Job Description
Kepler executes engineered marketing, where every message and ad delivered helps create a more personalized and productive relationship between brands and their consumers. We do this by acting as clients’ agency of record, as their in-house team, or some hybrid of the two – and by harnessing data and technology across all paid digital media and data-driven CRM channels.
Kepler prides itself on being a great place to work.
- We’re transparent with our employees. You’ll hear updates on company financials, how we’re performing against bonus goals, and how we’re responding to challenges we face.
- We’re growing. For you, that means unparalleled growth opportunities and a role in shaping the direction of the company.
- We’re fun. You’ll work with and learn from the smartest people in the industry and have a blast doing it.
Position Overview
We are looking for a strategic and highly organized Director of Operations to serve as the heartbeat of our agency’s operating system. You will sit at the intersection of Resource Management, Account Health, and Business Profitability, ensuring that our global digital media agency operates like a well-oiled machine.
In this role, you aren’t just managing spreadsheets; you are optimizing the way our team works, ensuring our accounts are structured for success, our processes are clear and practical, and we are meeting our account-level financial targets. You will support our team’s ability to deliver great work while delivering on our bottom-line business goals.
Core Responsibilities
1. Contract & Scope Development (The Foundation)
- SOW Architecture: Partner with Account, Legal, Finance and Business Development teams to draft, review, and approve Statements of Work (SOWs), ensuring deliverables are clearly defined and risks are mitigated.
- Pricing Strategy: In partnership with finance, develop and maintain standardized pricing models and rate cards that reflect the agency’s value while protecting profit margins.
- Contractual Guardrails: Collaborate with legal and finance to ensure contracts include realistic timelines, clear out-of-scope triggers, and favorable commercial terms.
- Change Management: Establish the formal process for identifying and documenting “scope creep,” working with relevant Account, Legal and Finance teams to address out-of-scope requests without negative impact on client relationships.
2. Resource Operations (The Talent Engine)
- Capacity Planning: Manage agency-wide bandwidth. Forecast hiring needs based on the BD pipeline and expected revenue trajectory.
- Utilization Management: Track and optimize billable versus non-billable hours to ensure our “human capital” is deployed efficiently. Proactively ensure department & account leaders are aware of utilization issues within teams and collaborate on resolution.
- Consultation: consult with department and account leaders on staffing solutions, including internal capacity, external options, and intercompany working arrangements.
3. Account Operations (The Delivery Framework)
- Process Architecture: Support standardization of “How We Work” across the agency, from initial employee onboarding to new tool deployment, delivering large-scale change management support and cross-functional project management.
- Tech Stack Ownership: Oversee the implementation and adoption of project management, profitability, resource management and time-tracking tools (e.g., Planful, Paycom, Asana).
- Onboarding: Lead the operational setup for new, high-value clients to ensure seamless integration into the agency workflow.
- Compliance: Lead tracking for compliance with key processes, including time card completion, billing & financial processes, certifications, and others as needed within the team.
- Intercompany Alignment: support discussions of shared delivery models, initiatives & projects between Kepler and our kyu sister companies.
4. Business Operations (The Financial Guardrails)
- Profitability Tracking: Monitor account-level P&Ls. Identify margin erosion early and work with Account or department leads to course-correct.
- Commercial Support: Partner with the Finance team on revenue recognition, billing accuracy, and contract renewals to ensure strong operational ways of working.
- Operational Reporting: Deliver executive-level reporting regarding topics such as resource utilization, margin trends, project status, and more.
- Legal: act as key business liaison between client-facing teams and Kepler’s legal team, submitting contract requests according to Legal team requirements and helping to prioritize competing requests.
Required Qualifications
- Experience: 8+ years in agency operations, project management, or account leadership, specifically within the digital media or advertising space.
- Contractual Expertise: Experience in scoping complex digital projects, ranging from performance media buys to consulting engagements. Knowledge of standard media agency contractual structure & terms is a big plus.
- Analytical Rigor: You should be a “data storyteller”—someone who can look at a utilization report and immediately identify the underlying staffing issue.
- Leadership: Proven ability to manage a team of junior Operations associates, in addition to being a strong cross-functional operator, capable of building consensus across stakeholders of different backgrounds.
- Solutions-Oriented: Demonstrated track record of developing solutions to complex organizational problems or bottlenecks and helping to bring them to life in a fast-paced, ever-changing environment.
- Technical Savvy: Expert-level knowledge of ERP/SaaS tools and advanced Excel/BI reporting. Demonstrated AI knowledge & integration is strongly preferred.
Total Compensation:
- Base Salary: $140,000 - $160,000
- Target Annualized Discretionary Bonus: 10% ($14,000 - $16,000)
- Target Total Cash: $154,000- $176,000
Benefits:
- Healthcare/Dental/Vision
- Unlimited PTO
- 401k Contributions
- $75/mo Wellness Stipend
- $100/mo Mobile Phone Stipend
- $50/mo Internet Stipend
- $500/yr Annual Learning Stipend
- $2,000/yr Annual Tuition Stipend
- One-time $200 New Hire Home Office Equipment Stipend
- Parental Leave - 16 week primary caregiver / 6 week secondary caregiver leave
- Annual Work From Anywhere 4 weeks per year
