Marketing Operations Manager in Zürich

EF High School Exchange Year is looking for a sharp, reliable, highly organized operator to help keep our international marketing team focused, aligned, and moving.

This role is focused on the operational side of marketing: creating the structure, follow-through, process, and daily coordination that allow strong strategy and creative work to turn into real progress.

You will be the day-to-day operating partner for a small, ambitious marketing team working across 13 country markets.

You will sit close to the central marketing leadership team and work directly with digital marketing, creative, country sales teams, agencies, and other internal stakeholders to keep multiple workstreams moving in parallel.

The person who will thrive in this role is structured, calm, proactive, and high trust.

You are energized by bringing order to complexity.

You like turning vague needs into clear next steps.

You are comfortable making decisions, pushing work forward, and ensuring people have what they need to deliver.

What you will do

Own the team’s operating rhythm and help run the practical day-to-day machinery of the marketing team

• Own the team's project management infrastructure, including meetings, timelines, task tracking, status updates, and follow-up.
• Keep key workstreams moving across multiple campaigns, markets, and stakeholders.
• Turn leadership priorities into clear action plans, owners, deadlines, and next steps.
• Spot risks early and elevate when priorities, timelines, or resources are becoming misaligned.
• Make sure the team has a clear view of what is happening, what is stuck, and what needs attention.

Triage and manage marketing requests, acting as the central point of contact for country teams requesting marketing support.

• Field and organize requests from sales and market teams across 13 countries.
• Help assess what is urgent, what is important, what can wait, and what needs more clarity.
• Route requests to the right people across digital, creative, content, and leadership.
• Protect the team from constant distraction by creating structure around inbound needs.
• Help ensure country teams feel heard while keeping the central team focused on the highest-value work.

Coordinate campaign and creative workflows, helping keep production work clear, structured, and on track.

• Coordinate brief intake, timelines, review cycles, approvals, and delivery.
• Work with designers, digital marketers, agencies, vendors, and internal stakeholders to keep projects moving.
• Help make sure briefs are complete, deadlines are realistic, and feedback is consolidated.
• Track deliverables across markets and campaigns, especially during peak season.
• Support campaign trafficking, asset handoffs, and administrative coordination where needed.

Support reporting and performance tracking. While you don’t need to be a data strategist, you should be comfortable with numbers and helping the team stay close to performance.

• Support regular reporting cadences by helping to compile, organize, and distribute key performance data to teams and stakeholders
• Help maintain simple dashboards, spreadsheets, and tracking documents.
• Partner with the digital marketing lead and head of marketing on budget tracking, pacing, and forecasting processes and reporting.
• Bring a practical, detail-oriented eye to campaign performance, market activity, and operational reporting.

Improve how the team works by helping to modernize the ways of working over time.

• Identify process gaps, repeated inefficiencies, and places where the team is losing time.
• Improve documentation, onboarding materials, shared workflows, and knowledge management.
• Help introduce better systems, templates, tools, and routines where they make the team faster or clearer.
• Bring curiosity and practical interest in modern tools, including AI agents, automation, and workflow improvements.
• Look for simple ways to reduce manual work and help the team spend more time on higher-value marketing activities.
• What we are looking for
• Must-haves
• 5+ years of experience in marketing operations, project management, marketing coordination, campaign operations, or a similar role.
• Experience working inside or closely with a marketing team.
• Exceptional organizational skills and the ability to manage many moving pieces without losing track of details.
• Strong project management instincts: you know how to create structure, clarify ownership, manage timelines, and follow through.
• High trust, good judgment, and the confidence to operate with autonomy.
• Comfort working in a fast-moving, lean team where priorities change and plans need to adapt.
• Strong working ability with project management tools, spreadsheets, shared documents, and basic marketing platforms.
• A practical, service-minded approach to stakeholders: helpful, structured, responsive, and willing to push back when needed.
• Strong advantages
• Experience working across multiple countries, markets, or regional teams.
• Familiarity with paid media operations, including platforms such as Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager, or Tik Tok Ads Manager.
• Experience with CRM, email marketing, marketing automation, or campaign management tools.
• Strong spreadsheet skills and comfort working with dashboards, reporting, budget tracking, or performance data.
• Experience improving team workflows, documentation, processes, or operating systems.
• Interest in AI tools, automation, and modern workflow design.
• Fluency in another European language.
• What makes this role important
• This role is central to how the marketing team works.
• You will help create the structure, clarity, and momentum that allow strong marketing work to happen across markets.

When priorities are shifting, requests are coming in, and multiple workstreams are moving at once, you will be the person helping the team stay focused and coordinated.

• A great week in this role is one where priorities are clear, workstreams are on track, stakeholders know where things stand, and the team has what it needs to move quickly and effectively.
• This role is especially well suited to someone who enjoys the operational side of marketing: turning ideas into plans, plans into tasks, and tasks into completed work.

You do not need to be the person leading brand strategy or creative direction to have a major impact here.

Your impact will come from making the whole team sharper, faster, more organized, and more reliable.

• If you are a strong operator with marketing experience, excellent follow-through, a sharp project mind, and an interest in helping a modern marketing team work better, this role could be a strong fit.
• Why you will love EF Zurich
• A fun, international, and dynamic environment
• Regular training sessions and opportunities for company growth
• Team events, kick-offs, and Holiday Parties
• Discounts on EF programs for Staff and Staff Families for all EF Programs
• Free use of EF Hello: a premium Language Learning App
• Tuition Reimbursement for continued education
• And much more...

About Us

Some companies are in the business of banking.

Others are in the business of shoes.

Or sports.

Or soft drinks.

At EF, we're in a different kind of business.

One that's a little less tangible, and a lot more important.

Because our business, what we make, makes everything else possible.

We're in the business of understanding.

Between people.

Between cultures.

For over half a century we’ve been the leader in international educational programs and experiences designed to foster such understanding.

Through language, cultural exchange, academic studies, and educational travel, we create the kinds of immersive experiences that challenge biases, open minds, and pave the way for a more understanding world.

You’ll find our offices and schools located in some of the world’s greatest cities, and filled with smart, driven people (over 50,000 of us) who push each other to be better every day.

But it’s what we do together - building greater understanding, breaking down barriers, and creating a better world - that makes all the difference.

Founded in 1965 in Sweden, EF (Education First) is a global association of education companies that share a common mission of opening the world through education.

EF has been recognized on Forbes 2025 and 2024 World’s Best Employers and 2024 Top Companies for Women lists, Fast Company’s 2025 Next Big Things In Tech, and was a 2024 App Store Award winner in Cultural Impact.

About the Team

EF High School Exchange Year is a non-profit high school foreign exchange program affiliated with Education First.

We’ve been promoting global awareness through student exchange for over 40 years.

Our ideals are simple: we believe that cultural exchange makes the world a better place.

We bring high school students from around the world to live with volunteer host families across the USA for a semester or full academic year.

This J-1 Visa exchange program fosters cross-cultural understanding, tolerance, open-mindedness and global connections.

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