About this role
Location: CEE countries (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania)
Reporting to: CCO DHL Supply Chain; dotted to CEO DHL Supply Chain CEE
Role purpose and strategic context
As Vice President Business Development CEE, you play a pivotal role in shaping the growth of DHL Supply Chain across Central & Eastern Europe.
You will lead the commercial growth agenda, strengthen strategic customer relationships and build a sustainable pipeline of profitable opportunities. Beyond winning new business, you will shape where and how CEE competes, lead major transformational opportunities and connect customer needs with commercially sound and operationally executable solutions.
In a rapidly changing market, your impact extends beyond sales results to strengthening commercial capabilities, developing the best Business Development team, and positioning CEE for sustainable future growth.
Success matrix along four role profile dimensions
Professional Capabilities – Delivering today
- Strong commercial and business expertise, translating priorities into clear CEE market, sector and customer strategies.
- Driving profitable growth through pipeline quality, disciplined opportunity management and strategic renewals.
- Leading large and complex opportunities from early customer engagement through solution development, negotiation and contract award.
- Strong understanding of end-to-end supply chains and the operational and financial dynamics of complex solutions.
- Building trusted relationships and influencing senior customer and internal stakeholders.
- Acting as a bridge between European, cluster and country perspectives, connecting strategy with execution.
Personal Capabilities – Leadership impact
- Head: Combines strategic commercial thinking with strong execution and prioritisation.
- Heart: Builds trust and creates an environment where people collaborate openly across countries and functions.
- Guts: Has the courage to challenge assumptions, make decisions and focus resources on opportunities that create sustainable value.
- BITE: Creates impact through empowerment and accountability, enabling BD teams and mobilising the wider organisation behind key opportunities.
Future Challenges – Shaping tomorrow
- Accelerating profitable growth and proactively identifying where CEE can win.
- Anticipating customer needs and shaping opportunities rather than only reacting to tenders.
- Developing innovative and transformational solutions together with Operations and Solutions Design.
- Balancing growth ambition and speed with profitability and operational deliverability.
Cultural Fit – Matching the environment
- Creating impact across diverse countries, customers, sectors and cultures.
- Building relationships based on trust and credibility.
- Strong cross-functional collaboration, connecting BD with Operations, Solutions Design, HR, Finance and other functions.
- Breaking down country and functional silos and encouraging knowledge sharing across CEE.
- Entrepreneurial, curious and externally focused, with the agility to operate in a changing environment.
Key requirements
- Minimum 10 years of senior commercial leadership experience in logistics, contract logistics, supply chain services or a comparable B2B environment, with a proven track record of profitable growth.
- Strong Business Development, Sales or Account Management experience combined with sound understanding of Operations and/or Solutions Design.
- Proven experience leading large and complex commercial opportunities and negotiations.
- Strong customer relationship and senior stakeholder management capability.
- Experience leading commercial teams across countries and culturally diverse markets.
- Strong international / cross-country experience.
- Entrepreneurship, commercial judgment, speed and adaptability as critical differentiators for success.
- Fluent English and relevant university degree or equivalent professional experience.