Operations & Service Lead / Rekstrar & Þjónustustjóri

Do you want to be part of a small operation with a big heart and even bigger ideas?

We're one of Iceland's most-loved tour companies — over 9,000 reviews — and we're looking for the person who'll take our guides and our service and make them sharper, warmer and more professional than ever. Not a seat-filler. A leader who owns it.

The role

You run the show day to day: guides and drivers in the right place, guests looked after, tours and transfers going out clean. But you don't just execute — you decide how the operation runs. How we handle close-outs, how tours turn around, how our processes hold up under a busy summer: these are your calls to make and improve. You set the standard our guides & service team are held to, and you own the training and systems that keep that standard consistent, so it lives in a process, not just in someone's head.

You dig into what our reviews and numbers are telling us and turn that into a service people write home about. You'll do the work alongside the team and lift them as you go — and when Iceland throws a curveball, you stay calm and sort it.

The person currently in this seat is moving on, so this isn't a role you'll shadow into. You take the wheel from day one. It's hands-on, it's fast, and you'll have real ownership immediately.

What you'll own

• Guide services and walking- and food-tour operations, keeping every tour running smoothly.
• Training and onboarding — for both guides and the service team. Building the manuals, checklists and standards the whole team can follow, and passing on how we operate.
• Our AI-assisted training system — we're setting up a smart, always-on "brain" that holds our training material and helps the team find answers fast. You'll own it: keep it current, use it to onboard, and make sure it genuinely earns its place.
• Service quality end to end — doing the work, and making the team better at it.
• How we run our operations — processes, close-outs, and the calls on how tours and transfers actually get delivered. You'll shape these, not just follow them, and keep improving them as we grow.
• Driving and transfer operations on the ground — vehicles and drivers where they need to be, pickups on time, transfers running clean. (Our fleet lead handles the vehicles themselves; you keep the operation moving.)
• Reviews, feedback and the numbers behind them — turned into a service that keeps improving.
• Operational backup for our multi-day and DMC tours when it's needed.

You

• Come from tour operations, a DMC or a travel agency. You've run guides and daily ops before — this role has no safety net, so real experience matters. Being able to put a multi-day itinerary together when needed is a plus.
• You actually enjoy training people — and you're good at turning how-we-do-it into something written down. You've built training material or SOPs that people used, not that sat in a drawer.
• Confident with AI tools — and glad to use them. You'll own our AI training "brain", so you're the kind of person who reaches for these tools to work smarter, not someone we have to convince.
• Lead naturally — you own problems, make the call, hold a standard, and don't panic when three things land at once.
• Want to shape how things run, not just keep them running — you see a messy process and fix it rather than working around it.
• Comfortable owning a booking system and quick to adapt when tools change.
• Read the numbers and act on them.
• Warm with people, firm on standards — both, always.

Setup

Hybrid in Reykjavík, around 60% at our office on Hlésgata 1. You'll be with guides, partners and the team in person — this isn't a remote role.

Permanent and full-time. We'd like to start as soon as we find the right person — and we'd rather wait for the right fit than rush it.

Want in?

Send a short CV and a few lines on why this is you. Then tell us two things:

• A training doc, checklist or onboarding process you built that other people actually followed.
• A time you had to hold someone to a standard they weren't meeting — and what you did.

That's the job — show us.

About us

Your Friend in Reykjavík is a Reykjavík-based DMC, tour operator and travel agency, working with partners worldwide and directly with travellers. Daily walking tours and food experiences, private and multi-day trips across Iceland, and ground operations for tour operators everywhere.

Small, award-winning, and serious about doing things properly — built on five values: Ástríða (passion), Persónuleg þjónusta (personal service), Fagmennska (professionalism), Gleði (fun) and Hlýja (warmth).

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Viltu vera hluti af litlu fyrirtæki með stórt hjarta og enn stærri hugmyndir?

Við erum að gera eitthvað rétt — yfir 9.000 umsagnir — og við leitum að manneskju sem getur hjálpað okkur að gera þjónustuna okkar enn betri, hlýrri og fagmannlegri en nokkru sinni fyrr. Leiðtoga sem hefur ástríðu fyrir því að bæta ferla og flæði en heldur hlýleikanum í fyrirrúmi gagnvart gestum, samstarfsaðilum og samstarfsfólki