Senior Manager of Marketing Programs & Portfolio Management, Confluent
$177-230k
Data streaming platform
Be an early applicant
Data streaming platform
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$177-230k
1001+ employees
Company mission
Founded by the team that built Apache Kafka, their mission is to make managing Kafka easy.
Role
Who you are
- The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in scaling program operations, developing governance frameworks, influencing senior stakeholders, and advancing organizational planning, policy, and execution maturity
- Bachelor’s degree plus 8-10+ years experience in marketing, operations, strategic planning, program management, or some combination
- Familiarity with modern marketing and sales technology stacks (SFDC, Tableau, Marketo, Asana)
- A self starter who is intellectually curious
- Strong interpersonal and team building skills; ability to work with a diverse team, influence/drive change across functional and business boundaries, and present to leadership
- Strong business acumen and demonstrated ability to link planning and process gaps, requirements, and desired outcomes to objectives and the defined work required; expert at cross-functional team management, coaching, and mentoring; ability to identify, mitigate, and/or escalate
- Maniacal about “process and planning design,” you’re obsessed with understanding how everything works and translating requests and business processes into insights-based frameworks and solutions
- Strong program and project and change management skills along with the ability to perform in a fast-paced and high-energy environment
What the job involves
- As the Senior Manager of Marketing Programs & Portfolio Management, you will shepherd how strategic initiatives are prioritized, governed, and executed across the Marketing organization
- You will collaborate closely with Marketing, Field, Product, Finance, and other stakeholders to operationalize both strategic and run-the-business programs, proactively surface risks and opportunities, and ensure clear communication and alignment across teams
- This leader navigates complex, abstract challenges, drives innovation, and ensures Marketing delivers effectively against company goals
- Establish standards, operating models, and governance frameworks for how Marketing and GTM initiatives are prioritized, reported, and optimized
- Develop and implement organizational policies and authorize their adoption across Marketing and GTM
- Design and operationalize KPIs, dashboards, and performance reporting to track program impact and inform executive decisions
- Identify and manage cross-functional risks, dependencies, and trade-offs across the Marketing and GTM portfolio; drive escalation, mitigation, and resolution with senior leadership
- Ensure program budgets, resources, and schedules meet corporate expectations
- Influence and guide leadership across functions, shaping priorities and promoting new ideas that improve execution and collaboration
- Participate in the development of enterprise-wide methods, evaluation criteria, and best practices for program and portfolio management
- Partner with the Head of Marketing Strategy & Operations to translate corporate priorities into an actionable Marketing plan through enterprise planning cadences
- Lead the Rhythm of Marketing operating cadence in partnership with the Director of Marketing Strategy & GTM Excellence to drive visibility, alignment, and execution
- Govern the evaluation and deployment of AI tools, workflows, and automation to optimize program tracking, risk identification, resourcing, and stakeholder communication
- Lead Marketing Project Managers in the prioritization and execution of cross-functional marketing programs aligned to Confluent’s strategic initiatives, including goal setting, planning, budget and resource management, progress tracking, risk mitigation, and stakeholder communication
- Drive transformation initiatives that evolve Marketing and GTM operating models, including change adoption, stakeholder enablement, communication strategy, and behavioral integration
- Work across functional areas to translate abstract and ambiguous business needs into clear program strategies, operating mechanisms, and execution plans
- Provide direction to leaders across teams and influence decision-making beyond immediate scope of ownership
- Build and scale the Marketing PMO function, including organizational design, operating rhythms, role definition, hiring strategy, and capability development
- Play an active role in or own headcount planning, workforce development, and staffing strategies for the PMO team
- Lead enablement across Marketing by building the frameworks, communications, and programs that drive alignment, adoption, and execution excellence
- Support the Head of Marketing Strategy & Operations by leading high-priority special projects and cross-functional initiatives
- Develop and uphold best practices, tools, and training that elevate program management maturity and drive consistency, accountability, and collaboration across Marketing and GTM teams
- Provide oversight and quality assurance of direct reports’ work; mentor and grow PM talent and cross-functional contributors
- Coach junior PMs and influence fellow Directors to drive adoption of new processes and improvements
- Set long-term vision for the function, building operational rigor around governance, knowledge management, and roles and responsibilities
- Shape departmental strategy, drive innovation, and influence leadership decisions that affect organizational direction and impact
Our take
Confluent is a commercial company built on top of the open-source Apache Kafka project. Confluent and Kafka have developed a streaming data technology that processes massive amounts of information in real-time.
The streaming database technology was developed at LinkedIn as a way of moving massive amounts of messages. The company decided to open-source that tech in 2011, and Confluent launched as the commercial arm in 2014.
While the base open-source component remains available for free download, it doesn’t include the additional tooling the company has built to make it easier for enterprises to use Kafka. Confluent's value add is in those additional tools, including a cloud version of the product and a marketplace for sharing extensions to the platform.
Confluent expanded strategic partnerships with Microsoft and acquired Immerok, and in 2023 expanded its cloud platform. 2024 saw further product expansions with the launch of the Confluent Migration Accelerator, all exemplifying how the company is living up to its name by rocket-boosting the benefits of Apache Kafka integration for companies.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Apr 2020
$250m
SERIES E
Jan 2019
$125m
SERIES D
Total funding: $455.9m
Company HQ
Mountain View, California
Leadership
Jay Kreps
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously a Principal Engineer at LinkedIn.
Neha Narkhede
(Co-Founder & Board Member)Previously a Lead Engineer at LinkedIn and Oracle. They are an Investor/advisor for Gem, Block Party, Material Security, Abacus AI, Cortex Data, Yugabyte, Metaphor Data, Natalist, Common Room, and more.
Jun Rao
(Co-Founder)Previously a Senior Engineer at LinkedIn. Has a PhD in Computer Science from Columbia University.
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