Marketing Planning Systems & Operations Lead

Key Responsibilities

Planning Systems Strategy & Platform Ownership

• Serve as business owner and subject matter expert for enterprise planning platforms, including Airtable, Workfront, and related planning technologies.

• Define and execute the roadmap for planning systems, ensuring capabilities evolve to support organizational priorities and operating model needs.

• Design, configure, and maintain workflows, data structures, taxonomies, automation, governance standards, and reporting capabilities.

• Evaluate and implement system enhancements that improve user experience, planning effectiveness, visibility, and operational efficiency.

• Partner with technology teams and vendors to support integrations, upgrades, and platform optimization initiatives.

• Lead adoption efforts through training, communication, documentation, and change management programs.

Planning Operations & Operating Model Design

• Design and maintain scalable planning processes that support decentralized planning while creating consistency across the organization.

• Establish standards for initiative tracking, planning data collection, portfolio monitoring, and operational governance.

• Translate business requirements into sustainable system and process designs that enable teams to plan effectively and efficiently.

• Continuously assess current-state processes and identify opportunities to reduce friction, improve transparency, and increase planning maturity.

• Partner with stakeholders across Marketing to ensure planning systems and processes support evolving business needs.

Portfolio Data & Visibility Management

• Serve as steward of the department's planning and portfolio dataset, ensuring information is structured, governed, and maintained to support organizational decision-making.

• Define and manage portfolio-level data requirements including strategic alignment, initiative attributes, dependencies, resource signals, work demand, and governance indicators.

• Develop dashboards, reporting solutions, and portfolio metrics that provide leadership visibility into priorities, workload, operational risks, capacity considerations, and portfolio health.

• Establish data quality standards and governance practices that ensure planning information remains accurate, actionable, and trusted.

• Leverage portfolio data to identify trends, opportunities, bottlenecks, and operational improvements.

Planning, Governance & Workflow Integration

• Design planning workflows that create visibility into upcoming work and downstream operational requirements.

• Partner with teams responsible for content governance, approval processes, and operational controls to ensure planning systems effectively support end-to-end workflow visibility.

• Create data structures and process integrations that allow governance requirements, operational dependencies, and workflow milestones to be visible earlier in the planning lifecycle.

• Support initiatives that improve forecasting of work demand, operational impacts, and potential approval requirements across the marketing portfolio.

• Enable proactive identification of portfolio risks and dependencies through reporting, process design, and system capabilities.

Strategic Enablement & Continuous Improvement

• Support annual, quarterly, and ongoing planning activities through platform administration, reporting, portfolio analysis, and operational enablement.

• Recommend improvements to systems, processes, governance structures, and planning methodologies.

• Lead cross-functional initiatives that strengthen Marketing's planning capabilities and operational effectiveness.

• Stay current on emerging planning technologies, portfolio management practices, and workflow innovations to continuously improve organizational capabilities.

• Lead special projects and perform other duties as assigned.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.

• 5+ years of experience in planning operations, business operations, marketing operations, project management, PMO operations, portfolio management, or related disciplines.

• Experience administering enterprise planning, project management, workflow, or portfolio management platforms.

• Experience designing and implementing operational processes and governance frameworks.

• Demonstrated ability to translate business requirements into scalable system and workflow solutions.

• Strong analytical skills and experience leveraging data to support business decisions and operational improvements.

• Experience managing complex initiatives involving multiple stakeholder groups.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Airtable, Workfront, Smartsheet, Asana, Jira, Monday.com, or similar platforms.

• Experience supporting planning, intake management, portfolio visibility, governance, workflow management, or operating model transformation initiatives.

• Experience leading platform implementations, migrations, or enterprise process redesign efforts.

• Experience building dashboards, reporting frameworks, and portfolio analytics solutions.

• Experience within marketing, content operations, creative operations, or large matrixed organizations.

Special Factors

Sponsorship

About Vanguard

At Vanguard, we don't just have a mission—we're on a mission.

To work for the long-term financial wellbeing of our clients. To lead through product and services that transform our clients' lives. To learn and develop our skills as individuals and as a team. From Malvern to Melbourne, our mission drives us forward and inspires us to be our best.

How We Work

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.