Manager, Marketing Automation and Operations

Seattle Sounders FC•Renton, WA

6d•Onsite

About The Position

The Manager, Marketing Automation & Operations is the technical and strategic owner of the marketing automation platform for Seattle Sounders FC and Seattle Reign FC. Within the Lifecycle Marketing team, this individual is responsible for platform architecture, configuration, governance, deliverability, and privacy compliance across email, SMS, mobile push, in-app messaging, and paid media audiences. The role supports the final transition from Salesforce Marketing Cloud and leads the subsequent build-out of the new platform as a foundation for both clubs’ marketing programs. The position develops lifecycle stage models, lead scoring, and cross-channel journeys that support growth goals and drive ticket, membership, and renewal revenue. It partners with Business Intelligence, which owns data pipelines, integrations, and enterprise reporting, to define platform data needs, engagement data flows, and reporting. Working with Lifecycle Marketing, Ticketing, Digital, IT, and other stakeholders, the manager establishes standards that enable independent campaign execution while protecting data integrity, brand control, and compliance across both clubs. This is an individual-contributor, full-time, exempt role reporting to the Senior Director, Lifecycle Marketing. It is based on-site at the Headquarters & Training Facility in Renton, Washington, Monday through Thursday, with flexibility on Fridays and periodically as needed. Evening, weekend, and holiday work is periodically required, potentially including match support. The employee must reside in Washington state by the date of hire, facilitate their own local travel, and be eligible to work in the United States without sponsorship.

Requirements

At least 5 years of experience in marketing operations and automation, including at least 3 years administering a marketing automation platform.
Experience integrating a marketing automation platform with a CRM, including lead management, lead scoring, and bi-directional data synchronization.
Hands-on email deliverability experience, including domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and IP warming.
Experience running automation for two brands in one instance.
A track record of running marketing operations work through AI agents and automation, with context, review steps, and data guardrails to do so safely.
No specific degree is required; the organization prioritizes experience and judgment over credentials.
Must reside within Washington state upon date of hire.
Must be able to facilitate own local travel.
Must be eligible to work in the United States without sponsorship.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Salesforce CRM.
Experience with lifecycle models and audience segmentation inside a marketing automation platform.
Experience with Customer.io, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, or Braze.
Experience with customer data platforms such as Amperity.
Experience with email testing tools, Google Analytics, and BI tools such as Tableau.
Experience in sports or live events.

Responsibilities

Own and administer the clubs’ marketing automation platform, including workspace and project structure, user roles and permissions, data schema, API keys, and integration configuration.
Manage platform health and roadmap through audits, troubleshooting, feature adoption, and vendor and implementation-partner management.
Support the final Salesforce Marketing Cloud migration, validate migrated audiences, journeys, and consent records during the parallel-run period, and lead post-launch platform build-out.
Set and enforce campaign production and governance standards across both clubs, covering segmentation, campaign setup, QA, launch, naming conventions, permissions, audit trails, and the campaign calendar.
Serve as the escalation point for complex or revenue-critical sends.
Partner with Marketing Managers and Lifecycle Marketing to build targeted acquisition, retention, and member programs; train and enable marketers through documentation, onboarding, and certification paths, including responsible use of AI and automation features.
Own email deliverability, including sending-domain and IP strategy, separate sender reputations per club, SPF/DKIM/DMARC/BIMI authentication, IP warming, monitoring, and remediation.
Own privacy-compliance workflows, consent management, and suppression strategies for GDPR, CCPA, CAN-SPAM, and other applicable regulations.
Design, build, and maintain cross-channel journeys across email, SMS, mobile push, in-app messaging, and paid media audiences, including frequency and suppression rules coordinated with the Braze instance bundled with Jump for ticketing messages.
Partner with Business Intelligence to define platform data requirements, including the Amperity fan ID as the primary profile key, event and attribute schemas, inbound data feeds, and engagement data returned to the data warehouse.
Own data quality within the platform and work with Business Intelligence to resolve upstream issues involving sources such as Jump, Salesforce, Shopify, and Fanatics.
Lead experimentation and optimization, including A/B and multivariate tests, holdout groups, and incrementality measurement; translate results into recommendations for Marketing Managers.
Build and maintain the platform lifecycle stage model and lead-scoring logic as defined by Lifecycle Marketing with Ticketing, including MQL definitions, score decay, routing and writeback to Salesforce CRM, and suppression of fans in active sales conversations.
Produce recurring weekly, monthly, and quarterly campaign and journey performance reporting connecting programs to ticket and membership revenue, renewals, and lifecycle-stage movement, with club-specific and consolidated executive views.
Configure, govern, and measure AI and machine-learning features such as send-time optimization, predictive scoring, and generative copy assistance, with brand guardrails and human approval.
Evaluate technologies that integrate with the platform to identify automation opportunities and reduce tool overlap.
Use AI agents for routine campaign production, maintain the context they rely on, and review their output before it reaches fans.

Benefits

100% employer-sponsored medical, dental, and vision premiums for employees and dependents.
Employer contributions to a Health Savings Account for employees enrolled in the HSA healthcare plan: $1,000 annually for employee-only coverage and $2,000 for spouse or family coverage.
Unlimited paid vacation, paid company holidays, and paid sick leave in compliance with Seattle’s Paid Sick and Safe Time ordinance.
Paid bereavement leave and paid jury duty leave.
401(k) retirement plan matching.
A $10,000 lifetime maximum fertility benefit through the healthcare plan, including coverage for infertility treatment, IVF, IUI, embryo transfer, fertility preservation, and related medications.
Gender-neutral parental leave providing 12–16 weeks of paid leave, inclusive of Washington Paid Family & Medical Leave.
Employer-paid long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance, and accidental death and dismemberment coverage.
Complimentary match tickets.
Employer-funded ORCA cards for public transit.
Learning and development programs and resources.
Volunteer opportunities aligned with social impact goals and RAVE Foundation initiatives.