Overview
You run the marketing operations function at Checkr, managing a team that handles performance analytics, marketing tech stack, and automation. You're working on scaling AI-driven workflows while keeping the day-to-day marketing engine running across SMB and Enterprise segments.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Marketing Operations Manager |
| Sales Motion | Supporting both inbound (marketing-driven) and outbound motions |
| Deal Complexity | Varies - SMB transactional to Enterprise consultative |
| Sales Cycle | N/A (enabling sales, not selling) |
| Deal Size | N/A (supporting pipeline generation) |
| Quota (est.) | Team OKRs around pipeline generation, conversion rates, automation efficiency |
Company Context
Stage: Late-stage (Series D+ or approaching public, given 1300+ employees and multiple business units)
Size: 1333 employees
Growth: Actively expanding RevOps team, launched new vertical (Truework for mortgage/financial services)
Market Position: Established player in background check space, competing against traditional providers and newer entrants
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Team Management (30%) | Strategic Projects (30%) | Partner Meetings (25%) | Systems/Data Work (15%)
Key Activities
- Managing your team: Weekly 1:1s with 3-5 direct reports covering performance analysts, marketing systems analysts, and tech stack owners. Reviewing their projects, unblocking issues, doing performance reviews.
- Marketing leadership partnership: Regular meetings with CMO/VP Marketing to translate their growth goals into operational plans. They want more pipeline from X segment, you figure out the automation, routing, and measurement.
- AI strategy execution: This is the buzzword-heavy part. Realistically, you're evaluating AI tools for lead scoring, content personalization, and chat workflows. Some will work, some won't. You're running pilots and measuring incrementally.
- Tech stack optimization: You own the Marketo-Salesforce integration, Demandbase (ABM), Qualified (chat), and whatever other tools marketing has bought. You're constantly troubleshooting sync issues, fixing attribution, and evaluating new vendors.
- Campaign infrastructure: Building the operational backbone for campaigns - lead routing rules, scoring models, nurture tracks. Marketing wants to launch something, you build the plumbing.
- Reporting and forecasting: Building dashboards for pipeline metrics, campaign performance, and funnel conversion. Monthly business reviews where you explain why numbers moved.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- "Zero tolerance for manual processes" is aspirational: You'll inherit plenty of manual workarounds and legacy processes. Automating everything takes time and often hits technical limitations or stakeholder resistance.
- Balancing strategic vs tactical: Marketing will pull you into urgent campaign launches while you're trying to build long-term AI infrastructure. The tactical always wins in the moment.
- Cross-functional politics: You're caught between Marketing (who wants speed), Sales (who complains about lead quality), and IT (who controls system access). Everyone thinks their priority should be yours.
- AI hype vs reality: Leadership wants AI magic. You're implementing incremental improvements in lead scoring and chatbot routing. Managing expectations is constant.
- Data quality issues: Your automation is only as good as your data. You'll spend more time than you'd like cleaning up duplicate records, fixing field mappings, and chasing teams to update their info.
What Success Looks Like
- Your team consistently delivers clean, actionable pipeline data that sales trusts
- Marketing can launch campaigns without you being the bottleneck
- You've eliminated 2-3 major manual processes and can prove time/cost savings
- Pipeline contribution from marketing increases quarter-over-quarter
- Your automation experiments (AI or otherwise) show measurable lift in conversion or velocity
Who You're Supporting
Direct Partners:
- VP/Director of Marketing - setting strategy, reporting results
- Marketing team members - campaign managers, demand gen, content
- Sales leadership - ensuring lead quality and routing
- RevOps peers - aligning on tech stack, data models, processes
What They Care About:
- Marketing cares about: More pipeline, faster campaign execution, better attribution
- Sales cares about: Lead quality, fast routing, accurate data in Salesforce
- Leadership cares about: Efficiency gains, ROI on marketing spend, AI innovation story
Requirements
- 8+ years in marketing operations, demand gen ops, or similar
- Experience managing a team (probably 2-3 years minimum)
- Deep knowledge of marketing automation platforms (Marketo strongly preferred here)
- Salesforce proficiency for managing integrations
- Experience with ABM platforms (Demandbase mentioned) and conversational marketing tools
- Track record of building automation and eliminating manual work
- Comfort with ambiguity - "zero tolerance for manual processes" suggests they have plenty to fix
- Ability to translate business goals into technical requirements
- Strong stakeholder management skills across Marketing, Sales, and IT