Global Economist, Commercial Optimization & Data

At Avolta (SIX: AVOL), our people are at the driving force behind our success. With a team of over 76,000 individuals representing more than 150 nationalities, we are a truly global company driven by passion, innovation, and excellence.

Born from the combination of Dufry and Autogrill, Avolta is redefining the travel experience through the dedication and expertise of our diverse workforce. Across 73 countries and 1,000 locations, our teams bring energy, creativity, and commitment to delivering world-class travel retail and food & beverage experiences.

We operate across multiple channels - including airports, motorways, cruise ships, ports, railways, and more - offering endless opportunities for collaboration and growth. Our people are empowered to make an impact, supported by a culture that values teamwork, development, and innovation.

Sustainability and social responsibility are embedded in our strategy, ensuring we grow in a way that benefits both our employees and the communities we serve.

Are you looking for a dynamic, international career where your contributions truly matter? Join Avolta and be part of a team that’s shaping the future of travel - together.

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

The Global Economist, Commercial Optimization & Data will be a key hire for the future of Avolta’s Commercial Optimization function. The role centers on economic reasoning: modeling how travelers, prices, assortment and promotions interact and designing frameworks that guide Avolta’s commercial decisions. Working closely with data scientists, BI engineers and product teams, this role will own the economic foundations of our commercial models, including causal identification, elasticity estimation, incentive design, market structure and the trade-offs that drive profitable growth. Given Avolta’s scale pricing, availability, selection and promotions across thousands of outlets and billions of passenger interactions this is a foundational role with significant impact. The Global Economist will develop new approaches to dynamic pricing, optimize working capital through smarter inventory and availability decisions, and rigorously measure the incremental value of promotions and assortment. Modeled on senior economist roles in leading technology and commerce companies, this position requires deep econometric expertise, strong business intuition and the ability to transform ambiguous, high-stakes commercial questions into rigorous, actionable economic insight.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Economic Strategy & Foundational Thinking
• Build the economic foundations for Avolta's commercial optimization across pricing, availability, selection and promotions
• Frame ambiguous commercial questions as testable economic hypotheses, and define the models, experiments and metrics needed to answer them
• Bring rigorous economic reasoning to strategic decisions where intuition and spreadsheets are not enough
• Shape the long-term intellectual agenda of the Commercial Optimization function, influencing how the company thinks about demand, value and trade-offs
• Design economic frameworks across highly diverse travel locations, passenger flows and product categories
• Estimate demand elasticities and cross-price effects, accounting for the unique dynamics of captive travel-retail environments
• Develop pricing mechanisms that balance revenue, margin, traveler experience and competitive positioning
• Quantify the profit impact of pricing decisions and articulate the trade-oƯs clearly to business leaders
• Develop economic models that connect availability and assortment of decisions to working-capital efficiency, identifying how smarter inventory and selection choices free up capital without sacrificing revenue
• Model the economic trade-offs between stock availability, service levels, holding costs and lost sales risk
• Inform selection and assortment strategy through demand modeling, substitution effects and longtail economics
• Design promotional mechanisms and incentive structures that maximize incremental margin
• Establish measurement standards that let the business trust and act on promotional ROI
• Design and analyze experiments (A/B tests, geo-experiments, natural experiments) to establish causality behind commercial levers
• Apply modern causal-inference and econometric methods to observational and experimental data
• Set the standard for how the organization measures cause and effect in commercial decisions
• Partner with data scientists and engineers to translate economic frameworks into production models and tools, providing the economic logic and rigor behind them
• Work closely with commercial, finance, category, supply chain and analytics teams to embed economic thinking into everyday decisions
• Communicate complex economic insights clearly to non-technical business leaders, up to Director and Senior Director level, with selective executive exposure
• Act as a trusted advisor on the economic implications of major commercial decisions

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

• Advanced degree in Economics (PhD strongly preferred) or a closely related quantitative field with a strong econometric foundation
• 6–8+ years applying economics to real business problems, ideally in retail, e-commerce, travel, hospitality, marketplaces or a technology company
• Track record of turning economic analysis into decisions that generated measurable impact - revenue growth, margin improvement, working-capital efficiency or better pricing
• Experience originating novel frameworks or mechanisms, not only running standard analyses
• Deep expertise in econometrics, causal inference and experimentation (e.g., instrumental variables, difference-in-differences, synthetic control, regression discontinuity)
• Strong command of demand modeling, elasticity estimation, market structure and incentive/mechanism design
• Hands-on ability to work with data using SQL, R, Python or Stata to build and validate models independently
• Comfortable partnering with data scientists and engineers on model design while owning the economic rigor. Domain Knowledge & Business Acumen
• Strong understanding of commercial optimization: pricing, demand elasticity, assortment, promotional effectiveness and inventory/working-capital dynamics
• Solid financial acumen - P&L drivers, ROI, working capital and business trade-offs
• Ability to connect abstract economic reasoning to concrete commercial value.
• Ability to influence without authority and build trust with both technical teams and business leaders
• Exceptional ability to explain sophisticated economic ideas simply and persuasively
• Clear written and verbal English; additional European languages are advantageous
• Comfortable presenting recommendations to senior and executive audiences. Execution & Mindset
• Strong bias for action and the ability to move from ambiguity to a rigorous, practical plan
• Intellectual curiosity and the ambition to develop what doesn't yet exist
• High standards for rigor, always connected to measurable business value
• Comfortable in a fast-paced, multi-priority global environment

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We look forward to connecting with you soon!