Marketing Manager III_USD

Job Title: Marketing Manager III
Job Location - Rancho Cordova OR San Jose, CA (Hybrid, 3 days onsite)
Duration - 04 - 05 Months

Client's Strategic Planning & Marketing team is looking for an experienced Business Operations Manager with a focus on Marketing Operations — on a contract basis — to bring dedicated financial and operational expertise to a fast-moving, cross-functional organization. This role reports directly to the Chief of Staff with an operational scope that extends across the Brand, Creative, Digital, and Events group, Industry Leadership Marketing, and Global Communications functions, as well as our AI Central group building out labs and engaging with our ecosystem partners.

This isn’t a role where you’ll inherit a clean set of processes and maintain them. The broader financial and procurement infrastructure at Client is built primarily around product and business operations, and while that system works well for what it was designed to do, it doesn’t always map cleanly onto how marketing and customer-related functions plan, spend, and operate. You’ll need to be fluent in the language of budgets, POs, accruals, and vendor contracts, while equally conversant in campaign launches, agency retainers, event logistics, brand investments, and more. You’ll assess where existing processes create unnecessary friction for marketing, advocate for adaptations, and build the workflows that work for a fast-moving team.

As a contractor, you’ll closely work with the marketing team and function as a core operational partner with all business group leaders — not a peripheral support resource. Our first focus will be to support the marketing team, but support across all functions is expected. You’ll be a connective tissue and the person in the room who can translate between “marketing” and “the business” without losing either audience.

What You’ll Do

• Budget Management & Finance
  • Own the integrated marketing budget across all functions and cost centers, maintaining real-time visibility into spend, commitments, and remaining capacity.
  • Support other groups within Strategic Planning and Marketing on their budgets and related finance, procurement, and tracking requirements.
  • Translate marketing investments — campaigns, sponsorships, events, agency retainers, content production — into the financial constructs Finance and Procurement need to process them accurately.
  • Partner with Finance on accruals, POs, and year-end close, bringing specific context that prevents misclassification and unnecessary friction.
  • Build and maintain budget dashboards that give leadership clear, actionable visibility.
  • Proactively surface budget risks, reallocation opportunities, and end-of-period variances before they become problems.
• Billing & Invoice Management
  • Manage the full invoice lifecycle for marketing spend — routing, approval, reconciliation, and payment — with a process designed for the realities of marketing (milestone-based SOWs, retainers, variable project fees).
  • Reconcile invoices against contracts and POs; resolve discrepancies with both vendors and Finance.
  • Reduce the administrative burden on program and creative teams so they can stay focused on the work.
• Vendor & Agency Management
  • Manage the end-to-end vendor lifecycle for marketing suppliers: sourcing, onboarding, contracting, performance, and offboarding.
  • Maintain the master vendor and contract calendar so renewals, compliance requirements, and expirations don’t catch the team off guard.
  • Partner with Legal and Procurement on MSAs, SOWs, and NDAs — while advocating for terms and timelines that reflect the pace at which marketing needs to move.
  • Build strong relationships with key agencies and partners; be the operational point of contact they can rely on.
• Process Design & Advocacy
  • Assess existing company-wide processes and identify where they create unnecessary friction for marketing — then propose and implement adaptations that preserve compliance while enabling agility.
  • Build operational frameworks for how the marketing team plans, executes, and reports — from annual budgeting cycles to campaign-level spend tracking.
  • Act as a constructive internal advocate for marketing’s needs with Finance, Procurement, Legal, and other business operations stakeholders.
  • Support planning cycles including headcount modeling, program budgeting, and quarterly reforecasting.
  • Serve as the operational liaison between three integrated marketing teams: Brand, Creative, Digital and Events, the AI & Leadership Marketing, and Global Communications teams, aligning on shared resources, budgets, and workflows.
• Reporting & Compliance
  • Produce regular operational reports that give marketing and Finance stakeholders the visibility they need.
  • Ensure all spend is properly documented, categorized, and audit-ready.
  • Support internal compliance requirements around vendor diversity, spend governance, and ethics policies.

What You Bring

• 5 years in marketing operations, marketing finance, or a closely related function within a B2B technology environment.
• A genuine dual fluency: you understand how enterprise finance and procurement systems work, and you understand how marketing and ecosystem enablement teams operate — and you’ve facilitated bridging the two.
• Proven experience building or improving operations processes, not just inheriting and maintaining them.
• Strong command of marketing-specific financial constructs: agency retainers, campaign budgets, event P&Ls, production cost structures, sponsorship agreements.
• Experience navigating procurement and finance processes — POs, accruals, MSAs, SOWs — with the ability to work within the system while advocating for it to evolve.
• Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail, paired with the judgment to know what actually matters.
• Strong communicator who can translate between marketing and business operations stakeholders without losing either audience.
• Ability to operate independently and hit the ground running — as a contractor, you’ll be expected to bring your own structure and not require significant ramp time.

Nice to Have

• Experience in semiconductor, enterprise storage, or B2B tech infrastructure marketing.
• Background in high-growth, or resource-constrained environments where processes are still being defined.
• Prior contract or consulting engagements where you’ve had to build trust and credibility quickly within an existing team.