Director, Campaign Operations

Cengage; North Olmsted (OH); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Cengage is seeking a Director of Campaign Operations to lead the vision, strategy, and execution of marketing programs. You will mature our campaign operations ecosystem, drive growth, and build a modern production model balancing rigor with flexibility.

This remote leadership role reports to Marketing Ops leadership and guides a distributed team across the enterprise. The ideal candidate brings strategic leadership and hands-on problem solving, with a track record of scalable, high-quality

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in marketing operations, campaign operations, marketing automation, or related marketing technology and production functions.
• Proven experience leading teams in complex enterprise environments.
• Strong understanding of marketing strategies, campaign operations, marketing automation, workflow management, and production processes.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the enterprise campaign operations strategy, operating model, production processes, governance, and service model to enable scalable campaign execution.
• Build and optimize an efficient production model using internal teams, self-service by marketers, and external resources.
• Drive operational excellence by measuring and improving campaign production timelines, velocity, throughput, quality, and predictability.
• Lead governance for campaign configuration, audience management, workflow, templates, data usage, and standards.
• Partner with Marketing, Revenue, Digital, and Product leaders to align investments with growth objectives.
• Manage external agency resources to ensure accountability, capacity, and quality.

Skills

Marketing operations

Campaign operations

Automation

Leadership

Strategy

Tools

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Workfront

Data 360

Job description

## **Director, Campaign Operations****We believe in the power and joy of learning**At Cengage, our employees have a direct impact in helping learners around the world discover the power and joy of learning. We are bonded by our shared purpose - driving innovation that helps millions of learners improve their lives and achieve their dreams through education.We are seeking a strategic and operationally minded **Director of Campaign Operations** to lead the vision, strategy, and execution of marketing programs, mature our campaign operations ecosystem, and drive growth.This role will report to the Vice President, Marketing Operations within Cengage's marketing center-of-excellence and will lead a team responsible for enabling efficient, scalable, and high-quality campaign execution and evolution for Marketing.The Director, Campaign Operations will define how campaigns move from strategy to execution - bringing together people, process, technology, workflow, and data to help marketers execute more effectively. This leader will build a modern campaign production model that balances operational rigor with flexibility and innovation while enabling increasingly personalized customer experiences at scale.The role requires a blend of strategic leadership, operational excellence, and technical depth. The ideal candidate is a player-coach: equally comfortable defining a long-term capability roadmap and rolling up their sleeves to solve complex execution challenges alongside their team.This is a leadership role for someone with a proven track record of building efficient campaign operations in complex enterprise environments, translating marketer needs into scalable capabilities and services, and leading high-performing teams.This is a remote role with occasional travel required.## What you'll do here:**Own Campaign Operations Excellence*** Define and evolve the enterprise campaign operations strategy, operating model, production processes, governance, and service model to enable scalable campaign execution.* Build and optimize an efficient production model using a combination of internal teams, marketer self-service, and external agency or managed-service resources.* Establish planning standards, templates, workflows, intake processes, and reusable campaign components that help marketers work faster while maintaining quality and consistency.* Drive operational excellence by measuring and improving campaign production timelines, velocity, throughput, quality, and predictability.* Identify bottlenecks and opportunities across the campaign lifecycle and implement improvements that accelerate time-to-market, increase quality, and drive outcomes.* Establish clear expectations, operational metrics, and continuous improvement practices across campaign operations.## Unlock Marketing Capabilities to Drive Growth* Own the campaign operations capability roadmap, translating business priorities and marketer needs into scalable campaign execution, personalization, and automation capabilities.* Partner with Marketing, Revenue, Digital, and Product leaders to align campaign investments and operational priorities with growth objectives.* Define and evolve capabilities that improve customer engagement, including audience targeting, journey orchestration, personalization, and lifecycle marketing.* Identify and prioritize opportunities to improve marketer productivity and campaign effectiveness through automation, AI, reusable content, self-service, and workflow innovation.* Translate operational insights and marketer feedback into new services, capabilities, and ways of working that accelerate growth.* Balance capability expansion with operational efficiency, scalability, and long-term sustainability.## Provide Marketing Automation Leadership and Governance* Provide leadership and governance for campaign operations platforms and integrated systems, including Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Workfront, Data 360, and related technologies.* Serve as the campaign operations subject matter expert, representing campaign execution requirements in MarTech, data, workflow, and architecture discussions.* Partner with Marketing Technology, Data, Digital, Analytics, and IT teams to ensure campaign capabilities are scalable, integrated, secure, and aligned with enterprise architecture.* Guide the design and implementation of automated customer journeys, triggered communications, and campaign execution frameworks.* Establish governance for campaign configuration, audience management, workflow, templates, data usage, and operational standards.* Monitor platform performance, campaign health, deliverability, data quality, and operational reliability.* Ensure campaign operations capabilities align with enterprise data models, privacy requirements, compliance standards, and technology roadmaps.## Drive Campaign Performance and Continuous Improvement* Partner with marketers, audience owners, and campaign managers to translate business objectives into efficient and scalable campaign execution plans.* Implement testing, measurement, and optimization practices that improve campaign effectiveness and operational efficiency.* Build dashboards and reporting that provide insight into production workflow, campaign velocity, quality, service levels, and execution outcomes.* Own campaign operations prioritization and capacity planning frameworks.* Use operational and campaign performance data to find opportunities for improvement and prioritize investments.* Establish mechanisms to capture feedback from marketers and continuously improve the campaign experience and operating model.## Collaboration and Enablement* Build strong partnerships across Marketing, Sales, Revenue Operations, Digital, IT, Analytics, Legal, Marketing Technology, and Marketing Operations.* Be an advisor to help Marketing improve results across automation, email, and owned channels while staying within governance and compliance.* Serve as a strategic partner to marketers by understanding their needs and helping translate those needs into scalable capabilities and operational solutions.* Develop documentation, training programs, playbooks, and onboarding materials that enable marketers and campaign teams to work effectively within the campaign operating model.* Help establish clear roles, responsibilities, and decision-making processes across teams involved in campaign planning, production, activation, and measurement.* Resolve complex campaign operations and platform-related challenges while identifying themes for foundational solutions.## Lead and Develop a High-Performing Team* Lead, coach, and develop a distributed team of automation strategists and campaign producers.* Balance efficient execution within campaign squads, with a broader center-of-excellence approach that elevates marketing operations across the entire global organization.* Build a strong player-coach culture where leaders and team members combine operational rigor with hands-on problem solving.* Establish clear goals, development plans, performance expectations, and success metrics for team members.* Manage external agency and managed-service resources to ensure clear accountability, efficient use of capacity, and high-quality delivery.* Build organizational resilience through documentation, cross-training, standardized processes, and scalable ways of working.## Skills you will need here:* 10+ years of experience in marketing operations, campaign operations, marketing automation, or related marketing technology and production functions, including experience leading teams in complex enterprise environments.* Demonstrated experience building and operating efficient, scalable campaign production or marketing automation models.* Strong understanding of marketing strategies, campaign operations, marketing automation, workflow management, and production processes.*