Marketing Strategy Lead

Overview

Senior individual contributor on Zendesk's Marketing Strategy & Operations team, translating marketing strategy into clear priorities, scalable operating plans, and measurable execution.

What you'll do

• Partner with Marketing leaders to translate strategy into annual and quarterly priorities, operating plans, milestones, dependencies, and measurable outcomes.
• Drive planning and business-management processes, including target setting, forecasting, pipeline pacing, budget and resource discussions, and executive business reviews.
• Create clarity across cross-functional initiatives by defining ownership, decision rights, workstreams, risks, dependencies, and communication cadences.
• Develop operating frameworks, templates, playbooks, and mechanisms that improve prioritization, accountability, visibility, and execution quality.
• Analyze business and marketing performance to identify implications, surface trade-offs, and recommend actions to improve growth and operational effectiveness.
• Partner with Marketing Operations, Analytics, Finance, Sales/Revenue Operations, Product, and regional teams to connect plans and ensure coordinated execution.
• Facilitate working sessions and leadership discussions that turn ambiguity into decisions, aligned action, and documented follow-through.
• Identify opportunities to simplify processes, automate recurring work, and improve the way Marketing makes and executes decisions.

What you'll need

• A structured thinker who can bring order to complex, cross-functional work without creating unnecessary process.
• Strong business judgment and comfort balancing strategic priorities, operational realities, and measurable outcomes.
• Excellent communication and facilitation skills, including the ability to influence without formal authority.
• A bias toward clarity and action: you define the decision, the owner, the next step, and the measure of success.
• Analytical fluency and the ability to use data to challenge assumptions, frame trade-offs, and support recommendations.
• A collaborative, low-ego working style and a genuine interest in making teams more effective.
• 8+ years of experience in marketing strategy, business operations, marketing operations, consulting, finance, or a related discipline.
• Proven experience leading planning, forecasting, business reviews, operating rhythms, or cross-functional strategic initiatives.
• Strong analytical and financial modeling skills, with the ability to connect marketing activity to pipeline, revenue, and resource decisions.
• Experience building executive-ready narratives, recommendations, and operating materials from complex inputs.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple priorities, drive alignment, and deliver through influence.

Nice to have

• Experience in a high-growth B2B SaaS or similarly complex global marketing environment.

Details

• Location: Remote, California, United States of America.
• Hybrid way of working: opportunity to come together in person at Zendesk offices, with flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.
• US annualized base salary range: $134,000.00 - $200,000.00, plus potential bonus, benefits, or related incentives.