If your marketing team feels like a disorganized mess…If launches get delayed, balls keep getting dropped, and you’re still the one asking “where’s the update?”…
You don’t have a talent problem.
You have an ops problem.
More specifically, you’re missing the right Marketing Operations Lead.
Most founders and leaders know they need someone to “run ops”, but they don’t know what that role actually looks like, let alone how to hire for it.
This post breaks down the truth behind the role, what to look for (and avoid), and how to confidently hire someone who can drive execution without you micromanaging every detail.
What a Marketing Ops Lead Actually Does
Let’s clear this up first.
A real Marketing Operations Lead is not:
- A glorified task pusher
- A Slack babysitter
- Someone who just updates ClickUp or Asana
This role is the glue between your vision and execution.
Their job is to take vague, high-level goals like: “Let’s grow the podcast by 350 subscribers this month” and turn them into cross-functional campaigns that get executed on time, on budget, and without you chasing everyone down.
They don’t just manage people. They manage outcomes.
That means translating strategy into step-by-step tasks, coordinating across teams (design, dev, copy, media), optimizing talent on the team, and holding each department accountable without overwhelming them.
The 5 Non-Negotiable Traits to Look For
Forget resumes for a second. Here’s what you actually want:
1. Cross-Functional Fluency
They must understand how to speak every team’s language.
This means:
- Knowing what a designer needs to hear to start a homepage
- Understanding how copy fits into a funnel
- Communicating with devs about functionality and integrations
- Setting realistic expectations based on the actual work required
If they’ve never touched a landing page builder, written an email, or scoped a dev ticket… they’re going to bottleneck your team.
2. Execution Intelligence
This is different from “being organized.”
Execution intelligence is the ability to:
- Take a two-sentence brief and reverse-engineer the entire workflow
- Set dependencies, sequence work properly, and prevent team overwhelm
- Know when to templatize vs. when to customize
- See five steps ahead so nothing falls through the cracks
If they can’t build a roadmap from chaos, they’re not your person.
3. Relentless Follow-Through
This isn’t someone who waits for status updates, they create systems that surface them automatically.
Look for:
- People who pre-emptively follow up
- Ops leads who review overdue tasks before stand-ups
- Leaders who set expectations and create accountability (without being a micromanager)
Follow-through is the difference between shipped and slipped.
4. Systems Thinking
Ask yourself: can they see how one broken automation can impact a whole campaign?
You want someone who doesn’t just check if a task is “done” they ask:
- Was it done the right way?
- Did it connect to the next step?
- Did it create a new problem down the line?
They should understand automations, dependencies, communication workflows, and tool integrations and more importantly, when and why to use them.
5. Emotional Discipline Under Pressure
Marketing timelines move fast. Mistakes happen. People ghost. Things break.
This person cannot be someone who panics, flails, or emotionally offloads stress onto the team.
You’re looking for calm under pressure. Quiet confidence. Operational maturity.
7 Interview Questions to Reveal the Ops DNA
After the usual “tell me about yourself”. Ask questions that simulate the job.
- “Tell me about a time when you were given a very vague brief. What did you do next?”
→ Listen for: clarification steps, planning mindset, reverse engineering. - “How do you break down a marketing campaign into tasks?”
→ Bonus if they mention timelines, roles, dependencies, and cross-functional checkpoints. - “How do you avoid team overwhelm while keeping everyone accountable?”
→ Look for task visibility strategies and smart workload management. - “What tools have you used to manage execution? How did you customize them?”
→ You’re not just testing tool knowledge, you’re testing adaptability. - “What’s your system for following up on overdue tasks?”
→ They should already have a system. If they don’t, that’s a red flag. - “Give an example of a launch or project that nearly went off the rails. What did you do?”
→ Looking for cool-headed problem solving and leadership under fire. - “What’s your process after a campaign finishes?”
→ You want someone who talks about documentation, assets, retro, and optimization, not just moving on to the next task.
Red Flags That Should Make You Walk Away
- “I just follow what’s assigned to me” – Nope. You want proactive ownership, not passive execution.
- Over-indexes on templates – Templates are great, but ops leads must adapt to nuance. If they can’t think outside a checklist, they’ll break your business.
- Never worked with creative teams – Marketing ops is different from IT project management. If they’ve never worked across copy, design, dev, and media then they’ll struggle to lead.
- Doesn’t understand marketing timelines – If they can’t scope a funnel launch or estimate campaign deliverables, expect constant misalignment and missed deadlines.
How to Test Before You Hire
Don’t just interview, you also have to test.
Here’s a simple way to evaluate a candidate’s thinking:
Give them a real-world prompt: “You’ve been told: ‘We need to drive 500 webinar signups in 3 weeks.’”
Ask them:
- What questions would you ask first?
- How would you approach this?
- How would you set up the project?
- What roles would you assign?
- How would you keep it on track?
Look for how they structure information, how they plan cross-functionally, and how they think about risk, communication, and follow-through.
Bonus: Download the Free Hiring Checklist
We created a Marketing Ops Hiring Guide based on all the insights above. It includes:
- Key traits to rate during interviews
- Sample test project prompts
- Red flags to look out for
- Tools + systems cheat sheet
👉 Download it free inside the Visionary Vault →
Final Word
If you’re still drowning in campaign chaos, playing project babysitter, or jumping into Slack to put out fires…
You don’t need more people. You need the right one.
A true Marketing Operations Lead gives your team structure, speed, and sanity. They don’t just keep the trains running. They build the tracks.
And when you hire the right one?
Execution stops being your bottleneck and starts being your competitive edge.
Need help building under the role of a Marketing Ops Lead? Listen to the episode that inspired this post: How to Build Bulletproof Marketing Ops
Or dive into the Visionary Vault for more hiring tools, SOPs, and training.