Senior Director, Marketing Operations

Senior Director, Marketing Operations Santa Clara, California, United States of America Marketing Ref ID: JR-024508 Apply Current Employees, apply here

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks®, we’re united by a shared mission—to protect our digital way of life. We thrive at the intersection of innovation and impact, solving real-world problems with cutting-edge technology and bold thinking. Here, everyone has a voice, and every idea counts. If you’re ready to do the most meaningful work of your career alongside people who are just as passionate as you are, you’re in the right place.

Who We Are

In order to be the cybersecurity partner of choice, we must trailblaze the path and shape the future of our industry. This is something our employees work at each day and is defined by our values: Disruption, Collaboration, Execution, Integrity, and Inclusion. We weave AI into the fabric of everything we do and use it to augment the impact every individual can have. If you are passionate about solving real-world problems and ideating beside the best and the brightest, we invite you to join us!

We believe collaboration thrives in person. That’s why most of our teams work from the office full time, with flexibility when it’s needed. This model supports real-time problem-solving, stronger relationships, and the kind of precision that drives great outcomes. Job Summary

Our Mission At Palo Alto Networks®, everything starts and ends with our mission: Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life. We are a company built on the foundation of challenging and disrupting the way things are done, and we’re looking for innovators who are as committed to shaping the future of cybersecurity as we are. Our Approach to Work We operate in a dynamic, fast-paced environment that values innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement. We empower our teams to challenge the status quo, drive operational excellence, and pioneer cutting-edge solutions that transform enterprise technology and cybersecurity. Your Career As the Senior Director of Marketing Operations, you will lead a global team defining and running the operational backbone, technology strategy, and operating cadence for Global Marketing. Reporting directly to the SVP of Global Digital Marketing, you will bridge executive vision with scalable execution, driving the Marketing AI North Star Roadmap and co-owning the Joint Marketing–IT Roadmap to modernize enterprise MarTech architecture, data governance, and automated revenue workflows. Your Impact • AI North Star Roadmap: Define, prioritize, and execute Marketing’s long-term AI strategy, scaling generative, predictive, and agentic AI use cases across personalization, content orchestration, audience segmentation, and attribution.

• AI Operationalization & Governance: Transition AI from experimental pilots to production workflows while partnering with Legal, InfoSec, and Data teams to establish operational guidelines and data-privacy guardrails.
• Technology Modernization: Assess the enterprise MarTech landscape to eliminate redundancy, optimize TCO, and build a modern, adaptable architecture.
• Strategic IT Partnership: Serve as the primary Marketing Operations liaison to IT leadership, co-architecting and executing a unified Joint Marketing–IT Roadmap.
• Enterprise Infrastructure & Data Architecture: Ensure seamless integrations across marketing automation, CRM, CDP, BI tools, and product telemetry.
• System Integrity & Security: Establish enterprise-grade SLAs for pipeline-critical infrastructure and ensure strict regulatory compliance (GDPR, CCPA).
• Multi-Year Operational Blueprint: Translate high-level business goals into a prioritized operational plan across all global marketing regions.
• Cross-Functional Delivery: Lead transformations across Sales Ops, Product, Finance, IT, and Marketing.
• Change Management & Enablement: Drive change management to maximize adoption and ROI on new processes, platforms, and AI toolsets.
• Impact & Velocity Metrics: Track operational KPIs including pipeline velocity, conversion efficiency, and MarTech adoption; own MTA, MMM, and lead scoring strategies.
• Vendor Management: Own global vendor management, consolidation, and governance.
• Lead-to-Revenue Funnel Architecture: Architect and optimize the global lead-to-opportunity lifecycle to accelerate pipeline velocity.
• Automation at Scale: Direct marketing automation to power multi-touch nurture streams, dynamic segmentation, and automated routing.
• Data Hygiene & Enrichment: Establish operational processes for lead enrichment, deduplication, scoring, and lifecycle stage management.

Qualifications Your Experience

• 15+ years of experience leading Marketing Operations, Revenue Operations, Business Strategy, or MarTech Transformation within large-scale, global B2B SaaS or enterprise technology environments.
• Proven track record defining and operationalizing an enterprise AI roadmap, applying machine learning and generative/agentic tools to automate workflows and drive efficiency.
• Demonstrated success co-leading technical roadmaps alongside IT, Enterprise Architecture, and Engineering teams.
• Deep expertise in enterprise architectures, including Salesforce, Marketo/HubSpot, Snowflake, Segment/CDPs, BI tooling, and orchestration layers.
• Strong executive presence with experience advising and influencing C-suite leaders across highly matrixed organizations.
• Advanced financial and analytical acumen with direct ownership of multi-million-dollar budgets, headcount models, and vendor consolidation initiatives.
• Demonstrated ability to lead change, redesign legacy workflows, and drive operational improvement across global teams.
• Extensive experience recruiting, developing, and leading senior managers, technical architects, and program managers across distributed global teams.

The Team Our Marketing team has an opportunity like no other in any industry: high-impact work and the chance to change the future of digital security, globally. Your hands will be in industry-leading content created in the face of rapidly growing threats: cyberattacks. Being in marketing at Palo Alto Networks means that you will be in the midst of the changes affecting our industry and helping our internal teams, customers, and partners address the ever-changing threats we all face on a day-to-day basis.

Compensation Disclosure

The compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications, experience, and work location. For candidates who receive an offer at the posted level, the starting base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary + commission target (for sales/com-missioned roles) is expected to be the annual range listed below. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here (opens in new window).

$259,400.00 - $355,950.00/yr Our Commitment

We’re trailblazers that dream big, take risks, and challenge cybersecurity’s status quo. It’s simple: we can’t accomplish our mission without diverse teams innovating, together.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for all qualified individuals with a disability. If you require assistance or accommodation due to a disability or special need, please contact us at [email protected] (opens in new window).

Palo Alto Networks is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or other legally protected characteristics.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Is role eligible for Immigration Sponsorship? No. Please note that we will not sponsor applicants for work visas for this position.

Apply Current Employees, apply here