Sr. Onboarding Specialist (12 month contract)
OpenTable · Paris, France
Senior Onboarding Specialist (Senior OBS)
Location: Paris, France
Team: Global Onboarding
Travel: Up to 50%, varying by account and client requirements
Salary: 60k€ basic
Languages: Fluent French and English required
With millions of diners, 70,000+ restaurant partners and 25+ years of experience, OpenTable, part of Booking Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: BKNG), is an industry leader with a passion for helping restaurants thrive. Our world-class technology empowers restaurants to focus on what matters most – their team, their guests, and their bottom line – while enabling diners to discover and book the perfect restaurant for every occasion.
Every employee at OpenTable has a tangible impact on what we do and how we do it. You’ll also be part of a global team and its portfolio of metasearch brands. Hospitality is all about taking care of others, and it defines our culture.
Role summary
The Senior Onboarding Specialist (Senior OBS) is a product expert and lead practitioner within OpenTable’s global Onboarding team. They own the end-to-end onboarding journey for complex and high-profile restaurant partners, from signed contract through configuration, integration, training, and go-live.
Using a consultative, high-touch approach, the Senior OBS translates restaurant operating needs into effective OpenTable configurations and practical training. They combine strong individual delivery with team-level impact by mentoring colleagues, supporting escalations, managing workflow, leading test projects, and identifying improvements that increase onboarding quality, speed, and customer value.
This Paris-based role will involve regular client-facing work on site. The successful candidate should be comfortable travelling up to 50%, with the exact level varying by account, implementation complexity, and client requirements.
What you’ll do
- Own complex implementations from initial handoff through successful go-live, including configuration, product setup, integrations, data readiness, and tailored staff training.
- Act as a trusted advisor to restaurant partners, using a consultative approach to understand their operations, challenge assumptions constructively, and recommend setups that support adoption and long-term value.
- Configure OpenTable products to reflect each restaurant’s floor plan, guest flow, operating model, and business needs.
- Coordinate with restaurant teams, POS providers, third-party partners, and internal technical teams to resolve integration, data, and configuration issues.
- Deliver engaging training to restaurant owners, managers, and staff in French and English, both remotely and on site.
- Represent OpenTable professionally during client-site visits, workshops, implementation meetings, and go-live support.
- Manage a dynamic portfolio and daily workflow, balancing implementation speed, quality, client needs, and team service-level agreements (SLAs).
- Serve as a point of escalation for complex, unusual, or high-impact onboarding cases, partnering with Tier 2 Support, Product, Sales, Customer Success, Billing, and other teams to drive resolution.
- Mentor and support Onboarding Specialists by sharing product knowledge, configuration approaches, training techniques, and practical case guidance.
- Contribute to team training, knowledge sharing, internal channels, and the development of onboarding materials, playbooks, and process documentation.
- Lead or contribute to test projects for new products, tools, workflows, and company initiatives; define milestones, identify blockers, analyse results, and communicate recommendations to management.
- Identify bottlenecks and opportunities across the onboarding journey, using operational data and customer insight to recommend and implement improvements.
- Champion effective use of AI, automation, and role-specific tools to improve preparation, documentation, communication, workflow efficiency, and implementation quality.
- Maintain accurate account records, implementation milestones, training notes, and status updates so that internal stakeholders have clear visibility of progress and risk.
- Proactively communicate emerging risks and partner needs before they affect the customer experience or downstream handoff.
What you’ll bring
Experience and qualifications
- Typically 4–5 years of experience in software implementation, customer success, professional services, operations, or a comparable customer-facing role.
- At least 1 year of direct experience as an Onboarding Specialist or in a similar technical implementation role.
- Demonstrated experience implementing SaaS, restaurant technology, POS, booking, or other operational software.
- Experience training customers or non-technical users on software products, including delivering training to groups in person and remotely.
- Strong understanding of restaurant operations and the realities of front-of-house hospitality.
- Experience managing multiple concurrent implementations, competing priorities, and time-sensitive deliverables with minimal supervision.
- Fluent French and English, with the ability to communicate clearly and confidently with restaurant partners and internal stakeholders in both languages.
- Willingness and ability to travel up to 50%, depending on account and client requirements.
Skills and capabilities
- Expert knowledge of OpenTable products and features, or the ability to quickly develop equivalent product mastery.
- Strong consultative communication, presentation, phone, and in-person facilitation skills.
- Sound judgement and ethical decision-making in ambiguous or fast-moving situations.
- Advanced organisation, documentation, prioritisation, and time-management skills.
- Ability to analyse implementation performance, identify root causes, and use data to support recommendations.
- Strong cross-functional collaboration and stakeholder-management skills.
- A leadership mindset, with the ability to mentor colleagues, lead by example, and act as a trusted resource without formal people-management responsibility.
- Confidence leading projects from definition through execution, reporting, and follow-up.
- Practical fluency with CRM, project-management, reporting, and collaboration tools such as Salesforce, Google Workspace, and equivalent platforms.
- Comfortable using AI and automation tools as part of daily work, and willing to share effective practices with the wider team.
Preferred qualifications
- Direct experience working in restaurant operations is preferred, for example as a restaurant manager, maître d’, lead host, or in a comparable hospitality role. Experience in another high-volume service environment is also valued.
- Experience with complex POS integrations, web-based widgets, APIs, data migration, or third-party technology deployments.
- Experience supporting multi-site restaurant groups or strategically important accounts.
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience or certification.
How we’ll measure success
- Implementation quality and speed: Complex accounts are delivered accurately, with strong right-first-time performance and within agreed time-to-value benchmarks.
- Partner readiness and adoption: Restaurant teams demonstrate confidence and proficiency at go-live, with configurations that support effective ongoing use.
- Client experience: On-site and remote interactions build trust, resolve issues efficiently, and represent OpenTable to a high standard.
- Workflow and SLA performance: Personal and team workflow is actively managed, risks are surfaced early, and agreed SLAs and quality standards are consistently met.
- Mentorship impact: Junior team members benefit from practical coaching, escalation support, and knowledge sharing.
- Process improvement: At least one meaningful process, automation, or AI-enabled improvement is identified, tested, or implemented and its impact is communicated.
- Stakeholder trust: Sales, Customer Success, Support, P