Venue Development Manager

We're Hiring: Venue Development 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 developing, operating, and optimizing high-quality venues for entertainment, hospitality, events, sports, retail, cultural, and commercial experiences.

Our teams collaborate across Development, Real Estate, Design, Construction, Operations, Commercial, Finance, Marketing, Technology, Hospitality, and external partners to create venues that are commercially successful, operationally efficient, safe, accessible, and engaging for visitors.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Venue Development Manager to lead the planning, development, delivery, and optimization of new and existing venues.

The ideal candidate will manage venue development initiatives from feasibility and concept development through design, approvals, construction, commissioning, opening, and post-opening optimization, ensuring projects meet commercial, operational, customer-experience, quality, budget, schedule, and safety objectives.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and implement venue development strategies aligned with business and portfolio objectives.
• Identify and assess opportunities for new venues, expansions, renovations, relocations, and major upgrades.
• Conduct feasibility studies covering market demand, location, capacity, customer segments, commercial potential, operating requirements, and development costs.
• Prepare business cases, investment proposals, development plans, and financial models for venue projects.
• Evaluate site suitability, accessibility, transportation, surrounding infrastructure, utilities, zoning, and operational considerations.
• Conduct market research and benchmark comparable venues, visitor experiences, pricing, capacity, amenities, and operating models.
• Develop venue concepts, functional requirements, space programs, capacity plans, and development briefs.
• Translate commercial and operational requirements into clear design and development criteria.
• Coordinate with architects, engineers, designers, consultants, contractors, operators, and specialist advisors.
• Manage design development from concept through schematic, detailed, technical, and construction documentation.
• Review layouts, circulation, customer flows, back-of-house areas, service areas, loading facilities, storage, staff facilities, and operational spaces.
• Ensure venue designs support efficient visitor movement, accessibility, safety, security, and operational functionality.
• Coordinate requirements for hospitality, food and beverage, retail, ticketing, guest services, entertainment, event, and premium areas where applicable.
• Integrate technology requirements including ticketing, access control, Wi-Fi, digital signage, audio-visual systems, building systems, security, and customer-experience platforms.
• Coordinate sustainability, energy efficiency, waste management, accessibility, and environmental requirements.
• Support planning approvals, permits, authority submissions, inspections, and regulatory requirements.
• Coordinate with legal, government-relations, compliance, and technical teams on development approvals.
• Develop project schedules, milestones, budgets, resource plans, procurement strategies, and delivery frameworks.
• Manage project risks, dependencies, interfaces, change requests, and critical-path activities.
• Monitor design quality, construction progress, cost performance, and schedule adherence.
• Coordinate tendering, contractor selection, procurement, commercial evaluations, and contract administration.
• Review contractor proposals, technical submissions, shop drawings, material selections, and value-engineering opportunities.
• Conduct design reviews and ensure development decisions remain aligned with approved business cases.
• Monitor construction quality and coordinate with project-management and site teams to resolve issues.
• Coordinate testing, commissioning, operational readiness, and handover activities.
• Develop opening-readiness plans covering staffing, training, systems, suppliers, facilities, guest services, security, cleaning, maintenance, and emergency procedures.
• Coordinate soft-opening, trial operations, testing events, and launch activities.
• Identify and resolve construction, operational, technical, commercial, and customer-experience issues before opening.
• Establish post-opening review processes to evaluate venue performance against business-case assumptions.
• Analyze visitor behavior, capacity utilization, customer feedback, revenue performance, operating costs, and facility performance.
• Identify opportunities for venue optimization, refurbishment, expansion, new attractions, improved amenities, and enhanced customer experiences.
• Support venue lifecycle planning, capital-investment planning, asset upgrades, and long-term development roadmaps.
• Work with Operations and Facilities teams to ensure development decisions support maintainability and lifecycle efficiency.
• Coordinate with Commercial, Sales, Marketing, and Partnerships teams on revenue-generating spaces and commercial opportunities.
• Evaluate opportunities for sponsorships, premium experiences, retail, food and beverage, events, memberships, and other venue revenue streams.
• Develop requirements for temporary facilities, event infrastructure, pop-up spaces, and seasonal venue modifications where applicable.
• Manage external consultants, architects, engineers, contractors, operators, technology providers, and specialist vendors.
• Define partner scopes, deliverables, timelines, quality standards, budgets, and performance expectations.
• Monitor consultant and contractor performance and implement corrective actions where required.
• Maintain comprehensive project documentation, approvals, drawings, contracts, decisions, risk registers, and handover records.
• Prepare regular management reports covering project status, budget, schedule, risks, quality, approvals, and development milestones.
• Establish development KPIs and dashboards to track project and portfolio performance.
• Promote continuous improvement and apply lessons learned across future venue projects.
• Monitor emerging venue, hospitality, entertainment, technology, sustainability, and customer-experience trends.
• Evaluate innovative development approaches that improve commercial performance, visitor experience, operational efficiency, and long-term asset value.

Key Performance Indicators

• Development project delivery against schedule
• Development budget adherence
• Project cost variance
• Development milestone achievement
• Feasibility study completion
• Business-case approval rate
• Investment return performance
• Project ROI
• Development cost per square meter
• Construction cost performance
• Design completion performance
• Design revision rate
• Authority approval turnaround time
• Permit and approval compliance
• Contractor performance
• Consultant performance
• Procurement cycle time
• Change-order value
• Variation frequency
• Construction quality
• Defect and rework rate
• Critical issue resolution time
• Project risk closure rate
• Commissioning completion
• Operational readiness
• Opening readiness score
• Launch delivery performance
• Venue capacity utilization
• Visitor throughput
• Visitor satisfaction
• Customer experience performance
• Revenue performance
• Revenue per visitor
• Commercial-space utilization
• Premium-area utilization
• Operating cost efficiency
• Energy and resource efficiency
• Asset availability
• Maintenance readiness
• Safety and compliance performance
• Post-opening improvement completion

Ideal Candidate

The successful candidate should have strong experience in venue development, real estate development, hospitality development, entertainment venues, sports facilities, commercial development, destination development, construction, or large-scale customer-facing projects.

The candidate should demonstrate:

• Proven experience managing venue or complex property-development projects.
• Strong understanding of the full development lifecycle from feasibility through opening and optimization.
• Experience developing business cases, budgets, schedules, investment proposals, and project plans.
• Strong knowledge of architectural, engineering, construction, and operational coordination.
• Experience working with architects, consultants, contractors, developers, operators, and specialist vendors.
• Strong understanding of venue planning, customer flows, capacity, accessibility, back-of-house operations, and visitor experience.
• Experience managing authority approvals, permits, inspections, and regulatory requirements.
• Strong commercial awareness and understanding of venue revenue models.
• Experience with procurement, tendering, contractor selection, and contract management.
• Strong cost-control, value-engineering, and budget-management capabilities.
• Excellent project-management, risk-management, and problem-solving skills.
• Experience coordinating technology, security, audio-visual, ticketing, access-control, or other venue systems is desirable.
• Strong understanding of health, safety, accessibility, sustainability, and operational requirements.
• Ability to manage multiple projects, priorities, stakeholders, and deadlines.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to evaluate feasibility, financial models, project performance, and investment returns.
• Excellent communication, negotiation, presentation, and stakeholder-management capabilities.
• Strong attention to detail and ability to make commercially and operationally sound decisions.
• Experience with international and distributed teams is highly desirable.
• A proactive, collaborative, commercially aware, and delivery-focused approach.