Sr. Manager, Brand Operations

Realtor.com Careers•Austin, TX

15h•Hybrid

About The Position

Recognized as the No. 1 site trusted by real estate professionals, Realtor.com® has been at the forefront of online real estate for over 25 years, connecting buyers, sellers, and renters with trusted insights and expert guidance to find their perfect home. Through its robust suite of tools, Realtor.com® not only makes a significant impact on the real estate industry at large, but for consumers, navigating the biggest purchase they will make in their life, by providing a user experience that is easy to use, easy to understand, and most of all, easy to make decisions. Join us on our mission to empower more people to find their way home by breaking barriers to entry, making the right connections, and building confidence through expert guidance. Realtor.com® is looking for a Senior Manager, Brand Operations to lead the operating system for The Bureau -- our in-house brand and creative organization. This role exists to bring clarity, credibility, and control to how brand work moves from strategy to execution across a highly cross-functional environment. You will own and be empowered to enforce the processes, rhythms, and decision frameworks that make timelines real, commitments reliable, and creative work deliverable at scale -- while protecting teams from unnecessary complexity and last-minute chaos. You’ll partner closely with Creative Directors, Audience Directors, Brand Strategy leads, tactical marketing stakeholders, and external agencies to ensure work is well-briefed, well-resourced, and delivered with clarity and confidence. You’ll manage two senior individual contributors -- a Consumer Program Manager and a Client Program Manager -- and act as the connective tissue across brand, marketing, product, finance, and agency partners. This is a senior leadership role for someone who loves structure because it protects creativity -- not because it controls it.

Requirements

10+ years experience in brand operations, creative operations, marketing operations, or program management.
2 - 5 years direct management experience.
Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
Proven success building operational systems for in-house creative or brand teams (agency experience a plus).
Strong leadership presence with the ability to influence senior stakeholders without formal authority.
Comfort managing ambiguity, competing priorities, and high-visibility work.
Experience with project and workflow tools such as Asana, Airtable, Smartsheet, or similar.
Experience simplifying complex workflows -- including the use of AI-enabled tools -- to reduce manual work, protect timelines, and make cross-functional commitments reliable.
Financial fluency: budgets, forecasting, tradeoffs, and ROI thinking.
A leadership style that values clarity, trust, and calm execution.

Responsibilities

Brand & Creative Operations Leadership Own and evolve the operating model for The Bureau, spanning intake, briefing, prioritization, production, review, and delivery.
Translate brand strategy and business priorities into executable project plans across consumer and client workstreams.
Create governance that brings clarity to decision-making, approvals, and quality standards — without slowing teams down.
Serve as the operational “center of gravity” for leadership, ensuring continuity, documentation, and institutional knowledge.
Program & Resource Management Lead and coach the Consumer and Client Program Managers, setting clear expectations, escalation paths, and operating norms.
Oversee resource planning across internal teams and external agencies, balancing speed, quality, and capacity.
Own freelance and contractor resource management across the Bureau, partnering with team leaders to identify capacity needs and working closely with Legal, Procurement, and Finance to ensure onboarding, contracts, and invoicing are handled efficiently and compliantly.
Anticipate bottlenecks and proactively reallocate resources to protect creative integrity and delivery timelines.
Partner with Creative and Audience Directors to ensure priorities are aligned and realistic.
Tools, Systems & AI Enablement Own the creative operations tool stack (currently Asana), and evaluate opportunities to improve workflows through new platforms or integrations.
AI enablement is a core requirement of this role. You will be expected to identify, pilot, and operationalize AI-driven workflows that materially expand the team’s effective capacity — such as accelerating briefing and review cycles, improving production forecasting, automating operational reporting, or increasing asset reuse.
Build templates, dashboards, and reporting that create shared visibility across teams and stakeholders.
Partner with IT, Legal, and Security to ensure tools are enterprise-ready and compliant.
Financial & Operational Discipline Manage brand and creative operating budgets, including vendor spend and production costs.
Partner with Finance to forecast spend, track variance, and connect operational inputs to business outcomes.
Own agency, freelance, and external partner strategy — including capacity planning, SOW oversight, and renewal decisions — ensuring the right mix of internal and external resources to deliver high-quality work efficiently and on budget.
Bring data and calm judgment to tradeoff decisions when timelines, scope, or budgets collide.
Cross-Functional Partnership Act as a trusted partner to Marketing, Product, Communications, and Analytics teams.
Lead integrated planning moments that align creative output with media flighting, product launches, and seasonal priorities.
Represent The Bureau in broader planning, resourcing, and process discussions across the company.
Build strong relationships through credibility, clarity, and follow-through -- not bureaucracy.