Customs Director

As the GBS Customs Local Operations Lead / Site Lead , you will have full site-level accountability for Customs operations.

You will lead managers, supervisors, and specialists while ensuring operational stability, regulatory compliance, financial performance, continuous improvement, and successful execution of global Customs initiatives. You will report directly to the local Site Managing Director , with an indirect reporting line to the Global Customs Lead .

Key Responsibilities

• Lead all Customs operations delivered from the GBS site across 15+ countries and multiple customers/products.
• Own service delivery performance against KPIs, SLAs, quality, productivity, and operational targets .
• Act as the primary escalation point for operational issues, customer-impacting incidents, and compliance risks.
• Lead a 250+ FTE organization , including managers, supervisors, and specialists.
• Drive workforce planning, recruitment, succession planning, talent development, and organizational scalability.
• Own site-level Customs P&L, budget adherence, cost control, productivity, and margin improvement .
• Lead operational performance reporting covering volumes, productivity, quality, costs, and risks.
• Ensure compliance with Customs regulations, internal policies, QMS standards, and audit requirements.
• Oversee incident management, corrective actions, deviations, controls, and regulatory reporting where required.
• Drive process standardization, continuous improvement, operational excellence, and cost efficiency.
• Execute global automation and digitalization initiatives at site level.
• Identify automation opportunities and support business cases, testing, rollout, and benefit realization.
• Serve as the key Customs Operations interface for business units, countries, internal stakeholders, and relevant customers.
• Support global and regional Customs initiatives, governance forums, transitions, migrations, and large-scale ramp-ups.

Must-Have Qualifications

• 7–10+ years of experience in Customs operations/services , preferably in logistics, freight forwarding, or shared services; OR 7–10+ years managing comparable large-scale operational processes in a GBS/BPO environment.
• 5+ years leading multi-layered organizations , including managers of managers, across large-scale or multi-site operations.
• Proven ownership of end-to-end service delivery , including KPIs, SLAs, operational governance, and P&L accountability.
• Experience managing complex, multi-country or multi-client operations .
• Strong experience in Customs compliance, audits, and regulatory authority interaction .
• Proven experience leading complex transitions, migrations, and large-scale ramp-ups .
• Experience in stakeholder and client relationship management within a service delivery environment.
• Strong understanding of Customs processes and regulatory risk.
• Strong financial and performance management capability.
• Strong experience in continuous improvement and operational excellence.
• Experience leading or executing automation and digital transformation initiatives .
• Fluent written and spoken English .
• Background in logistics, transport, freight forwarding, or shared services/GBS .
• Bachelor's/university degree preferred.

Good-to-Have

• Experience managing operations with significant financial and commercial responsibility.
• Experience scaling Customs capabilities across multiple countries.