’s grocery operations in the Kingdom. This is an exciting scale-up leadership role focused on building a robust and sustainable business in a highly competitive market.
This role requires a strategic and hands-on leader who can drive commercial and operational excellence while orchestrating cross-functional execution at scale. As the GM for KSA, you’ll be the architect of our overall business, ultimately responsible for delivering a large and successful business in KSA. You’ll drive the commercial engine (assortment, pricing, promotions) and align stakeholders across operations, marketing, supply chain, and more to deliver our ambitious growth plans. This is a high-impact role with a mandate to shape the future of grocery in the Kingdom and improve the lives of millions.
We’re looking for someone with a strong understanding of grocery who can help us expand our grocery dark store offering. Our ideal candidate is someone with a strong sense of the industry, a knack for building selection in a customer obsessed manner and leveraging data-driven decision making, complemented by exceptional leadership skills and the ability to maintain strong external relationships so we unlock the best deals and execute seamlessly.
- Lead the end-to-end strategy and execution for KSA Grocery across growth, assortment, store expansion, and operational efficiency, driving turnaround and long-term scalability.
- Own and grow key supplier and brand relationships, unlocking best-in-class deals and differentiated selection.
- Define and execute category management strategies (across assortment, pricing, promotions, and hierarchy) aligned with commercial objectives.
- Continuously evolve assortment to reflect customer needs, market trends, and performance insights through rigorous data analysis.
- Deliver P&L outcomes for the full KSA Grocery business.
- Mobilize and align cross-functional teams; including Supply Chain, Central Ops, and Marketing, to drive execution and hit business targets.
What you’ll need
Successful candidates will have a passionate commitment to improving the lives of people, an insane focus on excellence and customer centricity, and a strong alignment with our core values and purpose.
- 10+ years of experience in e-commerce, digital marketplace, or app-based businesses.
- Strong operational background with experience leading cross-functional teams.
- Demonstrated P&L ownership or entrepreneurial leadership.
- Deep understanding of the Middle East region; KSA market experience is highly preferred.
- Background in scaling operations, turnaround situations, or launching new markets.
- Proven ability to recruit, coach, and lead diverse, high-performing teams.
- Strong analytical skills with a data-driven approach to decision-making.
- Experience managing complex partnerships and supply chains.
Why join our journey
When you start your journey at Careem, you’ll be empowered to drive impact across a region of 600 million people, supported by our community of colleagues from over 75 nationalities. Whether you’re creating codes for our Super App or finding new ways to bring our platform to the people in your city, you’ll have the opportunity to learn and grow every day to develop alongside talented and inspiring people from around the world. As a colleague at Careem, you’ll be empowered to take ownership of your work, be of service to our Captains, customers and partners as we build the region’s Super App, all while shooting for the moon to create impact across the region.
What we’ll provide you
We offer colleagues the opportunity to drive impact in the region while they learn and grow. As a full time Careem colleague, you will be able to:
- Work and learn from great minds by joining a community of inspiring colleagues.
- Put your passion to work in a purposeful organisation dedicated to creating impact in a region with a lot of untapped potential.
- Explore new opportunities to learn and grow every day.
- Work 4 days a week in office & 1 day from home, and remotely from any country in the world for 30 days a year with unlimited vacation days per year. (If you are in an individual contributor role in tech, you will have 2 office days a week and 3 to work from home.)
- Access to healthcare benefits and fitness reimbursements for health activities including gym, health club, and training classes.