Building a Marketing Operations Team: Roles & Responsibilities

I once talked to a founder who spent $80,000 on marketing tools in a single year. When I asked who managed them, she said, "Well, our marketing manager logs in when something breaks."

That's the moment I realized most growing companies face the same problem. They collect tools like baseball cards, but nobody's actually running the system. Building a marketing operations team isn't about hiring people to babysit software. It's about creating a crew that turns your marketing chaos into a revenue-generating engine.

Let me show you how to build a team that actually works.

What a Marketing Operations Team Actually Does

Before we talk about roles, let's get clear on what marketing operations really means.

Think of your marketing operations team as the invisible backbone of everything marketing does. They're not creating ads or writing blog posts. They're making sure the people who do those things have clean data, working systems, and clear insights about what's actually driving results.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

They manage your technology stack. Someone needs to make sure your email platform talks to your CRM, your website captures leads correctly, and your analytics tools actually track the right things.

They keep your data clean. Bad data kills good marketing. Your marketing operations team ensures contact information stays accurate, duplicates get merged, and everyone works from the same source of truth.

They build and optimize processes. From lead routing to campaign workflows to reporting cycles, marketing operations creates the systems that let your team scale without breaking.

They provide insights and reporting. They translate data into stories that help your marketing and sales teams make better decisions.

The best marketing operations teams don't just maintain systems. They spot patterns before anyone else sees them. They notice when a campaign type consistently outperforms others. They identify bottlenecks before they slow down revenue. They connect dots across your entire customer journey.

Core Marketing Operations Team Roles

Let's break down the actual positions you need, starting small and scaling up. I'm going to give you practical definitions, not corporate job descriptions.

Marketing Operations Coordinator

What they do: This is your foundation role. The coordinator handles day-to-day execution.

They build email campaigns, create landing pages, upload lists, clean data, and generate basic reports. They're hands-on with your tools every single day.

When to hire them: This should be your first marketing operations hire. If your marketing team is spending more than 10 hours a week on "technical stuff" instead of strategy and content, you need a coordinator.

Skills to look for:

• Comfortable learning new software quickly
• Detail-oriented with data entry and list management
• Basic understanding of marketing metrics
• Can follow processes and spot when something's broken

Real-world insight: Your best coordinators often come from customer service or project management backgrounds. They understand workflows and aren't afraid of repetitive tasks that need precision.

Marketing Operations Manager

What they do: The manager designs the systems that coordinators execute.

They own your marketing technology decisions. They build your lead scoring models. They create the workflows that route leads to sales. They set up dashboards and train the marketing team on processes.

When to hire them: When you have multiple marketing channels running simultaneously and your coordinator is maxed out, or when you're ready to implement sophisticated automation and attribution.

Skills to look for:

• Deep knowledge of at least one major marketing automation platform
• Understanding of data architecture and integrations
• Project management skills to coordinate across teams
• Ability to translate business goals into technical requirements

Real-world insight: The best managers think like both marketers and engineers. They understand buyer psychology but can also diagram data flows. Look for someone who asks "why" before they ask "how."

Marketing Operations Analyst

What they do: The analyst turns your data into decisions.

They build custom reports, create attribution models, analyze campaign performance, identify trends, and provide recommendations backed by data.

When to hire them: When leadership keeps asking questions like "which channels actually drive revenue?" or "why did this campaign work?" and nobody has time to dig deep.

Skills to look for:

• Strong with Excel, Google Sheets, or data visualization tools
• Statistical thinking and pattern recognition
• Ability to tell stories with numbers
• Curiosity about why metrics move

Real-world insight: Don't confuse activity with insight. The analyst who shows you 50 charts isn't as valuable as the one who shows you three charts that change your strategy.

Marketing Operations Director

What they do: The director connects marketing operations to business strategy.

They align marketing operations with sales and revenue goals. They evaluate and negotiate with vendors. They build the roadmap for marketing technology investments. They lead cross-functional projects that touch multiple departments.

When to hire them: When marketing operations becomes strategic, not just tactical. Usually when your marketing team exceeds 15 people or when marketing technology spend exceeds $150,000 annually.

Skills to look for:

• Strategic thinking and business acumen
• Vendor negotiation and budget management
• Cross-functional leadership without direct authority
• Ability to translate technical complexity into executive-friendly language

Real-world insight: The best directors spend more time in meetings with sales, product, and finance than they do inside marketing tools. They're bridge-builders.

Marketing Automation Specialist

What they do: This specialist focuses exclusively on building and optimizing automated campaigns.

They create nurture sequences, set up behavioral triggers, design lead scoring systems, and constantly test and improve conversion rates within your automation platform.

When to hire them: When automation becomes complex enough that it needs dedicated attention. Usually after you have 10+ active nurture tracks or sophisticated multi-touch attribution.

Skills to look for:

• Expert-level knowledge of your specific automation platform
• Understanding of customer journey mapping
• A/B testing methodology and optimization mindset
• Balance between technical capability and marketing intuition

Real-world insight: The best automation specialists prototype campaigns manually first. They map out customer journeys on whiteboards, test messages with small groups, and only automate what's already proven to work.

How to Size Your Marketing Operations Team

Here's a framework based on company stage and marketing complexity:

Startup Stage (0-50 employees)

Team size: 0-1 person

Structure: You likely don't need a dedicated marketing operations person yet. Your marketing manager or growth lead can handle basic automation and reporting.

When to hire: Once you exceed 5,000 contacts in your database or run more than 5 active marketing programs simultaneously.

Growth Stage (50-200 employees)

Team size: 1-3 people

Structure: Start with a Marketing Operations Coordinator or Manager (depending on complexity). Add a second person when the first is at 80% capacity.

Typical setup:

• One Manager handling strategy, systems, and vendor relationships
• One Coordinator executing campaigns and maintaining data

Focus: Building foundational processes and keeping systems running smoothly.

Scale Stage (200-1000 employees)

Team size: 3-7 people

Structure: Formal team with specialized roles.

Typical setup:

• One Director setting strategy
• One Manager overseeing execution
• One Analyst focused on insights
• One Automation Specialist building sophisticated programs
• One or more Coordinators handling day-to-day execution

Focus: Optimization, attribution, and cross-functional coordination.

Enterprise Stage (1000+ employees)

Team size: 7-15+ people

Structure: Sub-teams organized by function or geography.

Typical setup:

• Senior Director or VP leading the function
• Separate pods for automation, analytics, and technology management
• Dedicated coordinators for different business units or regions
• Specialists for integration, data governance, and compliance

Focus: Governance, standardization, and advanced analytics.

Alternative Team Structure: The Pod Approach

Here's a different way to think about marketing operations team structure that works especially well for companies that value flexibility over hierarchy.

Instead of stacking people in a traditional pyramid, organize your marketing operations team into small, cross-functional pods. Each pod includes someone who builds, someone who analyzes, and someone who coordinates.

Example Pod Setup:

Campaign Pod: Focuses on campaign execution, automation, and performance

• One automation builder
• One analyst tracking results
• One coordinator managing execution

Technology Pod: Focuses on integrations, data flow, and system health

• One technical integrator
• One data quality analyst
• One project coordinator

Insights Pod: Focuses on reporting, attribution, and strategic recommendations

• One senior analyst
• One data visualization specialist
• One coordinator gathering requirements

Each pod operates with significant independence but syncs regularly with other pods and with broader marketing and sales teams.

Why this works: Pods respond faster to changing priorities. They develop deep expertise in their focus area. Team members learn multiple skills from each other. You avoid bottlenecks where everything waits for one manager's approval.

When to use this approach: When your company culture values autonomy and experimentation. When you have at least 6 marketing operations people. When your marketing programs are diverse enough to benefit from specialized focus.

Essential Skills Across All Marketing Operations Roles

No matter which roles you hire, look for these fundamental skills in every marketing operations team member:

Technical Comfort

Your marketing operations team lives inside software. They need to learn new tools quickly, troubleshoot when things break, and figure out solutions without constant hand-holding.

This doesn't mean they need coding skills (though that helps). It means they're not intimidated by technology.

Systems Thinking

Marketing operations is about seeing how pieces connect. The best team members naturally think in flows, processes, and dependencies. They ask questions like "what happens next?" and "where else does this touch?"

Detail Orientation With Speed

Yes, marketing operations requires precision. But it also requires momentum. You need people who work accurately without getting paralyzed by perfectionism.

Communication Skills

Marketing operations sits between marketing, sales, technology, and leadership. Your team needs to translate technical concepts for non-technical people and business requirements for technical people.

Problem-Solving Mindset

Things break. Data gets messy. Integrations fail. The best marketing operations people treat problems as puzzles to solve, not crises to panic about.

Business Curiosity

The difference between a good marketing operations team and a great one is curiosity about the business. Great teams ask why campaigns matter, how sales uses the data, and what leadership cares about.

How to Hire Your First Marketing Operations Person

If you're building a marketing operations team from scratch, here's my practical advice:

Start with a generalist, not a specialist. Your first hire needs to do everything. Look for someone with broad exposure to marketing tools, data management, and campaign execution rather than deep expertise in one platform.

Hire for potential, not perfection. Marketing technology changes constantly. Someone who learned two platforms well can learn a third. Focus on learning ability and adaptability.

Test practical skills. During interviews, give candidates a real scenario. Show them messy data and ask how they'd clean it. Describe a broken integration and ask how they'd troubleshoot. Watch how they think, not just what they know.

Look for cross-functional experience. The best marketing operations people have worked closely with sales, product, or customer success. They understand business context, not just marketing tactics.

Value teaching ability. Your marketing operations team will train everyone else on processes and tools. In the interview, ask them to explain something technical in simple terms. If they can't teach, they'll create bottlenecks.

Where Marketing Operations Reports

This is a surprisingly important decision that affects how your marketing operations team functions.

Reporting to the CMO or VP of Marketing:

This is the most common structure. Marketing operations is seen as a support function for the marketing team.

Pros: Direct alignment with marketing priorities. Faster decision-making on marketing tools and processes.

Cons: Can create silos between marketing and sales operations. Harder to optimize across the full customer journey.

Reporting to Revenue Operations or a CRO:

This structure treats marketing operations as part of a unified revenue engine alongside sales operations and customer success operations.

Pros: Better alignment across the customer journey. Shared data standards. Easier to track revenue attribution across teams.

Cons: Marketing operations might spend more time serving sales priorities than marketing innovation.

Reporting to Operations or IT:

Less common but works for some companies, especially those where technology infrastructure is critical.

Pros: Strong technical support and integration capabilities. Consistent data governance.

Cons: Can become too technical and lose connection to marketing strategy.

My recommendation: For most growing companies, marketing operations should report into marketing until the team exceeds 50 people. At that point, consider a unified revenue operations structure if you want tight alignment between marketing and sales.

Common Mistakes When Building Marketing Operations Teams

Let me save you from the mistakes I see repeatedly:

Hiring too senior too early. A startup doesn't need a Director. They need someone willing to build campaigns and clean data. Save senior hires for when you have real complexity.

Hiring only for tools, not thinking. Someone who knows Marketo inside-out but can't think strategically will just execute bad ideas faster. Look for problem-solvers first, tool experts second.

Skipping the coordinator role. Too many companies try to hire a manager first and wonder why that person gets buried in execution. Coordinators free up managers to think strategically.

Building before you have volume. If you have 500 contacts and two marketing programs, you don't need a three-person marketing operations team. Start small and scale as complexity grows.

Isolating marketing operations from the business. Marketing operations can't work in a vacuum. If your team doesn't regularly talk to sales, product, and leadership, they'll build systems nobody wants.

Measuring activity instead of outcomes. Don't judge your marketing operations team by how many workflows they built or reports they generated. Judge them by whether marketing drives more revenue with less friction.

How to Work With Your Marketing Operations Team

If you're a marketing leader managing a marketing operations team, here's how to set them up for success:

Give them context, not just tasks. Don't just say "build this workflow." Explain why it matters, what business problem it solves, and how you'll measure success.

Protect their time for strategic work. Marketing operations can easily become a ticket-taking team drowning in requests. Block time for them to analyze, optimize, and think ahead.

Include them in planning early. Don't design a campaign and then ask marketing operations to "make it work" in the tools. Involve them when you're still deciding what to do.

Let them say no to bad tools. Your marketing operations team sees the full technology stack. When they recommend against adding another tool, listen. They're seeing complexity you're not.

Celebrate invisible wins. Marketing operations rarely gets credit when things work smoothly. Acknowledge when data flows correctly, when processes prevent problems, and when insights change strategy.

The Future of Marketing Operations Teams

Here's what I'm watching as marketing operations team structure evolves:

Smaller, more flexible teams. As tools get easier to use and automation becomes more accessible, companies will need fewer people managing technology and more people thinking strategically about growth patterns.

Blurred lines between marketing and sales operations. Revenue operations is becoming the standard. Marketing operations teams will increasingly share team members, data standards, and goals with sales operations.

More emphasis on data storytelling. Basic reporting is being automated. The human value in marketing operations is shifting toward interpretation, pattern recognition, and strategic recommendations.

Cross-functional pods replacing hierarchies. Traditional org charts are giving way to fluid teams that form around projects, solve problems, then reorganize. Marketing operations will lead this shift because they already work across functions.

Integration specialists becoming critical. As marketing stacks grow more complex, the ability to connect systems and ensure data flows correctly becomes more valuable than knowing any single platform deeply.

Getting Started: Your 90-Day Plan

If you're building a marketing operations team right now, here's what to do in your first three months:

Month 1: Audit and stabilize

• Document every marketing tool you use
• Identify what's broken or poorly configured
• Map your current processes (even if they're messy)
• Get one quick win to build credibility

Month 2: Build foundations

• Establish data standards and cleanup processes
• Create basic reporting dashboards
• Document and train the team on core workflows
• Set up regular syncs with sales and leadership

Month 3: Optimize and scale

• Identify your biggest bottleneck and fix it
• Start testing improvements to one major campaign or process
• Build a 6-month roadmap for technology and process improvements
• Establish metrics for how marketing operations adds value

How House of MarTech Can Help You Build Your Marketing Operations Team

Building a marketing operations team isn't just about filling positions. It's about creating a structure that drives revenue with clarity and efficiency.

At House of MarTech, we help companies at every stage design, hire, and optimize their marketing operations teams. Whether you need help defining roles, evaluating candidates, setting up processes, or training your new team, we provide strategic guidance grounded in real-world experience.

We don't sell you a cookie-cutter org chart. We build a marketing operations strategy that fits your business model, growth stage, and culture.

Ready to build a marketing operations team that actually moves your business forward? Let's talk about what that looks like for you.