Associate Principal, Transformation

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd•Miami, FL

8d•Onsite

About The Position

Royal Caribbean Group's Global Marine Operations (GMO) Team has an exciting career opportunity for a full-time Associate Principal, Transformation reporting to the VP, Marine Transformation and Performance. This position will work onsite in Miami, Florida. Marine operations at the scale and complexity of Royal Caribbean Group’s Global Marine Operations (GMO) does not stand still. The organization must continuously adapt — modernizing how it works, raising its standards, and building the capability to meet the future. The Senior Manager, Marine Transformation brings firsthand operational experience of life at sea to a team that is designing and delivering change across GMO. Having served aboard vessels, this person contributes a working knowledge of how ships operate — the rhythms, constraints, decision-making structures, and human realities of an always-on marine environment. That perspective enriches how the team designs transformation initiatives, particularly those that touch the fleet directly. This role works alongside colleagues who bring strong corporate, analytical, and process design capabilities. Together the team is stronger for the range of experience it represents. The Senior Manager’s contribution is not to validate or correct the work of others, but to bring a complementary dimension that improves the quality and practicality of what the team collectively produces. Working in close partnership with the Senior Director, this role leads and contributes to transformation initiatives across GMO, engages shipboard leaders as part of the change process, and helps ensure that what is designed ashore translates effectively into the operational environment of the ships. The right person is a self-directed professional who has built a career around making operations better. They are as comfortable in a shoreside project environment as they are in a conversation with a Captain or Chief Engineer, and they bring both rigor and practical judgment to the work of organizational change.

Requirements

Shipboard experience. Service experience aboard vessels in a nautical or technical capacity — Chief Officer, First Officer, First Engineer, First Electrotechnical Officer, or equivalent — sufficient to have developed a genuine working knowledge of how ships operate. This experience is a core requirement of the role given the nature of the transformation mandate.
A track record of driving change. Demonstrated experience leading or contributing to continuous improvement, process redesign, or operational change initiatives. Understands what it takes to make change stick in an operational environment and brings that knowledge to how transformation is designed and delivered.
Comfortable across ship and shore. Able to operate effectively in both a shipboard and a shoreside corporate environment. Engages shipboard leaders with the ease of shared experience while working productively within a professional transformation team.
Project and change management capability. Able to structure, lead, and deliver complex initiatives with multiple stakeholders. Brings discipline to how work is scoped, sequenced, and tracked, and follows through to ensure delivery.
Collaborative and influential. Works effectively across functions, levels, and organizational boundaries. Builds trust through the quality of engagement and consistency of follow-through. Understands that in a transformation role, influence is the primary lever.
Intellectually curious and improvement-minded. Genuinely motivated by finding better ways of doing things. Brings energy and rigor to the question of how marine operations can be improved and is not satisfied with the status quo as a default position.
Professional transition to shoreside. Already working ashore or actively making the transition from sea to shore. Brings the operational foundation of a seafaring career and is developing the corporate and organizational skills to apply it at an organizational level.
Education. Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional qualification required. Relevant maritime certifications — STCW, Officer of the Watch, Chief Mate or equivalent — are expected given the shipboard experience requirement.

Responsibilities

Lead and contribute to transformation initiatives across GMO. Take ownership of transformation projects from scoping through to sustained delivery. Bring rigor to how initiatives are structured, sequenced, and executed, and contribute an operational perspective to initiatives that touch the fleet.
Contribute an operational perspective to transformation design. Draw on firsthand experience of the shipboard environment to help the team design initiatives that are practical and well-suited to the operational context. Contribute to discussions about sequencing, feasibility, and implementation approach with the knowledge of someone who has worked in that environment.
Engage shipboard leaders as part of the change process. Build and maintain productive working relationships with shipboard leaders including Captains, Chief Officers, and Chief Engineers. Support the engagement and buy-in process that makes transformation on the ships effective and lasting.
Support the development of the transformation roadmap. Contribute actively to the prioritization and sequencing of the GMO transformation agenda. Bring an operational lens to decisions about which processes to transform, which initiatives carry the most risk, and where the organization is most ready for change.
Design implementation approaches that work in the shipboard environment. Contribute to the design of rollout and adoption plans that account for the realities of an operating fleet — crew rotation, operational tempo, regulatory requirements, and the practical constraints of shipboard life.
Partner closely with the Marine Digital team. Contribute to process design work that underpins digital development. Bring an operational perspective to the design and rollout of tools intended for shipboard use, ensuring they are fit for the environment they are being deployed into.
Share operational knowledge across the team. Contribute to a team culture where a range of experience and perspective is actively valued. Share knowledge of the shipboard environment in ways that improve the collective quality of transformation design across all initiatives.