Manager, Marketing Automation and Operations

TITLE:  Manager, Marketing Automation & Operations DEPARTMENT:  Marketing REPORTS TO:  Senior Director, Lifecycle Marketing LEVEL:  Manager TYPE:  Full-Time Regular FLSA :  Exempt ROLE TYPE:  Individual Contributor OUR CLUBS   Seattle Sounders FC and Seattle Reign FC are united as one soccer family, driven by a shared commitment to excellence, growth, and impact on and off the pitch. Each club has independently forged a rich history of performance while connecting deeply with the community. Our clubs are continually pushing the boundaries of what's possible while fostering an inclusive culture- championing causes and building community connections to expand our reach and impact. Each match is an opportunity to bring together our community, celebrating our resilience, inclusivity, and a commitment to excellence. United in professional dedication- we are two clubs with one shared vision of progress and greatness.  POSITION SUMMARY   The Manager, Marketing Automation & Operations is the technical and strategic owner of the clubs' marketing automation platform within the Lifecycle Marketing team, accountable for platform architecture, configuration, governance, deliverability, and privacy compliance across email, SMS, mobile push, in-app messaging, and paid media audiences. This person joins as the clubs complete their transition away from Salesforce Marketing Cloud, supports the final cutover, and then builds the new platform into the foundation for Sounders FC and Reign FC. They build the lifecycle stage model, lead scoring, and cross-channel journeys inside the platform, turning the clubs' growth goals into always-on programs measured by the ticket, membership, and renewal revenue they drive. They partner closely with Business Intelligence (BI), which owns the clubs' data pipelines, integrations, and enterprise reporting, to define what data the platform needs, where engagement data goes, and how results are reported. Working with Lifecycle Marketing, Ticketing, Digital, IT, and other internal stakeholders, this role sets the standards that let marketers build and launch campaigns independently while protecting data integrity, brand control, and compliance across both clubs. ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES   Platform ownership and build-out Serve as the primary owner and administrator of the clubs' marketing automation platform (Braze, Customer.io, or similar) for Sounders FC and Reign FC, including workspace and project structure, user roles and permissions, data schema, API keys, and integration configuration. Own platform health and roadmap, including audits, troubleshooting, feature adoption, and management of the platform vendor and implementation partners. Partner with the migration lead, implementation partner, and platform vendor to complete the clubs’ move off Salesforce Marketing Cloud, including validating migrated audiences, journeys, and consent records during the parallel-run period before SFMC is retired. Then lead the build-out of the new platform. Standards, enablement, and compliance Set and enforce campaign production and governance standards across both brands, including segmentation, setup, QA, launch, naming conventions, permission management, audit trails, and the campaign calendar, and serve as the escalation point for complex or revenue-critical sends. Partner with Marketing Managers and the Lifecycle Marketing team to build and deliver highly targeted acquisition, retention, and member programs, and train and enable marketers on both teams to build campaigns independently, including effective and responsible use of the platform's AI and automation features, through platform documentation, onboarding, and certification paths. Own email deliverability for both clubs, including sending domain and IP strategy, separate sender reputations per club, domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI), IP warming, and ongoing monitoring and remediation. Serve as the subject matter expert for GDPR, CCPA, CAN-SPAM, and other applicable privacy regulations, owning compliance workflows, consent management, and suppression strategies across both clubs. Journeys, data, and lifecycle programs Design, build, and maintain complex 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 (BI), which owns the clubs' data pipelines, integrations, and reporting infrastructure, to define the platform's 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 for reporting. Own data quality within the platform and partner with BI to resolve upstream issues across sources such as Jump, Salesforce, Shopify, and Fanatics. Lead experimentation and optimization programs, including A/B and multivariate testing, holdout groups, and incrementality measurement, and translate results into insights and recommendations for Marketing Managers. Build and maintain the lifecycle stage model and lead scoring logic in the platform, as defined by Lifecycle Marketing in partnership with Ticketing, including MQL definitions, score decay, routing and writeback to Salesforce CRM, and suppression of fans in active sales conversations. Reporting, AI, and automation Own recurring weekly, monthly, and quarterly campaign and journey performance reporting that connects programs to ticket and membership revenue, renewals, and lifecycle stage movement, with views for each club and consolidated executive reporting. 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 in place, and evaluate technologies that integr