Head of Growth, Services

Department: Services

Team: Events & Services

Location: Atlanta (Hybrid 2-3 days in the office)

Position type: Permanent

What the hiring manager says

“This is a pivotal leadership role for Services and will report directly to me as CEO, Events and Industry Services. I am looking for someone who can bring strategic clarity, commercial discipline and a clear vision for portfolio growth to help us identify, prioritise and scale the next generation of growth opportunities across the portfolio. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to shape how Services grows, works with partners and creates long-term value for the global connectivity ecosystem.”

Sianne Ryder

CEO Events & Industry Services

About the Team

This is a newly established division within Industry Services, created to bring greater focus and momentum to the GSMA’s future commercial growth opportunities. The Head of Growth will initially lead two experienced direct reports: the Head of Services Product Development and the Growth, Partnerships & Commercial Director.

Together, the team will shape new propositions, partnerships and investment opportunities, with scope to expand its capabilities as the portfolio develops and revenues grow. The division will work collaboratively across Industry Services and with Marketing, Sales, Legal, IT, Finance and colleagues across the wider GSMA, giving the team broad visibility, influence and the opportunity to help define the future direction of Services.

About the role

As Head of Growth, Services, you will set the strategic direction for the next phase of growth across the GSMA Services portfolio. This is a senior leadership role focused on identifying where the GSMA can create future value through new products, services, partnerships and, where appropriate, inorganic opportunities that are commercially scalable, strategically relevant and aligned to the needs of the global connectivity ecosystem.

You’ll lead the growth agenda at portfolio level, providing strategic direction for the teams responsible for partnerships and market testing and commercial strategy. Working across Services and the wider organisation, you will turn insight into clear priorities and work collaboratively with The Head of Industry Services to inform routes to market for the strongest growth opportunities. Rather than owning every individual opportunity, you will create the focus, decision-making framework and operating rhythm that enables the strongest ideas to be tested, prioritised and taken to market with pace and discipline.

Success will be measured by the strength and quality of the growth pipeline, the clarity of the investment choices being made, and the ability to move promising opportunities from concept to validated proposition, launch and scale. You will ensure that growth initiatives are grounded in customer evidence, commercial rigour and measurable outcomes, with clear accountability across the teams and partners contributing to delivery.

In your first year, you will be expected to establish a clear portfolio growth strategy, sharpen the pipeline of future product and service opportunities, and create the governance needed to make confident decisions on where to invest, partner, scale or stop. You’ll have the opportunity to shape a growth engine for Services that brings together strategy, commercial discipline and partnership execution in support of the organisation’s long-term ambitions.

About You

You will be a senior commercial leader with the confidence, judgement and gravitas to shape a growth agenda at portfolio level. You’ll bring substantial experience of building or scaling revenue-generating products, services or commercial models, and you will be comfortable making clear choices about where to partner or invest and where to focus effort for the greatest impact.

You’ll know how to lead through others, setting direction and creating the conditions for an already successful team to do its best work. This means bringing clarity of priorities, strong decision-making, thoughtful challenge and the management confidence to give senior colleagues ownership while ensuring accountability, pace and alignment across the portfolio.

You will be credible with senior stakeholders, partners and customers, able to move confidently between strategic discussion, commercial assessment and practical execution. You’ll use data, market insight and systems such as Salesforce or equivalent CRM and pipeline tools to understand opportunities, test assumptions and track performance in a disciplined way.

You’ll be most successful if you combine ambition with pragmatism: someone who can inspire confidence in a future growth vision, but who also brings the commercial discipline and leadership maturity to translate that vision into funded priorities, measurable outcomes and sustainable revenue growth.

About your skills

The core skills required for success in this role are:

• Commercial Awareness — able to assess growth opportunities with strong commercial judgement, understanding revenue potential, margin impact, customer demand, investment choices and routes to market
• Leadership — able to set direction at portfolio level, lead through others, create clarity of priorities and decision rights, and build accountability across senior teams without needing to own every activity directly
• Analysis — able to use market insight, customer evidence, data and CRM or pipeline information to test assumptions, prioritise opportunities, track performance and make disciplined recommendations
• Influence — able to engage senior stakeholders, partners and customers with credibility and confidence, shaping alignment around growth priorities, investment decisions and partnership opportunities
• Delivery — able to translate strategy into action by establishing governance, operating rhythm and measurable outcomes that move opportunities from concept to validated proposition, launch and scale

We strive to offer a meaningful and inclusive application experience for all candidates. Should you require any accommodations or adjustments due to a disability or for any other reason during the hiring process, please contact [email protected] with your request.

Contract type

Worker type

Working at the GSMA offers you unparalleled access to the mobile industry. We offer a chance to truly shape the direction of mobile, whatever your role. By joining the GSMA, you will be exposed to a fast-paced rapidly evolving environment, working on global solutions, genuinely fascinating and industry-changing projects and a stimulating and dynamic environment designed to enable you to flourish.

In addition to architect-designed offices and competitive compensation, our benefits include fantastic learning & development opportunities, generous holiday allowances, four additional days off for professional development and many others.

To learn more about the GSMA, visit our career site, our LinkedIn page and our Twitter page.

Being You at the GSMA

We care deeply about diversity, equity and inclusivity and aspire to be the best at it. Your well-being and work/life balance is important, so flexi-time and remote working is available to all staff. We're keen to ensure everyone is equal, represented and connected so we particularly encourage applications from all demographics. The sucess of the GSMA year on year will continue to be contributed by people from all walks of life.

GSMA Values

Our values not only drive our culture – they shape how we work and interact inside and outside our global organisation.

Passionately driven

We approach everything we do with unparalleled capability, tenacity and commitment, knowing that the challenging scale, pace and complexity of our work is what leads to its world-changing impact.

Insightful leaders

We continually develop and engage our expertise, insight and creativity so that we’re always ready to respond to the changing landscape with authority, agility and nuance.

Stronger together

We lean on each other so the industry can lean on us, embracing our diversity by actively seeking out perspectives and skill sets beyond our own, fuelling each other’s successes and constantly asking how we can help.

Underpinning our values is our collective mindset to show up purposefully as good human beings every day, in every situation. When we’re at our best – we are collaborative, considerate and compassionate to others, and we create a safe space for one another to thrive, assuming positive intent in our colleagues. And if we aren’t at our best and the pressure is on – we feel free to be ourselves but still remain curious, lean into the tough stuff and we are always respectful to others and accountable for the part we play.