Senior Manager – Ad Operations & Automation

About the Role

We are looking for a senior, deeply ops-literate leader to own the automation of our affiliate operations — deciding what to automate, designing how, and directing the build, so that our delivery capability scales without scaling manual effort.

This is not a traditional ad-ops delivery role. We have strong affiliate operations today; our goal is to make them increasingly automated and AI-driven. The critical need is ownership of direction — someone who understands affiliate/ad ops cold and can translate that knowledge into automated systems, freeing the team to focus on the high-judgment work automation can't replace.

The operations team stays in place. As automation absorbs repetitive work, the team moves up the value chain — toward edge cases, fragile integrations, quality, fraud, and partner problem-solving. Success is measured by capacity freed and redeployed, not headcount reduced.

What You'll Own

Automation Direction (the core of the role)

• Own the roadmap of what to automate, in what sequence, and how — based on deep understanding of where manual ops effort, risk, and fragility actually sit.
• Decide build-vs-buy; direct internal builders and/or tooling to design automated setup, tracking, integration, and reporting flows.
• Judge what is safe to automate vs. what requires human handling — sequencing to reduce risk, never breaking live delivery.

Knowledge Capture & Systematization

• Convert existing institutional ops knowledge — integration edge cases, network fragilities, tracking quirks, what breaks and why — into documented systems and automated logic.
• Build the SOPs and operational logic that make delivery resilient and decreasingly dependent on any single person.

Operational Excellence (steady-state)

• Ensure campaign setup, tracking, attribution, and delivery remain accurate and SLA-compliant throughout the transition.
• Oversee API integrations, postbacks, and attribution setups — automating these progressively.
• Maintain traffic quality, fraud prevention, and compliance standards.

Team Leadership & Capability Uplift

• Lead and develop the Ad Operations team, keeping it flat while raising what it's capable of.
• Redeploy freed capacity toward higher-value work as automation lands.
• Define KPIs around automation progress and operational quality.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with Product, Tech, and Publisher/Network teams to align automation with platform direction.
• Act as the escalation point for critical operational issues during the transition.

Key Success Metrics

• Manual effort automated / capacity freed (primary)
• Operational capability uplift — share of team time on high-value vs. repetitive work
• Campaign Delivery SLA maintained through transition
• Tracking & Integration accuracy
• Automation roadmap delivery (initiatives shipped)
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• Traffic quality / fraud / compliance standards

Preferred Experience

• 8–12 years in Ad Operations, Affiliate Marketing, or Performance Marketing — deep, hands-on affiliate/ad-ops knowledge is the non-negotiable floor.
• Experience with affiliate/performance platforms (Trackier, Affise, Impact, Tune/HasOffers, or similar) and MMP/attribution platforms (AppsFlyer, Adjust, Branch, Singular, or similar).
• Automation-capable: able to architect automated flows and direct builders/tooling — does not need to code, but must know what's feasible and how to design it.
• Demonstrated judgment in deciding what to automate vs. keep human, sequencing for low risk.
• Experience leading operations teams and raising their capability.