Deal Desk Senior Manager

About Us Perk (formerly TravelPerk) is the intelligent platform for travel and spend management. Built to tackle the time-consuming, manual work that gets in the way of real work, our tools automate everything from travel bookings to expenses, invoice processing, and more. By eliminating this shadow work that wastes hours, erodes morale, and saps innovation, we're on a mission to power real work, with real impact. We're trusted by more than 12,000 companies worldwide, including On Running, Breitling, and Fabletics, and we're tackling the 7 hours of lost productivity per employee each week, a $1.7 trillion problem https://www.perk.com/shadow-work-report. Founded in 2015, Perk has grown into a global company of more than 1,800 people across 12 offices globally, with headquarters in London and Boston. We combine innovation, control, and simplicity to transform how businesses work and how people feel at work. At Perk, we're driven by our values, like being an owner, delivering a 7-star experience, and working as one team. We value curiosity, purpose, and mindset, not just knowledge, to unlock the power in your potential. Our talent team brings together leading minds from the travel, fintech, and SaaS industries, representing over 70 countries. If you're excited about having a real impact and shaping how millions of people experience work, we'd love you on the team. Visit www.perk.com http://www.perk.com to learn more. ABOUT THE ROLE This is a rare opportunity to build a truly strategic Deal Desk function at Perk — one that shapes how our Sales organisation structures, prices, and closes its most complex, high-value deals. We're investing in this transformation now, and we want a leader who can turn that ambition into reality. We're hiring a Senior Deal Desk Manager to lead this shift. You'll take ownership of the Deal Desk team and its transformation, personally running point on our most complex and strategic deals while building a team that operates as trusted commercial partners to Sales, Finance, and Legal. A major part of the role will be modernising how the team works: automating manual processes through AI and automation, and improving our CPQ and quoting systems so Sales can move faster with confidence. This is a coach-player role: you'll lead and develop a team while staying hands-on with the deals that matter most. WHAT YOU'LL DO Lead the transformation - Rebuild Deal Desk's operating model so the team spends its time on complex deal structuring and pricing strategy for high-value opportunities, not manual admin like company setup or payment profile processing — and put in place the triage, tools, and ways of working that make that shift stick. - Decide what Deal Desk should own, support, automate, or hand off to other teams, and build the case for change with Legal, Finance, and Sales Operations leadership. - Agree clear ownership and service levels for work that moves to other teams (for example, NDAs, supplier and financial forms, payment term changes, and downgrade/churn processing), so handovers actually stick. - Build performance metrics and reporting to track deal velocity, team output, and the impact of process and automation improvements over time. - Represent Deal Desk as a trusted, credible partner in cross-functional forums and with Sales leadership. Lead the team and run point on complex deals - Build, lead, and develop a team of Deal Desk professionals, setting clear goals and performance standards as the team matures into a more strategic function. - Act as a coach-player: personally run point on Perk's most complex, highest-value deals, modelling the standard of deal structuring, negotiation support, and stakeholder management expected of the team. - Own pricing governance and deal structuring for complex, non-standard commercial deals, balancing commercial risk with deal velocity. - Mentor the team on complex deal structuring, pricing strategy, and commercial risk judgement, and coach them through escalations. - Partner with Legal, Finance, Sales Operations, and Product to unblock deals and resolve cross-functional friction quickly. Own our systems and quoting experience - Own the relationship with our CPQ platform end to end, bringing prior experience owning a complex CPQ implementation elsewhere. - Identify and drive improvements to CPQ configuration, pricing logic, and quoting workflows so Sales can quote and close faster with confidence. - Act as the primary Deal Desk voice in Revenue Systems and CPQ/CLM tooling roadmap decisions. Drive automation and AI - Own the automation roadmap for Deal Desk, with a clear mandate to remove manual, repetitive work from the team through AI and automation. - Prioritise and deliver automation of the highest-impact manual workflows first, such as company and payment profile setup and post-signature subscription provisioning, which today account for a significant share of the team's ticket volume. - Partner with engineering/systems teams to scope, sequence, and deliver automation initiatives, and track the time saved and volume shifted off manual processing. - Evaluate and pilot AI tools for use cases such as contract redline review, NDA triage, and deal risk flagging, working closely with Legal. Protect the business - Act as Deal Desk's first line of defense on contract redlines and non-standard deal terms, escalating to Legal or Finance where needed. - Own commercial governance frameworks, pricing and discounting policy, and approval structures across the function. - Safeguard deal commercials, business risk, and revenue recognition implications on complex and non-standard deals. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - Strong Deal Desk experience within B2B SaaS, ideally spanning mid-market and enterprise segments. - Proven experience leading a Deal Desk (or equivalent commercial/sales operations) team, with direct people management responsibility. - A genuine coach-player: comfortable personally running complex, high-value deals while simultaneously leading and developing a team. - Prior ownership of a complex CPQ platform, with a track record of driving measurable improvements to quoting, pricing, and deal velocity for Sales. - Experience scoping and delivering automation and/or AI initiatives that reduce manual operational work, ideally in partnership with engineering or systems teams. - Strong cross-functional stakeholder management skills, comfortable partnering across Legal, Finance, Sales Operations, and Product. - Comfortable operating in a fast-changing, ambiguous environment where processes are still being defined and improved. WHAT WE OFFER - Receive competitive compensation and equity ownership in Perk. - Rest and recharge with 25 days of annual leave plus bank holidays. - Take control of your physical health with private medical cover and voluntary dental insurance from Bupa, and discounted gym memberships with GymFlex. - Plan for your future with our qualifying earnings company pension plan with Aviva. - Know that your loved ones are protected financially through your Life Insurance if the worst were to happen. - Rest assured that you're covered by income protection in case you experience a long-term sickness or absence. - Leverage tax-efficient cycle and electric car schemes with Cycle2Work & Octopus. - Join our unforgettable Perk events, including our spectacular annual summer party. - Always feel supported with Spring Health, our market-leading wellbeing partner, providing fast, comprehensive access to 12x therapy and 12x coaching sessions for you and your loved ones. - Focus on your family with 12-16 weeks' paid parental leave. - Contribute to your community with 16 paid hours per year to spend volunteering for your dearest charitable causes. - Broaden your horizons with up to 20 "Work from Anywhere" days per year. - Stay savvy with access to a wide variety of discounts and rewards. - Follow your passions and take a four-week, fully paid sabbatical once you reach 5 years. - Let us help you move to one of our hubs with relocation support. AI AT PERK AI is embedded in how we work across every function. The tools you'll use day-to-day are AI-enabled, so you can move faster and spend more time on the work that matters. In practice, that means using AI to research and prioritise accounts, draft and refine outreach, handle customer interactions more effectively, synthesise information, and cut through shadow work - the invisible tasks that pull people away from the work only they can do - so you can focus on relationships and outcomes. We don't expect you to be an AI expert, but we do expect you to be curious and intentional about it. The bar is judgment: knowing when AI makes your work better, when to verify what it produces, and when to rely on your own expertise instead. We'll ask about how you use AI in your interviews, not to test tool knowledge, but to understand how you think about it. That reflects how we work every day. How We Work At Perk, we take an IRL-first approach to work, where our team works together in-person 3 days a week. As such, this role requires you to be based within commuting distance of our hubs. We fundamentally believe in the value of meeting in real life to improve connectivity, productivity, creativity and ultimately making us a great place to work. For certain roles, we can help with relocation from anywhere in the world, English is the official language at the office. Please submit your resume in English if you choose to apply. Do not forget to submit an updated portfolio and/or resume. Perk is a global company with a diverse customer base, and we want to make sure the people behind our product reflect that. We’re an equal opportunity employer, which means you’re welcome at Perk regardless of how you look, where you’re from, or anything else that makes you, well, you. Protect Yourself from Recruitment Scams All official communication from Perk will always come from email addresses ending in @perk.com http://perk.com or @externalperk.com http://externalperk.com, our verified social media channels, or recruiters listed on our official LinkedIn page. We will never ask you to pay for equipment, training, or fees, request sensitive personal information such as bank details early in the process, or communicate through unofficial apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal. If you receive a message claiming to be from Perk that seems suspicious, please do not respond. Forward it to security [at] perk .com, and we will confirm whether it is legitimate. #LI-Hybrid