Sr. Associate Manager, Digital Customer Data and Engagement Solutions

YUM; Irvine (CA); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

YUM in Irvine, CA, seeks a Sr. Associate Manager, Digital Customer Data & Engagement Solutions to lead the data-to-activation lifecycle across CRM, loyalty, and personalization programs.

You will drive data readiness, activation patterns, and scalable architectures with cross-functional partners to deliver trusted customer experiences. The role requires hands-on engagement platform experience (Braze preferred), a strong CDP/data governance background, and the ability to translate complex data

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in customer data, marketing technology, CRM/lifecycle, digital solutions architecture, or related enterprise technology environments.
• Hands-on experience with customer engagement platforms (Braze preferred) and the ability to connect data, segmentation, orchestration, and channel execution.
• Strong working knowledge of CDP / customer data architecture, data modeling, SQL, data quality, event schemas, APIs / middleware, identity resolution, consent, and data governance.
• Experience designing or troubleshooting data flows across warehouse/CDP, activation platforms, and downstream measurement or decisioning environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead the solution approach for customer data used in CRM and digital engagement, including customer signals, attributes, events, audience inputs, identity mappings, consent, and downstream activation requirements.
• Own technical solution design for CRM, lifecycle, loyalty, personalization, and experimentation workflows across email, push, in-app, SMS, and offer constructs.
• Define reusable activation patterns, segmentation approaches, orchestration standards, QA/release controls, and implementation guardrails that improve consistency, quality, and speed to market.
• Mentor junior team members and raise the team's technical capability through playbooks, reusable patterns, documentation, and knowledge sharing.

Skills

Customer data

Marketing technology

CRM/Lifecycle

Digital solutions architecture

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business, Marketing, or a related field

Tools

Snowflake

Hightouch

Adobe Experience Platform

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Tealium

AWS

Redshift

Job description

We believe everyone deserves the right to Live Más – and we're constantly inspired by the creativity it takes to get there.

Sr. Associate Manager, Digital Customer Data and Engagement Solutions

Hybrid

About the Role

The Sr Associate Manager, Digital - Customer Data & Engagement Solutions is a senior individual contributor and technical leader within Customer Data & Solutions. The role owns the connection between customer data, identity, decisioning, and activation, turning complex data and engagement requirements into scalable, activation-ready solutions across CRM, lifecycle, loyalty, and personalization use cases.

This role is accountable for solution direction, data readiness, and activation patterns - not simply execution. The Sr Associate Manager partners across Data Engineering, Middleware, Analytics, Lifecycle, Loyalty, Product, and agency/platform partners to identify gaps early, establish repeatable patterns, and move work from ambiguous request to reliable production capability.

The Day-to-Day

Lead the solution approach for customer data used in CRM and digital engagement, including customer signals, attributes, events, audience inputs, identity mappings, consent, and downstream activation requirements.

Assess source-of-truth, data type, coverage, timeliness, grain, and one-to-one mapping before data is operationalized for activation, partnering with the appropriate data owners to validate assumptions.

Define repeatable activation patterns for moving trusted data through CDP/warehouse, Braze, and related platforms without creating unnecessary one-off implementations.

Proactively identify data quality, schema, identity, latency, and integration gaps and coordinate resolution with the appropriate owning teams, escalating when decisions or tradeoffs are required.

Engagement Solution Architecture & Enablement

Own technical solution design for CRM, lifecycle, loyalty, personalization, and experimentation workflows across email, push, in-app, SMS, and offer constructs.

Define reusable activation patterns, segmentation approaches, orchestration standards, QA/release controls, and implementation guardrails that improve consistency, quality, and speed to market.

Serve as a senior technical authority for how engagement solutions are designed and activated, balancing scalable architecture with practical delivery needs.

Guide complex or non-standard campaign designs and act as the escalation point for solution decisions that cross data, platform, and channel boundaries.

Data, Identity & Integrations

Partner with Data Engineering, Middleware, Analytics, and platform teams on APIs, webhooks, event schemas, data contracts, identity resolution, consent, and operational data flows.

Validate whether existing workflows and platform capabilities can support a requirement before recommending new pipelines, custom events, or net-new architecture.

Use data and technical analysis to diagnose issues, determine the appropriate owner, and distinguish activation work from deeper analytics or data-science needs.

BAU Enablement & Operating Model

Own or shape the CDS operating model for BAU activation, including intake, complexity triage, review triggers, QA/release readiness, launch validation, and post-launch learnings.

Create clear ownership and escalation paths across CDS, Lifecycle, Loyalty, Data, Analytics, Engineering, and agency/platform partners.

Continuously identify opportunities to simplify, automate, standardize, or shift work to the right operating team so CDS can scale without unnecessary manual effort.

Translate AI decisioning outputs, recommendations, scores, and dynamic content into activation-ready customer data and orchestration patterns.

Partner on Braze AI Decisioning and agentic workflows with appropriate controls, monitoring, human-in-the-loop review, and operational guardrails.

Prioritize AI and automation opportunities that build on stable data and reusable activation patterns rather than creating unnecessary bespoke complexity.

Cross-Functional Leadership

Lead through influence across Product Management, Data Engineering, Middleware, Analytics/BI, Lifecycle Marketing, Loyalty, Engineering, and agency/platform partners.

Bring forward recommendations, tradeoffs, risks, and decisions without waiting for every next step to be assigned.

Communicate complex data and architecture topics clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders and create durable documentation that enables others to operate independently.

Team Development & Capability Building

Mentor junior team members and raise the team's technical capability through playbooks, reusable patterns, documentation, and knowledge sharing.

Help establish standards that reduce dependency on individual knowledge and improve resilience when priorities, partners, or staffing change.

May manage 1-2 direct reports depending on team needs and operating model.

What Success Looks Like

Can independently take an ambiguous customer-data or engagement problem, clarify the requirement, identify the authoritative data source, assess feasibility, and recommend the right path forward.

Is recognized by xFN partners as a primary technical owner for defined customer data and engagement workstreams.

Builds reusable patterns and operating standards that reduce rework, manual review, and dependency on individual team members.

Raises risks early, proposes options, and moves work forward without requiring frequent manager intervention.

Creates clear data and solution documentation that allows CDS, agency, and partner teams to execute consistently.

Is This You?

8+ years of experience in customer data, marketing technology, CRM/lifecycle, digital solutions architecture, or related enterprise technology environments.

Hands-on experience with customer engagement platforms (Braze preferred) and the ability to connect data, segmentation, orchestration, and channel execution.

Strong working knowledge of CDP / customer data architecture, data modeling, SQL, data quality, event schemas, APIs / middleware, identity resolution, consent, and data governance.

Experience designing or troubleshooting data flows across warehouse/CDP, activation platforms, and downstream measurement or decisioning environments.

Ability to evaluate data readiness and feasibility, identify the appropriate owner, and distinguish scalable product/platform solutions from one-off implementations.

Experience supporting personalization, experimentation, AI decisioning, or automation workflows and translating outputs into activation-ready solutions.

Proven ability to independently lead multiple concurrent initiatives in a fast-paced, cross-functional enterprise environment.

Strong communication, influence, and documentation skills with the ability to simplify complex technical topics for business and technical audiences.

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science , Information Systems, Business, Marketing, or a related field (or equivalent experience).

Preferred Experience

Snowflake, Hightouch , Adobe Experience Platform, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Tealium, AWS, Redshift, or comparable CDP / customer data ecosystems.

Experience with loyalty, offer, or identity platforms and cross-system customer data integrations.

Experience establishing activation governance, QA frameworks, operating models, or reusable solution patterns in a complex enterprise environment.

Salary Range

$120,000 to $140,000 annually + bonus eligibility. This is the expected salary range for this position. Ultimately, in determining pay, we'll consider the successful candidate’s location, experience, and other job-related factors.