Head of Professional Services

The housing crisis is one of the biggest challenges facing the Netherlands. OPENRED builds the infrastructure that makes better decisions possible. You bring the substance that gives municipalities, provinces and ministries the confidence to take those decisions.

About OPENRED: making an impact on the housing construction of the future

The Netherlands faces one of the largest housing shortages in its history, and yet construction is stalling. Not for lack of plans or capital, but because decision-making is slow and fragmented: municipalities, developers and investors each decide on their own island, with outdated information. OPENRED exists to break that pattern: we build the decision infrastructure for housing construction. This creates one place where the people who allocate scarce resources decide which projects go ahead first. Better allocation ultimately means that more homes are built, in the right places.

We currently work for around 160 clients, including an increasing number of large public and private parties. In the coming period we are launching major programmes in which we want to deliver one thing: measurably better and faster decision-making in area and project development.

The municipality decides which plans go ahead, in what order and under which conditions. And it must account for those decisions to the executive board and council, with land exploitation budgets that add up, a programme that is feasible and risks that have been mitigated. Developers and investors make the same trade-offs from the other side of the table. That is exactly where we want to make the difference: of our clients, 13 are currently public. That needs to grow to 50 in the first year and then to 100. Because that is the only way OPENRED can truly make an impact.

And here is the real work: how decisions in this domain become structurally better is not fixed anywhere. Not with us, not elsewhere. We have already worked on it concretely: we have carried out feasibility studies and built portfolio monitors, with very satisfied clients. But the structure is missing and the effort is still fragmented within organisations. We want to change this: with implementation programmes in which all disciplines sit at the table, and only then the platform. But which offering it becomes, with a fixed form, a fixed price and a fixed lead time, and which team is needed for it, that is what we want to determine together with you.

The OPENRED product and tech team is full of AI experts who turn your vision into a product that fits the processes you shape, so as to bring about a fundamental change in how the development process runs. With substantive sharpness, always all insights at hand and fully data-driven.

That is why we are looking for a Head of Professional Services: the substantive authority on decision-making in area and project development, and the leader of the team that makes that decision-making better for our clients. Someone who knows the profession from the inside, has seen where it gets stuck and wants to change it to AI-native. Who can get to the bottom of a land exploitation budget down to the assumption, handle the conversation with an alderman or board, and at the same time think out loud about how this work can scale to fifty municipalities rather than five. Experienced, assertive and substantively strong: one without the other does not work here.

Your Role

You are responsible for the quality of the decisions that OPENRED makes possible, and you build the team that delivers on that. Your work consists of three things that overlap: setting up and leading a team, sitting at the table substantively for the most important programmes, and making the way of working AI-native. What your team learns with one client convinces the next.

Setting up a team of domain experts

• You build the Professional Services team: you determine which expertise is needed, recruit the first domain experts and turn a group of specialists into a team with a shared standard.

• You lead the team substantively and personally: you coach, review, give direction and make sure everyone grows.

• You define what good looks like: a recognisable quality standard for analyses, advice and reports, regardless of who in the team does the work.

• You are a sparring partner for the founder, product and commercial teams, and you help shape the direction of OPENRED.

Substantively at the table for the major programmes

• Creating a portfolio overview by testing and challenging housing programmes for feasibility.

• Shaping scenarios for project and area developments in the fields of ecology, social and economic aspects.

• Getting to the bottom of land exploitation budgets, testing them and questioning them sharply, with an honest picture of what happens when construction costs or interest rates move.

• Advising on feasibility, housing construction programming, phasing, cost recovery and land policy: in the language of the BBV and the Environment and Planning Act, and in the language of a council proposal or an investment committee.

• Bridging the gap between the portfolio on paper and what is realistically built: which projects are at risk, which blockage must be removed first, and what that means for the production target.

• Translating plans into neighbourhood and district development, with scenarios based on the feasibility of plans.

Making decision-making AI-native

• You determine which of our existing work, such as the feasibility studies and the portfolio monitor, becomes a repeatable product: fixed form, fixed lead time, fixed price.

• Every programme is delivered in such a way that it can be done faster next time: standard request for information, calculation models, templates, fixed reporting format.

• You actively seek the boundary between what a human must do and what the platform or AI can take over, and you design, together with product and tech, work processes that are AI-first: a practice that scales without growing proportionally in people.

• You make measurable what a better decision is: how much faster it can be reached, how much sharper the justification is and what that yields in homes.

• What your team encounters substantively, you bring back to product and commercial. Our proposition gets sharper from your files.

Growing the market

• You are the substantive face at the table for aldermen, directors, planning economists and investors. The deal runs through commercial, the credibility through you and your team.

• You help grow the public portfolio substantially, through services, through the platform, or through both. That number is the measure we steer by; there is no hours target.

• You build and use your network in the public and private worlds: trade events, peers in area development, consultancies. And you are findable for anyone grappling with this issue.

• You make it possible to tell what OPENRED concretely delivers to a client: in figures, in files, in examples.

Who are you?

Academic background: a university degree / level of thinking in [e.g. planning economics, real estate studies, urban planning or a related field].

Extensive experience: seven years or more of experience in area and project development, at a municipality, consultancy or developer. You have seen a lot: projects that got stuck, council proposals that failed and breakthroughs that nonetheless came in the end. You know from your own experience where decision-making stalls, and you want to change that fundamentally.

Domain expert in land exploitation and housing construction programming: this is a hard requirement. You get to the bottom of a land exploitation budget down to the assumption: where it pinches, why a council does or does not trust a figure, and what an alderman needs to defend it.

Substantively at level: Grex, Vex, Stiko, cost recovery, Environment and Planning Act, housing construction programming and feasibility.

Experience leading teams: you have recruited, coached and developed professionals. You know how to give a team a shared standard, and you want to build that at OPENRED from the ground up.

Politically sensitive: you know what a council cycle with a decision deadline does, and you can explain a complex financial choice to someone who is politically accountable for it.

Assertive: you take the lead substantively in a conversation, point out what is not right and hold your ground when under pressure, including internally, in a critical and articulate team.

Entrepreneurial: you enjoy discovering a proposition more than executing an existing playbook, and you can live with the first version not being right yet.

Thorough and structural: what you and your team deliver is afterwards reusable and scalable.

AI-native in your thinking: you believe your profession can and must be different, and you want to shape it into work processes that are AI-first. You do not need to be a programmer, but you enjoy experimenting and quickly see where AI makes the difference.

You have already seen a lot, and yet you still want to build. We are looking for someone with experience who keeps learning quickly, takes responsibility and brings others along.

You do not need to be perfect at everything already. We are looking for someone who learns quickly, takes responsibility and enjoys building. 

Work for clients as...
What we offer

• €6,750 - €7,750 gross per month, depending on experience, plus a bonus scheme based on [the growth of the portfolio and the impact of the team].

• The mandate to build your own team and to determine how OPENRED helps its clients make better decisions.

• Direct collaboration with the founder, product and commercial teams: short lines, quick decisions

• A product and tech team full of AI experts who turn your vision into product.

• Hybrid working from Rotterdam; annual team trip.

• The opportunity to build a proposition from the foundation, in a vertical AI scale-up. With plenty of freedom to shape the processes, the team and the proposition according to your vision.

• A pension scheme, so that you can still enjoy yourself later.

• A mobility solution that suits you.

Why this role is unique

• Scale: your many years of experience in area and project development work here not on a single project, but on the way dozens of municipalities and developers navigate their entire portfolio. And that translates into homes that otherwise would not have been built.

• Blank slate, no legacy: no established playbook and no existing team. What stands here in a year is something you have conceived and built with your team.

• Lasting: you are not a secondment-based consultant. You build something that remains once the assignment is over.

• Substance is the product: here, substance is the product and not the appendix to the product. The files of you and your team partly determine what we build.

• Decisions: the Netherlands has no shortage of plans, but of decisions. You are the one who makes those decisions measurably better and faster.

Ready to make an impact?

Apply today and become part of a team that looks beyond today and works on concrete solutions to the housing crisis.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​