General Manager / Community & Operations Lead

Portugal, with priority given to Cascais / Lisbon (regular physical presence required).

About Shanti Place

Shanti Place is a premium community space in Cascais bringing together events, retreats, cultural programming, wellbeing practices, and curated social experiences.

Think less “wellness studio”, more community-driven lifestyle business — a place where people come to connect, learn, belong, and return.

We are entering a new growth stage and looking for someone to help turn a founder-led project into a scalable, well-run, profitable business.

We’re looking for an operator-builder — someone who can combine hospitality, business thinking, community programming and operational leadership.

This is not a classic corporate COO role.

It is closer to running a boutique members club, experiential business, or premium community venue.

You would act as the founder’s right hand and own the engine behind the business:
operations, programming execution, commercial performance, and growth.

• Run day-to-day operations of the space

• Bring structure, systems and operating rhythm

• Coordinate team, practitioners, contractors and partners

• Improve workflows and reduce founder dependency

• Turn ideas into executable plans

• Own business performance and profitability

• Manage budgets and unit economics for events/programs

• Improve occupancy, utilization and repeat revenue

• Track KPIs and make decisions from numbers

• Build sustainable commercial mechanics, not just beautiful programming

• Oversee launches of retreats, events and new formats

• Help shape a strong programming calendar

• Ensure experiences are well-produced, profitable and aligned with brand

• Contribute ideas for partnerships, memberships and new revenue streams

• Lead a small cross-functional team

• Create accountability and clear priorities

• Hold execution quality high without bureaucracy

• Balance creative energy with operational discipline

• Boutique hospitality

• Members clubs / community businesses

• Retreats / experiential events

• Coworking / coliving / lifestyle venues

• Premium service businesses

• Founder-led businesses as operator / GM / right hand

• Growth-stage community-driven businesses

• Strong business and operational instincts

• Experience owning budgets / P&L / unit economics

• Team leadership experience

• Commercial mindset and comfort with numbers

• Experience scaling service or community businesses

• Understanding of sales funnels / partnerships / recurring revenue

• Digital product curiosity is a plus (future online membership direction)

Russian or Ukrainian preferred.
English working proficiency required.

Within 12 months you help Shanti Place become:

• more structured

• less founder-dependent

• more profitable

• more scalable

• and even stronger as a premium community brand.

This is for someone who likes building businesses that have soul and economics.

Someone who can care about atmosphere and margins in the same sentence.