Senior Vice President, Business Operations

Tinuiti is seeking an SVP, Business Operations to build, lead, and mature the company’s operating model for project management, delivery governance, onboarding, client success operations, and enterprise execution visibility.
This is a business-critical operating role, not an administrative PMO function. This role will serve as the architect and operator of Tinuiti’s execution system: the way work is initiated, prioritized,, governed, measured, escalated, and improved across the organization. The PMO under this role will serve as the execution engine for complex, enterprise-priority initiatives that span multiple business units, departments, or leadership forums. Large tooling rollouts, agency-wide process design, structural change initiatives, and transformation programs all run through this team. When an initiative requires cross-functional sequencing, executive visibility, structured governance, and active risk management beyond a single function’s normal cadence, this team leads the execution path and drives it to completion.
 

For the right leader, this is a rare opportunity to build the execution infrastructure of an agency from a position of real authority. You will have the platform, the executive relationships, and the organizational mandate to redesign how work flows across Tinuiti — and to leave a durable mark on how the company operates at scale.
 

Reporting Relationship
This role will report to the COO and partner closely with leaders across Client Delivery, New Business, Finance, Resource Management, RevOps, People, Technology, Legal, Commercial Innovation, and Executive Leadership.
 

Organizational Scope
The SVP, Business Operations will lead a team of approximately 10 people across the following functions, with additional matrixed influence across embedded project management roles enterprise-wide:
 

Function/Scope

Core PMO / Internal PMO Team

Direct leadership of the central PMO engine responsible for governance, tooling, reporting, standards, and executive visibility

Client Success Operations

Direct leadership around client lifecycle operations, contract hygiene, renewal workflows, commercial escalation, and client health visibility

Client Onboarding Experience

Direct leadership of central Onboarding team leading governance of onboarding standards, handoffs, RACI adherence, and early-stage client activation workflows

Matrixed PM / Program Management Community

Functional standards, enablement, and governance across project/program management roles embedded across the business and operational workstreams

Enterprise Delivery Portfolio

Visibility into major client delivery programs, strategic initiatives, operational priorities, transformation workstreams, and AI-related programs

The role will operate through a federated PMO model: centralized standards, governance, reporting, and escalation, while preserving the specialized delivery expertise of embedded teams.

Core Mandate
The SVP will be accountable for building and operating a scalable execution system across the organization, this includes:

• Running the PMO as the execution engine for complex initiatives that cross business units or departments; process redesign, structural change, key tooling rollouts, and transformation.

• Establishing consistent project and program management standards.

• Proactively and constantly looking for where AI can change how the agency gets work done, e.g., new ways to execute, automate, and rethink delivery across PMO, Onboarding, Client Success, and the initiatives this role runs.

• Building enterprise-level visibility into priority initiatives, risk, and delivery pressure.

• Improving handoffs and decisioning from sales through onboarding, delivery, and client success to drive better client and business outcomes.

• Reducing duplicated processes across teams.

• Clarifying ownership, decision rights, handoffs, and escalation paths for the functions this role owns directly and for enterprise initiatives governed via the PMO

• Building operating rhythms that increase pace, accountability, and follow-through.

• Enabling teams to move faster and cleaner, not slower.

Key Responsibilities
1. PMO as the Business Execution Engine

• Lead the PMO team in planning, sequencing, managing, and driving complex initiatives that span multiple business units or departments. The PMO is accountable for execution leadership, not passive status tracking.

• Partner directly with executive sponsors to translate strategy into executable plans, including scope, sequencing, milestones, dependencies, resourcing needs, governance, and delivery cadence.

• Build and maintain a portfolio view of priority initiatives, delivery programs, and transformation workstreams.

• Create dashboards and a standard health-review cadence that surface risk, dependencies, and resourcing pressure early.

2. PM Standards & Capability Building

• Define project/program management standards, tools, and ways of working; establish common definitions for health, risk, and escalation status.

• Build a PM/program management community of practice agency-wide, establishing shared standards and capability-building without assuming direct management authority over embedded PMs outside this organization.

• Partner with Technology leadership to ensure tools, data flows, automation, reporting infrastructure, and governance models are designed into major transformation efforts from the start.

• Serve as the business owner for Monday.com as Tinuiti’s primary PM/work management platform and rationalize adjacent tools where they create duplication, data fragmentation, or conflicting workflows.

3. Client Lifecycle & Commercial Discipline

• Directly manage Onboarding (OBX): client handoff, activation workflows, and escalation paths from sales through delivery readiness. Define and hold standards for time-to-activation and first-90-day client health, ensuring the OBX function closes the gap between what is sold and what is delivered.

• Directly manage Client Success operations, including operational discipline around scope definition, change-order readiness, contract adherence, renewal workflows, and commercial escalation. Partner with Client Delivery, Finance, Business Development and Legal on pricing, negotiation strategy, and material commercial decisions.

• Own contract management discipline across the client portfolio, ensuring negotiated terms, scope protections, minimum fee structures, and commercial commitments are operationalized, visible, and consistently enforced. Note: This role does not set rate strategy but ensures agreed commercial terms are translated into operating practice.

• Partner with Finance and Delivery leaders on budget health, labor mix, and margin risk; flag when work needs a change order or executive decision and drive those decisions to resolution.

4. Operating Rhythms & Executive Cadence

• Run recurring forums for portfolio health, delivery risk, and decision-making, with crisp agendas and tracked follow-through.

• Translate operational data into a clear view leadership can act on.

• Accountable for an organized Client Delivery leadership cadence, including agenda design, decision tracking, commitment follow-through, and completion of agreed change programs across senior leaders.

• Ensure internal change initiatives are program managed end to end

Required Experience

• 15+ years in PMO, delivery operations, business operations, client operations, agency operations, consulting operations, or professional services operations

• 5+ years leading a PMO, delivery operations, or cross-functional operations function.

• Experience operating in a complex, matrixed, client-service environment, with governance, operating rhythms, and executive dashboards to show for it.

• Ability to influence teams without direct reporting authority.

• Fluency with PM, resourcing, CRM, and BI tools (Monday.com, Wrike, Jira, Salesforce, PowerBI, or similar).

Preferred Experience

• Media, agency, or professional-services background. Media-literate, not narrowly media-native.

• Experience building PMO or delivery governance from a fragmented starting point.

• Experience standardizing delivery operations without slowing down client-facing teams.

Ideal Candidate Profile

• A systems thinker who simplifies complexity and builds processes people actually use.

• Earns trust across functional lines, including with business leaders and embedded teams who do not report directly to them.

• A confident communicator who surfaces risk without creating noise.

• A track record of personally driving process or delivery redesign using AI or automation, proactively.

Directional KPIs / First-Year Success Measures

• Reduction in the gap between sold, planned, and delivered work.

• Margin protection and recovery across the client portfolio, through scope defensibility and renewal discipline.

• Measurable business impact from operationalizing AI initiatives within PMO, Client Success, and Onboarding  (efficiency, capacity, and/or margin).

• Cross-functional integration strength across PMO, Client Success and Onboarding

• Contract compliance consistency.

• Design and adoption of key common PM standards, tools, and patterns across embedded PM populations agency-wide, i.e. in Client Delivery, Creative, Product, and transformation workstreams, achieved through influence and community, not direct reporting authority.

• The feeling our people should have, delivered through the PMO's key projects and programs, that we are an easier-to-navigate, more agile, faster moving organization that is innovative and future fit. It is easier to do their jobs well.