Sr Director of Strategic Operations, Marketing at Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 | Santa Clara, CA | $248K/yr – $343K/yr

Sr Director of Strategic Operations, Marketing

Santa Clara, CA (Hybrid)

$248K/yr – $343K/yrSenior Level15+ years expContract

Posted 4 months ago

Job Summary

Drive multi-year global marketing transformation with accountable program delivery, executive-facing leadership, and data-driven decision-making to optimize ROI.

Own the multi-year marketing roadmap and end-to-end programs.
Must-have: 15+ years leading digital marketing/marketing operations in global SaaS.
Standout: Executive presence influencing a multi-billion-dollar matrixed organization.

Job Description

Responsibilities

Strategic Roadmapping & Program Delivery: Multi-Year Vision: Partner with Marketing leadership to translate business objectives into a multi-year operational roadmap. Prioritize initiatives and run functional workstreams to achieve global goals.
End-to-End Orchestration: Lead large-scale strategic programs from inception to launch, owning the requirements, stakeholder management, customer journey planning and cross-functional delivery.
Change Management: Drive the adoption of new tools, marketing workflows and processes across global marketing teams. Develop communication plans and training strategies to ensure high adoption and ROI on technology investments and new processes.
Own KPI & Performance Tracking: Define and monitor metrics for program success, such as pipeline influence, lead velocity improvement, and AI adoption. Keep teams accountable to the goals.
Marketing Operations & Automation: Lead Flow & Lifecycle: Architect and manage the end-to-end lead flow operations. Identify and resolve bottlenecks in the digital marketing lifecycle to improve lead velocity and pipeline influence.
Marketing Automation: Own the global marketing automation strategy, ensuring high ROI on technology investments through rigorous adoption and repeatable delivery frameworks.
System Integrity: Monitor system uptime for digital properties and ensure enterprise-grade stability across the MarTech stack.
Financial & Operational Excellence: Budget & Headcount Governance: Strategically oversee the global budget and headcount planning. Lead cost-saving initiatives by auditing contracts and implementing spending guardrails. Own vendor consolidation and meticulous spend management processes that assures all budget spent has measurable ROI.
Rhythm of the Business: Run the operational pulse of the team, including MBRs, QBRs, OKR setting, All Hands, and annual planning cycles. Ensure meetings are productive and action-oriented.
Executive Communications: Draft high-impact presentations and memos for the digital marketing Exec team distilling complex data into clear, compelling narratives for executive consumption.

Requirements

15+ Years of Leadership: Deep experience in Digital Marketing, Marketing Operations, Business Strategy, transformation and change management within a global enterprise technology (SaaS) company.
Executive Presence: Proven track record of supporting C-suite leaders and influencing stakeholders across a multi-billion dollar matrixed organization.
Data-Driven Architect: Expert-level ability to turn complex data into strategic insights; deep experience with program management, marketing automation and analytics.
Financial Acumen: Strong experience in budget management, headcount planning, and financial modeling. Ability to perform rigorous ROI analysis on global spend.
Change Agent: Proven capability to lead large-scale organizational transformations with a strong bias toward iterative and AI driven processes (experimentation, testing, and scaling).
Strategic Problem Solver: A proactive mindset—identifying issues before they reach the SVP’s desk and presenting them alongside potential solutions.
Integrity: Absolute integrity and the ability to handle sensitive information regarding organizational changes and performance.
Trust Builder: Ability to build deep relationships across the company and influence senior leaders without having direct authority over them.
Data Driven: Comfortable navigating BI dashboards (Tableau, Adobe Analytics) to extract insights that drive strategic pivots. Expert-level ability to turn complex data into strategic insights; Deep GTM Knowledge: Comprehensive understanding of SaaS business models, modern brand and demand generation, Digital Marketing, and the complexities of global enterprise marketing.

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 brings together world-renowned threat researchers with an elite team of incident responders and security consultants to create an intelligence-driven, response-ready organization passionate about helping customers more proactively manage cyber risk. With a deeply rooted reputation for delivering world-class threat intelligence, Unit 42 provides industry-leading incident response and cyber risk management services to security leaders around the globe.

Founded in 2005

Santa Clara, California, USA

498 employees (11 in marketing)

paloaltonetworks.com/unit42