Director of Professional Services, WordPress VIP
Automattic
Hirezar Summary for South African Applicants
This fully remote full time position at Automattic is open worldwide, so South Africans can apply. As a remote position, you can work from anywhere in South Africa — whether you're based in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, or a smaller town.
Job Description
<p><a href="https://wpvip.com/">WordPress VIP</a> is the world’s leading enterprise content management platform. We help the world’s largest companies—including Meta, Salesforce, and Disney—create innovative digital experiences with WordPress.</p>
<p>We are hiring a Director of Professional Services to run our Professional Services delivery organization. You will own the day-to-day operation of a team that handles migrations, implementations, and custom engagements for some of the most complex enterprise WordPress deployments in the world. The role reports to the VP of Customer Experience (CX) as part of the CX Senior Leadership Team.</p>
<p>You’re walking into a team with real delivery capability and an established customer base. The work now is sharper: a tighter service menu, faster time-to-value, a delivery model that can flex to what enterprise customers actually need—and an organization that increasingly runs on AI. Professional Services at WordPress VIP is a revenue-generating business. The person in this seat owns that commercial result, not just the delivery quality behind it.</p>
<h4><strong>Responsibilities</strong></h4>
<ul>
<li>Build an agentic Professional Services organization—one where AI augments delivery, accelerates time-to-value, and creates capacity for higher-complexity work.</li>
<li>Build Professional Services into a growth lever: identify expansion opportunities within active engagements, and partner with Account Management and Sales to turn delivery relationships into commercial ones.</li>
<li>Lead a Professional Services team of engineers and delivery managers, delivering migrations, implementations, and custom engagements for enterprise customers.</li>
<li>Own delivery quality end-to-end: project health, escalation management, customer outcomes, and on-time, on-scope execution.</li>
<li>Build and maintain a clear menu of established service offerings, so Sales can sell them, customers can buy them, and the team can deliver them consistently.</li>
<li>Meet customers where they are. Not every engagement fits a playbook, and this role requires the judgment to scope and run custom work without losing the thread back to repeatable delivery.</li>
<li>Help set the strategic direction for Professional Services as part of the Customer Experience Senior Leadership Team, and translate it into an operating plan that the team can execute.</li>
<li>Help differentiate WordPress VIP’s services offering in the market: define what makes Professional Services at WordPress VIP distinct from what a customer could get elsewhere, and build the proof points behind it.</li>
<li>Partner with Sales & Accounts to scope and price engagements accurately, and own the hand-off from close to delivery.</li>
<li>Partner with Product, Support, and Account Management on feedback loops that continually improve WordPress VIP’s platform and services.</li>
<li>Represent Professional Services credibly with senior internal and external stakeholders, including customer executives, on complex or at-risk engagements.</li>
</ul>
<h4><strong>Experience</strong></h4>
<ul>
<li>8+ years of leadership experience in Professional Services, implementation, or technical consulting. Direct experience leading a Professional Services or delivery organization is required.</li>
<li>5+ years delivering services for enterprise SaaS or PaaS customers, ideally involving large-scale migrations or custom development.</li>
<li>Experience building a services portfolio—defining offerings, pricing them, and making them repeatable without killing the flexibility that enterprise customers need.</li>
<li>Experience working the full commercial loop—not just delivery, but scoping with Sales, pricing engagements, identifying expansion, and tying Professional Services outcomes to retention and revenue.</li>
<li>Comfortable operating in or alongside an AI-augmented delivery model. What we need is genuine fluency with how AI changes the work—not just awareness that it exists.</li>
<li>Demonstrated ability to engage with executive stakeholders, both internal and external.</li>
<li>Proven track record of performance management within a team, working closely with individual contributors, leads, and HR partners.</li>
</ul>
<h4><strong>How you work</strong></h4>
<ul>
<li><strong>Operator first. </strong>You hold the strategy in your head and still show up for the delivery details. More do than say.</li>
<li><strong>Commercially accountable. </strong>You think about Professional Services as a business, not a function. You know your revenue number, you know your margin, and you can talk about both with the same fluency you bring to delivery.</li>
<li><strong>Strong, persuasive communicator. </strong>You can scope a hard engagement, write clearly under pressure, and hold executive attention without overstating your case.</li>
<li><strong>Coach, not just a manager. </strong>You develop practitioners into delivery leads. You give direct feedback. You’ll step in wh
Tips for South African Applicants
Timezone Advantage
South Africa (SAST, UTC+2) overlaps well with European business hours and has a few hours of overlap with US East Coast. Mention your timezone flexibility in your application.
Salary in Context
Even without a listed salary, international remote roles typically pay 2-3x more than equivalent local positions in South Africa due to the exchange rate advantage.
Application Tips
Tailor your CV to international standards — use a clean format, highlight remote work experience, and include your English proficiency. Many SA applicants succeed by emphasising their strong work ethic and cultural adaptability.
Load Shedding Preparedness
If you're applying for a remote role, having a backup power solution (UPS, inverter, or generator) and mobile data as a backup internet connection shows employers you're prepared for South Africa's infrastructure challenges.
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About Automattic
Automattic is a company in the Account Executive industry that hires remote workers from South Africa. They currently have 19 open positions on Hirezar. View all Automattic jobs →