Director, Marketing Operations

Job Summary

The Director, Marketing Operations is responsible for the operational strategy, execution, reliability, and advancement of the platforms and processes that power Hearst Newspapers' digital subscription marketing strategy. This role leads day-to-day marketing technology operations across Sailthru, BlueConic, Casper, subscription rates and offers, data integrations, and platform quality assurance, ensuring the marketing technology stack operates reliably while continually improving how Marketing uses technology, data, AI, and automation. This is a centralized role supporting nine markets, with responsibility for building consistent, scalable processes and capabilities across the portfolio.

The ideal candidate is a technically fluent marketing operations leader who combines deep hands-on marketing technology experience, strong data and systems thinking, and disciplined operational leadership. This person will manage a distributed team of four and serve as a key bridge between Marketing and Product, Business Intelligence, Editorial, Finance, Customer Service, and technology vendors - translating marketing needs into clear requirements, identifying new capabilities and opportunities, and driving adoption across marketing and newsrooms.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and develop the Marketing Operations team, managing workload, performance, priorities, and professional development while establishing clear ownership, service levels, operating rhythms, and accountability.

• Own the Marketing Operations intake and prioritization process, evaluating incoming requests, allocating team capacity, managing tradeoffs, and keeping stakeholders aligned on timing, scope, and dependencies.

• Own day-to-day marketing technology operations across Sailthru, BlueConic, Casper, and any other future platforms, including platform administration, workflows, audience segmentation, campaign activation, personalization, troubleshooting, documentation, governance, and scalable execution across markets, with particular responsibility for supporting Marketing and newsroom teams in their use of Sailthru.

• Ensure operational reliability across recurring marketing processes, integrations, audience and data flows, rates and offers, tracking, and platform capabilities; proactively monitor for issues, diagnose root causes across systems, and partner with BI, Product, and vendors on resolution and safeguards.

• Oversee email operations across newsletters, lead generation, acquisition, retention, and other lifecycle communications, including audience selection, campaign/template setup, scheduling, suppression logic, deployment, and operational readiness. Partner closely with marketing and newsroom teams to strengthen newsletter capabilities, workflows, and best practices.

• Manage the operational setup and governance of checkout and cancellation flows, subscription rates, pricing configurations, and promotional offers, partnering with Finance, Marketing, Product, and Customer Service to ensure accurate implementation across customer experiences.

• Serve as Marketing's close partner to the Product Director and as the primary Marketing-to-technology translator: turn loosely defined business problems and ideas into clear functional, data, and operational requirements; support prioritization, ideation, implementation, testing, and rollout; and translate technical capabilities, constraints, and tradeoffs into practical marketing implications and opportunities.

• Proactively identify opportunities to expand Marketing's capabilities through existing or new technology, data, AI, automation, and self-service. Assess business value and operational feasibility, reduce manual work and handoffs, enable appropriate self-service, and move the strongest opportunities from concept to implementation while maintaining governance and human oversight.

• Manage marketing technology vendors, including relationships, contracts, renewals, platform performance, issue resolution, roadmap alignment, and service levels. In partnership with Product and technical stakeholders, represent Marketing in evaluating prospective technology and assessing capabilities, gaps, integration needs, and tradeoffs against business requirements.

• Lead capability rollout and adoption across Marketing and newsrooms by translating new functionality into usable workflows, documentation, training, governance, and operating practices; establish rigorous QA and change-management standards to ensure capabilities are implemented accurately and sustainably.

Qualifications & Skills

• Significant experience in marketing operations, marketing technology, lifecycle marketing, CRM, or digital subscription operations, including experience leading teams and managing complex cross-functional workflows.

• Strong hands-on experience directly configuring and troubleshooting marketing technology platforms, including customer data platforms, email/CRM platforms, audience segmentation, automation, personalization, business rules, and campaign activation; BlueConic and Sailthru experience are strongly preferred.

• Strong technical fluency across marketing technology ecosystems, including data integrations, APIs and data feeds, audience schemas, identity and profile data, tracking, campaign logic, platform dependencies, and data flows between marketing platforms and enterprise data environments.

• Demonstrated ability to independently diagnose marketing technology and data issues, trace problems across systems and data flows, identify likely root causes, and partner effectively with BI, Product, Engineering, and vendors on resolution.

• Strong data and systems literacy, including the ability to interpret data schemas, understand field-level logic and transformations, validate outputs, translate business needs into precise technical and data requirements, and assess upstream and downstream dependencies; familiarity with SQL or similar data-querying concepts is strongly preferred.

• Strong experience with email and newsletter operations, including supporting both Marketing and newsroom use cases, segmentation, lifecycle campaigns, automation, deployment workflows, deliverability considerations, and identifying and implementing new platform capabilities and best practice.

• Experience managing checkout or monetization platforms, subscription pricing, rates, promotional offers, or comparable configuration-driven customer subscription programs.

• Demonstrated ability to turn ambiguous business needs into clear requirements, partner effectively with Product and technical teams, evaluate technology capabilities and tradeoffs, and drive adoption of new tools and functionality across non-technical users.

• Proven people-management experience, ideally leading remote or distributed teams, with strong coaching, prioritization, stakeholder management, communication, and accountability skills.

• Demonstrated experience using AI, automation, and self-service approaches to improve operational workflows, QA, speed, and team capacity while maintaining appropriate governance and human oversight.

• Exceptional attention to detail, strong problem-solving and operational judgment, and the ability to balance business urgency with platform integrity, data quality, scalability, and sustainable processes in a fast-moving environment.

Our Benefits: At Hearst Newspapers we not only support our employees through personal and professional development, but we also believe in promoting each individual’s physical, financial and emotional wellbeing (and that of their family). Our industry-leading benefits include:

• Physical Wellbeing: Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage to keep you and your family healthy.
• Invest for the Future: Competitive retirement plan with matching program in most markets.
• Generous Paid Time Off: Recharge with ample time off, including holidays and vacation.
• Paid Parental Leave: Support for growing families, with paid leave for new parents.
• Monthly Child & Dependent Care Reimbursement: Financial support for the care of your loved ones.
• Emotional Wellbeing: Be your best self with our mental wellness benefits.
• LGBTQ+ & Inclusive Health Services: Inclusive healthcare designed for every individual’s unique needs.
• Fertility Coverage & Menopause Support: Helping you along every step of your family journey.
• Pet Wellness Reimbursement & Rover Credits: We care about your pets, too - helping you keep them happy and healthy.
• And more, click here for additional benefits and details.

This position does not provide sponsorship. All applicants should have the right to work in the U.S. without immigration sponsorship.

In accordance with applicable law, Hearst is required to include a reasonable estimate of the compensation for this role if hired in New York, NY. The reasonable estimate is $150,000 - $160,000. A final decision on the successful candidate’s starting salary will be based on a number of permissible, non-discriminatory factors, including but not limited to skills and experience, training, certifications, and education.