Director, Campaign Operations (Remote) US

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.
• Experience translating business and marketer requirements into technology, process, workflow, or automation solutions.
• Demonstrated experience improving operational efficiency, cam