Transportation Strategy Manager

We're Hiring: Transportation Strategy Manager

Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)

Employment Type: Full-Time

Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior

Work Arrangement: Fully Remote

About Us

We are a globally focused organization committed to building efficient, resilient, and scalable transportation networks across diverse markets and customer channels.

Our teams collaborate across Supply Chain, Distribution, Logistics, Procurement, Warehousing, Inventory, Sales, Finance, Technology, Operations, and external transportation partners to deliver reliable, cost-effective, and sustainable movement of goods.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Transportation Strategy Manager to lead transportation strategy, network optimization, carrier strategy, transportation planning, cost optimization, service improvement, and logistics transformation.

The ideal candidate will combine strategic thinking, commercial judgment, analytical expertise, and transportation knowledge to build a high-performing transportation model that balances cost, capacity, speed, reliability, flexibility, and customer-service requirements.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and implement long-term transportation strategies aligned with business and supply-chain objectives.
• Establish transportation operating models, policies, standards, and governance frameworks.
• Analyze transportation networks, lanes, volumes, shipment profiles, delivery requirements, and geographic coverage.
• Develop strategies for road, ocean, air, rail, parcel, express, and multimodal transportation as applicable.
• Evaluate transportation modes based on cost, lead time, capacity, reliability, risk, and service requirements.
• Optimize carrier networks, transportation lanes, delivery frequencies, shipment consolidation, and routing structures.
• Develop transportation strategies for regional, national, and international distribution networks.
• Partner with Distribution, Warehousing, Inventory, Demand Planning, Procurement, Sales, and Operations teams.
• Translate business forecasts and customer requirements into transportation capacity plans.
• Analyze transportation demand, seasonality, peak periods, market expansion, and future volume requirements.
• Develop transportation capacity strategies for new markets, new facilities, product launches, and business growth.
• Evaluate fleet ownership, leasing, outsourcing, dedicated transportation, and third-party logistics models.
• Lead transportation sourcing strategies, carrier selection, tendering, and commercial evaluations.
• Develop carrier requirements, service-level agreements, performance standards, and contractual expectations.
• Support negotiations with carriers, freight forwarders, 3PLs, brokers, and other transportation providers.
• Analyze freight rates, fuel costs, accessorial charges, tariffs, surcharges, and total transportation costs.
• Identify opportunities to reduce transportation cost without compromising service quality.
• Develop cost-to-serve models and transportation financial analyses.
• Evaluate total landed cost and transportation trade-offs across alternative logistics scenarios.
• Develop transportation budgets, forecasts, business cases, and investment proposals.
• Partner with Finance to validate savings, cost avoidance, budget performance, and financial benefits.
• Monitor carrier capacity, market conditions, fuel trends, freight rates, and transportation risks.
• Develop contingency strategies for capacity shortages, disruptions, weather events, geopolitical risks, and carrier failures.
• Establish transportation resilience and business-continuity strategies.
• Monitor on-time delivery, transit times, route adherence, shipment exceptions, and service-level performance.
• Identify root causes of transportation delays, failed deliveries, damages, claims, and service failures.
• Develop corrective and preventive actions to improve transportation performance.
• Support route optimization, load planning, shipment consolidation, and fleet utilization initiatives.
• Improve vehicle and load utilization while reducing empty miles and unnecessary movements.
• Support transportation planning and dispatch teams with strategic guidelines and optimization tools.
• Evaluate transportation technology, including TMS, GPS, telematics, route-optimization platforms, visibility systems, and analytics tools.
• Lead transportation technology implementations, integrations, testing, and process improvements.
• Develop dashboards for transportation cost, service, capacity, carrier, and network performance.
• Establish transportation data standards, master data requirements, and reporting governance.
• Use advanced analytics, predictive models, AI, and optimization techniques to improve transportation decisions.
• Support sustainability initiatives involving fuel efficiency, fleet electrification, alternative fuels, modal shifts, and emissions reduction.
• Monitor transportation-related safety, regulatory, environmental, customs, and compliance requirements.
• Develop transportation SOPs, operating standards, escalation processes, and governance documentation.
• Lead strategic transportation projects, network redesigns, sourcing initiatives, and transformation programs.
• Evaluate opportunities for automation, digital freight management, visibility, and predictive transportation planning.
• Train and coach transportation and logistics professionals on strategic planning and analytical methods.
• Prepare executive reports covering transportation costs, service performance, network risks, carrier performance, and strategic initiatives.
• Present transportation strategies, investment cases, optimization opportunities, and performance results to senior leadership.

Key Performance Indicators

• Transportation cost per unit
• Transportation cost per order
• Freight cost as a percentage of sales
• Cost per shipment
• Cost per kilometer or mile
• On-time delivery rate
• OTIF performance
• Transit-time reliability
• Average transit time
• Carrier SLA compliance
• Carrier utilization
• Vehicle utilization
• Load utilization
• Shipment consolidation rate
• Empty-mile percentage
• Route adherence
• Delivery failure rate
• Shipment damage rate
• Freight claims
• Transportation capacity utilization
• Tender acceptance rate
• Carrier performance
• Freight rate variance
• Fuel-cost performance
• Accessorial-cost control
• Transportation budget variance
• Forecast accuracy
• Network optimization savings
• Cost avoidance
• Cost-to-serve improvement
• Transportation emissions
• Safety performance
• Disruption response time
• Strategic project delivery
• Technology adoption
• Stakeholder satisfaction

Ideal Candidate

The successful candidate should have strong experience in transportation strategy, logistics, supply chain, freight management, distribution, transportation procurement, or network optimization , preferably within complex international operations.

The candidate should demonstrate:

• Proven experience developing and implementing transportation strategies across multiple markets or regions.
• Strong understanding of transportation networks, freight operations, carrier management, and logistics economics.
• Experience with road, ocean, air, parcel, rail, or multimodal transportation.
• Strong knowledge of transportation sourcing, tendering, carrier selection, and contract management.
• Experience managing 3PLs, carriers, freight forwarders, brokers, or transportation partners.
• Strong analytical and quantitative capabilities.
• Experience developing transportation models, cost-to-serve analyses, scenarios, and business cases.
• Strong understanding of freight rates, fuel costs, accessorial charges, capacity, and service trade-offs.
• Experience with TMS, route-optimization systems, GPS, telematics, or transportation analytics platforms.
• Advanced Excel and strong proficiency with BI and data-analysis tools.
• Experience with SQL, optimization modeling, simulation, or predictive analytics is highly desirable.
• Strong financial and commercial understanding.
• Excellent negotiation and vendor-management capabilities.
• Strong strategic thinking and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to balance cost, service, capacity, speed, flexibility, and resilience.
• Excellent project-management and stakeholder-management skills.
• Experience leading transportation transformation and network-optimization initiatives.
• Strong executive communication and presentation capabilities.
• Excellent written and verbal English communication skills.
• Additional languages are highly desirable.
• Experience working with international and distributed teams.
• Strong leadership and coaching capabilities.
• A strategic, analytical, commercially focused, and continuous-improvement mindset.