Lead Partnership Operations

washpost; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

The Washington Post is seeking a senior operational leader to transform partnership strategies into scalable, repeatable programs. You will align cross-functional teams across product, engineering, legal, finance, marketing, and analytics to deliver launch-ready partnerships and AI licensing initiatives.

You will design governance, implementation playbooks, dashboards, and scalable operating models that reduce risk, accelerate time to market, and support new revenue opportunities in content

Qualifications

• Experience delivering complex operational plans for strategic partnerships.
• Ability to translate business objectives into scalable operational plans.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration across product, engineering, legal, finance, marketing, data analytics.

Responsibilities

• Lead operational planning for strategic partnership launches with roadmaps, governance, milestones, dependencies, and accountability.
• Translate commercial partnership objectives into scalable operational and technical implementation plans.
• Drive cross-functional implementation efforts across Product, Engineering, Legal, Finance, Marketing, Audience, Data & Analytics, Advertising Operations.
• Lead technical discovery to identify integration requirements, workflows, data dependencies, and risks.
• Evaluate approaches for new partnership opportunities (AI licensing, content distribution, subscriptions, and emerging revenue models).
• Establish governance processes to manage risks and dependencies across concurrent initiatives.
• Design scalable operating models, playbooks, templates, and documentation standards to improve execution consistency.

Skills

Cross-functional leadership

Operations management

Partnerships

Strategic planning

Stakeholder management

Job description

Join the future of news

We're on a mission to deliver riveting storytelling for all of America. At The Washington Post, you'll help reinvent news. Our work is driven by a deep investigative spirit and enhanced by innovation to bring audiences closer to the stories that matter most.

About Our Team

The Washington Post is powered by the passion and talent of our people. It takes all of us to reinvent news. Beyond our award-winning News and Opinions teams, we work across many departments, including Brand & Events, Communications, Customer Care, Engineering & Product, Finance, Human Resources, Legal, Marketing & Advertising, Print Operations, and Sales.

Why This Role Matters

Serves as the operational leader responsible for transforming partnership strategies and commercial agreements into scalable, repeatable, and successful business implementations.

Enables The Washington Post's growth by establishing the operating models, governance, and implementation discipline required to launch and sustain strategic platform partnerships, AI licensing initiatives, subscriptions, content distribution agreements, and emerging business opportunities.

Bridges commercial strategy, technical implementation, and operational execution by aligning cross-functional teams around shared priorities, clear accountability, and successful delivery.

Creates scalable partnership operations that improve speed to market, reduce execution risk, and support sustainable revenue growth across the Partnerships portfolio.

Advances The Washington Post's transformation by designing operational capabilities that enable new partnership models in an evolving media, technology, and AI landscape.

What Motivates You

You are energized by turning complex business opportunities into structured operational plans that drive measurable results.

You enjoy solving ambiguous operational and technical challenges by bringing clarity, organization, and execution discipline to cross-functional initiatives.

You thrive at the intersection of business strategy, technology, and operations, helping diverse teams move together toward common objectives.

You are motivated by building scalable systems, governance models, and repeatable processes that improve organizational effectiveness.

You enjoy collaborating with technical and business leaders to translate commercial objectives into practical implementation plans.

You are excited by emerging technologies, evolving media business models, and the opportunity to help shape how partnerships create long-term value for The Washington Post.

You take pride in continuously improving how work gets done and removing barriers that prevent successful execution.

How You'll Support the Mission

Lead operational planning for strategic partnership launches by establishing implementation roadmaps, governance structures, milestones, dependencies, and accountability frameworks that enable successful execution across the partnership portfolio.

Translate commercial partnership objectives into scalable operational and technical implementation plans that align business goals with execution requirements and accelerate time to market.

Drive cross-functional implementation efforts across Product, Engineering, Legal, Finance, Marketing, Audience, Data & Analytics, Advertising Operations, and other business teams to deliver successful partner launches and operational readiness.

Lead technical discovery activities that identify integration requirements, content delivery workflows, data dependencies, platform access needs, operational constraints, and implementation risks, ensuring informed planning and successful delivery.

Evaluate operational and technical approaches for new partnership opportunities-including AI licensing, content distribution, subscriptions, podcasting, video, and emerging revenue models-to ensure solutions support long-term commercial objectives.

Establish implementation governance processes that proactively identify risks, manage dependencies, coordinate decision-making, and improve visibility across concurrent partnership initiatives.

Design scalable operating models, implementation playbooks, launch templates, documentation standards, and workflow processes that improve execution consistency and reduce operational complexity across future partnership launches.

Optimize partnership operations by identifying process bottlenecks, ownership gaps, technical constraints, and recurring execution challenges, implementing improvements that increase organizational efficiency and delivery quality.

Develop executive-ready implementation dashboards, status reporting, and governance communications that provide leadership with timely visibility into launch progress, risks, priorities, and strategic decisions.

Champion continuous operational improvement by evaluating emerging technologies, automation opportunities, and best practices that strengthen partnership implementation capabilities and support