Associate Director, Audience Engagement and Systems

AAAS•Washington, DC

19h

About The Position

AAAS is advancing a strategic transformation in how it collects, integrates, and activates audience data across its digital properties — including Science.org, and associated membership and career platforms. This reflects a sustained organizational priority in response to AI-driven traffic erosion and the long-term need to build direct, durable relationships with the 60+ million annual visitors to AAAS digital properties. The Associate Director, Audience Engagement and Systems will serve as the internal operational anchor for this initiative — coordinating projects, supporting data operations, and providing institutional continuity as AAAS builds out its audience data capabilities. Building on advice and intelligence gathered from a MarTech consulting strategist, this role is designed to absorb strategic expertise over time and grow into a permanent senior voice for data-driven, revenue-generating audience development and utilization. While this position is located within Publishing and primarily supports publications-related revenue streams, it will have ongoing collaboration across IT, Membership, and other units at AAAS. It requires someone who is adept at navigating a matrixed environment and who sees cross-divisional alignment as part of the job, not an obstacle to it. Help us ignite the next era of science.

Requirements

8+ years of experience in marketing operations, marketing technology, or digital analytics, preferably in a media, publishing, or membership organization.
Hands-on experience with Salesforce Marketing Cloud or a comparable email marketing automation platform (journey builder, data extensions, segmentation).
Familiarity with web analytics platforms, preferably Adobe Analytics or Google Analytics, including configuration and reporting.
Demonstrated ability to manage data integration projects across multiple systems, including working with APIs, data exports, and cross-platform identity matching.
Experience with AI tools specifically those geared towards marketing and/or data processing.
Knowledge of how AI search agents interact with web properties.
Strong project coordination skills: comfortable managing multiple workstreams, maintaining documentation, and communicating status across technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Ability to translate between business objectives and technical requirements — comfortable in both a strategy meeting and a system configuration interface.
High comfort level with ambiguity and a track record of building structure in environments where processes are not yet fully defined.

Nice To Haves

Experience with content management or publishing platforms (Atypon, Adobe Experience Manager, or similar).
Familiarity with identity resolution concepts, customer data platforms (CDPs), or audience segmentation tools.
Experience working in a cross-divisional or matrixed organization where alignment across departments requires active facilitation.
Exposure to privacy compliance requirements (GDPR, ePrivacy) and their implications for marketing data practices.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Specialist or Marketing Cloud Consultant certification (or willingness to obtain within the first year).
Experience working alongside or managing external consultants or contractors.

Responsibilities

Support a contracted MarTech strategist in auditing the current use of Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC), Adobe Analytics, Atypon (audience targeting functionality and Engage pilot), and other tools against their capabilities.
Lead the end-to-end ownership of onboarding and implementation of action and improvement plans, ensuring alignment with evolving requirements and the effective adoption of new and emerging technology solutions.
Monitor platform health, data flows, and integration points between core systems (Auth0, Atypon, SFMC, Adobe Analytics, RAP data lake).
Document current-state configurations and maintain an up-to-date inventory of tool capabilities, integrations, and known gaps with the goal of recommending and pursuing configuration and integration updates, enhancements, and potential system additions to the current MarTech infrastructure.
Support identity data propagation by coordinating between IT, Publishing, and Marketing to track progress, surface blockers, and maintain project documentation.
Maintain and enforce data hygiene practices across marketing systems, including deduplication, field standardization, and contact record management in SFMC.
Support integration of myIDP registration data into the RAP data lake and SFMC, in coordination with IT and Science Careers stakeholders.
Assist in configuring and managing audience segments within Atypon Engage, including behavioral scoring, decay factor settings, and interest-based groupings.
Build and maintain audience segment lists and data extensions in SFMC for use in targeted email campaigns and journeys.
Support the design and deployment of personalization campaigns — including interest-based alerts, post-registration nurture journeys, and institutional user outreach.
Coordinate and support the creation of lead-generation landing pages and journeys, working with vendors/technical resources to get landing pages up and running, and making sure audience data from those is stored to be actionable.
Set and maintain the standards for email campaign deployment and metrics.
Document and establish methodology across audience systems such as SFMC.
Setup additional advanced capabilities for email campaigns and provide user training.
Act as a leader in the cross departmental data working group, serving as a consistent operational presence across Publishing, RDA, IT, and Membership conversations.
Maintain a shared data dictionary and internal documentation of data definitions, segment taxonomies, system integrations, and governance policies.
Help communicate capabilities of audience data infrastructure to business stakeholders across the organization, translating technical infrastructure into actionable use cases.
Support the governance review process for new tool acquisitions, ensuring IT sign-off and compatibility assessment are completed before new MarTech tools are onboarded.
Actively participate in structured knowledge transfer sessions with the contracted MarTech strategist, with the goal of internalizing strategic decision-making capability over the course of the engagement.
Pursue relevant coursework to gain knowledge on MarTech data activation structure and best practices, as well as specific skill development in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Adobe Analytics, and/or Atypon as part of a defined professional development plan.
Stay current on industry developments in audience data, privacy regulation (GDPR, ePrivacy), and publisher-specific MarTech practices.