Principal Media Operations Manager
About The Position
Horizon Media is seeking a Manager, Principal Buying Operations & Process Transformation to strengthen the processes, systems, controls, reporting, and training that support Media Exchange (MX), its proprietary principal media buying model. The role partners across Media Investment, Operations, Billing, Accounts Payable, Client Finance, Technology, Application Support, and external platforms to translate business needs into practical workflows and system solutions. It supports business readiness, operational efficiency, and continuous process improvement across the MX ecosystem. The position owns workflow mapping and governance, billing and reconciliation process improvements, financial systems alignment, and systems enablement. It documents requirements and translates them into business and technical artifacts; coordinates testing, deployment, and production validation; investigates system and workflow issues; and develops training and change-management materials. The role also helps maintain controls, audit readiness, contract compliance, data integrity, and confidentiality.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Finance, Accounting, Information Systems, Communications, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
- 8–10 years of experience in business operations, media operations, agency finance, business analysis, process improvement, systems implementation, application support partnership, or business transformation.
- Strong process mapping, requirements documentation, workflow design, issue triage, root-cause analysis, and control-gap identification skills.
- Working knowledge of media investment operations, agency billing cycles, vendor accounts payable, reconciliation, and reporting workflows.
- Experience with Mediaocean/Prisma, FreeWheel/SBMS, DSPs, and/or ERP systems such as NetSuite.
- Experience creating SOPs, job aids, training materials, user communications, and onboarding support.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including meeting facilitation and explaining technical concepts to business stakeholders.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with principal buying, trade/barter models, or inventory arbitrage workflows.
- Hands-on involvement with NetSuite implementations, integrations, reporting remediation, or media platform migrations.
- Application support partnership experience.
- Lean, Six Sigma, Agile/Scrum, CBAP, or PMI-PBA certification.
Responsibilities
- Map and standardize MX workflows from deal ideation and client eligibility through trade execution, billing, reconciliation, and close.
- Identify bottlenecks, control gaps, and manual handoffs, and design scalable procedures to replace offline workarounds.
- Maintain safeguards for principal pricing, vendor costs, and commercial margin data across systems and reporting environments.
- Maintain SOPs, process flows, exception matrices, decision logs, and operating documentation.
- Analyze recurring billing variances, clearance discrepancies, and vendor payment issues; identify root causes and drive process improvements.
- Ensure buy structures, estimate setup, and system handoffs align with MX processes and NetSuite workflows.
- Partner with Client Finance, Billing, and Operations to investigate exceptions, document business requirements, and support workflow improvements.
- Support governance, audit-readiness, and contract-compliance controls.
- Identify opportunities to improve financial-process efficiency, reporting accuracy, and operational transparency across MX workflows.
- Gather and document business, operational, system, and reporting requirements from Investment, Finance, Billing, and leadership.
- Translate pain points into BRDs, user stories, process rules, acceptance criteria, and test scenarios.
- Partner with Technology, Application Support, and vendors to evaluate solution options, automation opportunities, and existing platform capabilities.
- Coordinate UAT, defect triage, retesting, business-readiness sign-off, deployment, production validation, pilots, and post-go-live stabilization.
- Work with Application Support, Technology, and vendors to investigate production issues, defects, reporting discrepancies, data variances, reconciliation exceptions, and workflow failures.
- Translate recurring issues into sustainable process, data, reporting, or system improvements, and maintain requirements traceability, change request logs, and decision registers.
- Develop training materials, job aids, user communications, and supporting documentation to promote readiness and adoption of new processes and system capabilities.
- Partner with stakeholders on change management for process improvements, system enhancements, and business transformation initiatives.
- Own process performance, issue coordination, documentation, and follow-through; collaborate across functions and drive continuous improvement.
Benefits
- Competitive total rewards package including a discretionary bonus.
- Health insurance coverage.
- Life and disability insurance.
- Retirement savings plans.
- Company-paid holidays.
- Unlimited paid time off (PTO).
- Mental health and wellness resources.
- Pet insurance.
- Childcare resources.
- Identity theft insurance.
- Fertility assistance programs.
- Fitness reimbursement.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
