Senior Manager, Strategic Operations & AI Enablement

Company Description

VERSANT (Nasdaq: VSNT) is an industry-changing media and entertainment business and home to trusted brands that shape culture, inform audiences, and build lasting connections. It operates across four core markets: political news and opinion, business news and personal finance, golf, and sports and genre entertainment. These markets are served through a powerful portfolio of iconic and innovative brands, including CNBC, MS NOW, USA Network, Golf Channel, Oxygen, E!,

SYFY, and Versant's sports division USA Sports, along with complementary digital assets including Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, Golf Now and Golf Pass.

VERSANT (Nasdaq: VSNT) is an industry-changing media and entertainment business and home to trusted brands that shape culture, inform audiences, and build lasting connections. It operates across four core markets: political news and opinion, business news and personal finance, golf, and sports and genre entertainment. These markets are served through a powerful portfolio of iconic and innovative brands, including CNBC, MS NOW, USA Network, Golf Channel, Oxygen, E!,

SYFY, and Versant's sports division USA Sports, along with complementary digital assets including Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, Golf Now and Golf Pass.

We are seeking a Senior Manager, Strategic Operations & AI Enablement to lead the evolution of how work strategically scales across the Digital Platforms & Ventures division. This role is responsible for designing scalable operational systems, driving AI-enabled innovation, and transforming complex business needs into streamlined, intelligent workflows that improve efficiency, collaboration, and business outcomes.

This is not a traditional project management role. Success is measured by the ability to redesign business processes, modernize operations through AI and automation, and build scalable systems that empower teams to work smarter and more effectively.

The Senior Manager, Strategic Operations & AI Enablement supports all verticals, all brands and all groups within the Versant Digital Platforms & Ventures division, including such products as Golf Now, Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, and more.

AI & Operational Innovation

• Champion an AI-first approach to operational excellence across the organization.
• Identify repetitive, manual, or inefficient workflows and redesign them using AI, automation, and intelligent process design.
• Build, train, test, and optimize AI assistants, prompts, automations, and operational agents that improve team productivity.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies and recommend scalable solutions that create measurable business impact.
• Develop governance, best practices, and standards for responsible AI adoption across business teams.

Workflow Architecture & Systems Design

• Design scalable operational workflows that support creative, marketing, print, digital, and cross-functional initiatives.
• Translate business needs into standardized, repeatable workflows that improve efficiency, visibility, and execution.
• Create operational frameworks that reduce manual effort while increasing quality and consistency.
• Continuously optimize existing workflows based on analytics, stakeholder feedback, and evolving business priorities.
• Serve as the organization's subject matter expert for workflow strategy and operational design.

Project Intake & Operational Planning

• Own the DPV project intake process from request through operational readiness.
• Assess incoming work for completeness, resource requirements, workflow alignment, and strategic prioritization.
• Convert business requests into scalable operational workflows rather than one-off project plans.
• Partner with stakeholders to define requirements before work enters execution.
• Ensure work is routed efficiently through standardized operational processes.

Platform Strategy & Integrations

• Own strategic administration and evolution of operational platforms including Asana, Page Proof, Salesforce integrations, Jira, and future technology solutions.
• Design and implement integrations between business systems to eliminate duplicate work and improve data flow.
• Partner with O&T and vendors to evaluate, implement, and optimize new technologies.
• Build automation strategies that reduce manual touchpoints across systems.
• Develop scalable operational infrastructure supporting future business growth.

Data, Intelligence & Continuous Improvement

• Leverage operational data, AI insights, and workflow analytics to identify optimization opportunities.
• Develop dashboards and reporting that measure operational health, workflow efficiency, adoption, and business impact.
• Establish KPIs around automation, cycle time reduction, resource utilization, and process effectiveness.
• Drive a culture of continuous improvement through experimentation and iterative optimization.

Training & Change Enablement

• Lead organizational adoption of AI tools (ChatGPT, Codex, etc.), workflow platforms, and operational best practices.
• Develop training programs,…