Product Operations Manager

The Trade Desk is a global technology company and the world’s leading independent platform for digital advertising, with over 3,000 employees across more than 30 offices. Our technology helps advertisers reach the right audiences across the open internet — from streaming TV and podcasts to mobile apps, news, and more. 

Advertising powers the content people love. By making it more transparent, effective, and responsible, we help support trusted journalism, quality entertainment, and creators worldwide. The world’s brands and agencies rely on us to reach their customers and grow their businesses responsibly.

The scale of our platform brings unique technical challenges — from processing massive datasets in real time to building systems that operate reliably on a global scale. When you work here, your impact is worldwide. We welcome diverse perspectives, encourage curiosity, and build teams that learn from one another. If you’re driven to solve meaningful challenges, we’d love to meet you.

What We Are Looking

We are looking for a driven, energetic Senior Product Operations Manager who will be part of a global Product Operations team within our product organization. You’ll partner closely with product, R&D, and the commercial business to ensure we are continuously translating product strategy into clear priorities, aligned execution, and measurable outcomes. 

You are a force multiplier for the R&D organization — driving clarity, discipline, transparency, and alignment across product and company leadership. You shift fluently between strategic, operational, and communication flows. You will tune and evolve the systems and rhythms that connect strategy formulation to goals, delivery, and client impact. You drive adoption of standards that enable scalable, data-driven operations, partnering with cross-functional teams to resolve friction and deliver on shared objectives. 

You are essential to the successful delivery of great products. You have deep empathy for internal and external customer needs, build scalable feedback mechanisms that weave quantitative and qualitative data into cohesive insights, and translate those insights into prioritized product opportunities that influence roadmaps to drive progress against measurable outcomes. 

What You Will Be Doing 

You will be focused on contributing to product operating rhythms and amplifying capabilities across the R&D organization. You will help the product organization evolve processes and operate at scale, ensuring that what we develop connects to both customer and business outcomes. You will support Product Ops Leadership in developing and delivering against strategies that tie the team’s work to The Trade Desk’s ability to bring the right products to market. 

Responsibilities 

Roadmap Ownership & Governance 

• Drive end-to-end facilitation of the product roadmap process, including strategy formulation, investment area definition, opportunity sizing, capacity planning, and scenario/tradeoff analysis 

• Facilitate formal roadmap presentations to leadership, commercial, and revenue teams to build alignment on strategic priorities, resource allocation, sequencing, and explicit tradeoffs 

• Document and socialize roadmap decisions; maintain version control of all roadmap artifacts 

• Integrate lifecycle expertise across multiple initiatives, anticipating systemic risks, cross-team dependencies, and cross-platform impacts; shape planning rituals and readiness standards across the organization 

Release Readiness & Launch Preparedness 

• Own operational readiness strategy for key product features, leveraging release readiness frameworks to drive alignment across multiple product domains 

• Anticipate systemic risks, define scalable playbooks, and influence senior stakeholders to ensure enterprise-wide launch preparedness and accountability for upstream and downstream adoption 

• Partner with Product and Ops leadership to evolve lifecycle frameworks, improving predictability, quality, and execution consistency 

Goal Setting, Measurement & Analytics 

• Facilitate regular cadence goal-setting for each product area and PM, ensuring goals ladder to roadmap investment areas and company goals 

• Collaborate with Data Science and Analytics partners to translate measurement frameworks into actionable tracking plans; embed defined KPIs in execution workflows and ensure insights drive meaningful adjustments in process and delivery outcomes 

• Design frameworks and quality controls used across Product Ops that enable teams to extract signal from noise and link insights to business outcomes 

• Monitor progress via structured weekly updates and proactively escalate risks, tradeoffs, slippage, or misalignment to product leadership 

Field Feedback & User Advocacy 

• Operate the regional intake process to collect structured pain point requests from field teams and route validate, strategically aligned opportunities to PMs for investigation 

• Build scalable mechanisms for collecting, synthesizing, and communicating user needs; integrate quantitative and qualitative data into cohesive insights that directly inform roadmap prioritization and feature decisions 

• Standardize how requests are documented, categorized, and themed; close the loop with field stakeholders on prioritization and progress 

• Champion adoption of user-centered practices within and across teams; drive measurable improvements in customer and product outcomes 

Product Ceremonies & Operating Rhythm 

• Own agenda design and management for product team meeting cadences: weekly leadership meetings, goal-tracking reviews, and cross-functional alignment sessions 

• Establish communication cadences and documentation standards that sustain alignment over time; ensure meetings are purposeful, high-leverage, and tied to current priorities 

• Facilitate alignment across multiple leadership groups and initiatives; anticipate friction points, reframe conflicts constructively, and guide teams toward evidence-based decisions 

Program, Process & Change Leadership 

• Lead complex change initiatives spanning multiple teams; design transition plans, stakeholder communications, and feedback loops to sustain adoption; anticipate resistance and implement strategies that maintain morale and clarity 

• Introduce tooling or automation to streamline processes or reduce overhead; partner with leaders to measure impact and drive continuous improvement across teams 

• Facilitate collaboration among cross-functional teams and influence decision-making within senior-level audiences; lead execution against recommendations quickly and accurately 

• Support psychological safety, team health, and happiness within the product org 

About You 

• You are passionate about operational process 

• You are a systems thinker who can effectively break down problems and scope solutions 

• You have experience successfully managing multiple programs simultaneously from start to finish, building durable collaboration structures that enhance decision velocity and accountability 

• You are data-driven and use evidence-driven storytelling to influence prioritization and senior stakeholders 

• You are empathetic to customer needs, and able to build sustainable feedback loops to promote customer advocacy across product areas 

• You use analysis and business context to identify root causes, proactively surface risks, and develop practical solutions that prevent recurrence on complex issues 

• You communicate persuasively to influence decision-making, presenting complex information with clarity and confidence to diverse audiences 

• You are able to manage expectations, mitigate conflict, and foster understanding across departments 

• You respond and adapt quickly while maintaining strategic momentum when solving problems 

• You are comfortable with ambiguity, resilient to change, and able to adapt or change course without losing momentum 

• You act with autonomy and can proactively bring fresh ideas to drive work forward 

Qualifications 

• 5+ years of experience in a technology company in product management, product operations, or program management with significant interface with technical and business teams 

• Demonstrated experience driving product roadmap processes, investment planning, or strategic planning cycles 

• Experience with release readiness or launch operations, including building playbooks and driving cross-functional launch preparedness 

• Experience facilitating senior level alignment meetings and communicating complex tradeoffs to senior stakeholders 

• Familiarity with field feedback or voice-of-customer programs; ability to integrate qualitative and quantitative data into actionable product direction 

• Experience partnering with Data Science or Analytics teams to define KPIs, build tracking plans, and embed measurement into delivery workflows 

• Comfortable working across product, engineering, revenue, and operations teams to drive cross-functional alignment 

• Familiar with product and design tools such as Jira, Confluence, Salesforce, and whiteboarding tools 

• Experience with goal-setting frameworks (OKRs or similar) and progress tracking at the organizational level 

• Strong written and verbal communication skills to create clarity across a large organization

The Trade Desk does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firm recruiters. Fees will not be paid in the event a candidate submitted by a recruiter without an agreement in place is hired; such resumes will be deemed the sole property of The Trade Desk. The Trade Desk is an equal opportunity employer. All aspects of employment will be based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.

[LA JOBS ONLY] The Trade Desk will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment in a manner consistent with the requirements of the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, Ordinance No. 184652.

[SF JOBS ONLY] Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

In accordance with various US state laws, the range provided is the Trade Desk's reasonable estimate of the base compensation for this role. The actual amount may differ based on non-discriminatory factors such as experience, knowledge, skills, and location.  All employees may be eligible to become The Trade Desk shareholders through eligibility for stock-based compensation grants, which are awarded to employees based on company and individual performance. The Trade Desk also offers other compensation depending on the role such as variable compensation-based incentives and commissions. Plus, expected benefits for this role include comprehensive healthcare (medical, dental, and vision) with premiums paid in full for employees and dependents, retirement benefits such as a 401k plan and company match, short and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance, well-being benefits, reimbursement for certain tuition expenses, parental leave, sick time of 1 hour per 30 hours worked, vacation time for full-time employees up to 120 hours thru the first year and 160 hours thereafter, and around 13 paid holidays per year.  Employees can also purchase The Trade Desk stock at a discount through The Trade Desk’s Employee Stock Purchase Plan. 

The Trade Desk also offers a competitive benefits package. Click here to learn more.

Note: Interns are not eligible for variable incentive awards such as stock-based compensation, retirement plan, vacation, tuition reimbursement or parental leave

At the Trade Desk, Base Salary is one part of our competitive total compensation and benefits package and is determined using a salary range. The base salary range for this role is $93,800—$172,000 USD

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, The Trade Desk is committed to creating an inclusive hiring experience where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

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When you contact us, please include your preferred contact details and specify the nature of your accommodation request or questions. Any information you share will be handled confidentially and will not impact our hiring decisions.