Director, Marketing Operations & Tech Strategy

Hearst Newspapers; Houston (TX); On-site; USD 150,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision

Retirement plan with matching

Paid time off

Parental leave

Child care reimbursement

Mental wellness benefits

Inclusive health services

Pet wellness reimbursement

Job summary

Hearst Newspapers is seeking a Director, Marketing Operations to lead the operational strategy, reliability, and advancement of platforms powering digital subscription marketing. The role oversees day-to-day marketing tech operations across Sailthru, BlueConic, Casper, and related data flows across nine markets.

The position requires strong leadership, deep experience in marketing technology, and a proven ability to translate business needs into technical requirements while driving automation,

Qualifications

• 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 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 diagnose marketing technology and data issues, trace problems across systems and data flows, identify root causes, and partner with BI, Product, Engineering, and vendors on resolution.
• Strong data and systems literacy, including interpreting data schemas, field-level logic and transformations, validating outputs, and translating business needs into technical and data requirements.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop the Marketing Operations team, managing workload, performance, priorities, and professional development while establishing ownership, service levels, and accountability.
• Own the Marketing Operations intake and prioritization process, evaluating requests, allocating capacity, and keeping stakeholders aligned on timing and scope.
• Own day-to-day marketing technology operations across Sailthru, BlueConic, Casper, and other platforms, including administration, workflows, audience segmentation, campaign activation, personalization, troubleshooting, and governance across markets.
• Ensure operational reliability across recurring marketing processes, data flows, rates and offers, tracking, and platform capabilities; partner with BI, Product, and vendors on resolution and safeguards.
• Oversee email operations across newsletters, lead gen, acquisition, retention, and lifecycle communications, partnering with marketing and newsroom teams to strengthen workflows.
• Manage checkout and monetization flows, subscription prices, rates, and offers, collaborating with Finance, Marketing, Product, and Customer Service to ensure accurate implementation.
• Translate business problems into functional requirements; support prioritization, ideation, testing, and rollout; and translate technical capabilities into marketing implications.
• Identify opportunities to expand capabilities through AI, automation, and self-service while maintaining governance and oversight.
• Manage marketing technology vendors, including contracts, performance, and roadmap alignment; evaluate capabilities and integration needs.
• Lead adoption across Marketing and newsrooms by creating workflows, documentation, training, and governance; establish QA and change-management standards.

Skills

Marketing operations

Marketing tech

Lifecycle marketing

CRM

Data integrations

Team leadership

AI automation

Education

Bachelor's degree in Marketing or related field

Tools

Sailthru

BlueConic

Casper

Job description

Hearst Newspapers is seeking a Director, Marketing Operations to lead the operational strategy, reliability, and advancement of platforms powering digital subscription marketing. The role oversees day-to-day marketing tech operations across Sailthru, BlueConic, Casper, and related data flows across nine markets.

The position requires strong leadership, deep experience in marketing technology, and a proven ability to translate business needs into technical requirements while driving automation,