Senior Marketing Operations Lead
We install marketing systems into restaurant groups and run them on software we built ourselves. This seat runs that machine.
The seat
We install marketing systems into restaurants across the UK · clients hitting £100k weeks, videos past 20 million views, number 1 spots on TripAdvisor. Behind that sits Slate, our own operating platform, and an AI-heavy stack that automates everything from scheduling to per-client CMO agents. This role runs that machine.
Be clear about the shape of it: there is no playbook for most of this work. We act as the outsourced marketing department for each brand, so the tasks change week to week and writing a procedure for every one would take longer than doing it. That is a blessing and a burden · you will never be bored, and you will rarely be told exactly how. The job is judgement more than instruction-following.
Not a strategist role and not a reporting role · our software does the reporting. This is systems, operations and delivery, at a senior grade, owned end to end.
What the work actually is
Eight things that actually came through this desk in the last month. Client names, links and logins removed, nothing else changed. If most of these read as a good day rather than a bad one, apply.
- 1Seventeen social connections to Meta expire inside six hours and the entire client roster stops publishing. Work out whether it is a token expiry, a permissions change or a platform-side revoke, reconnect every one, and confirm it by watching a real post go out rather than by trusting a green tick.
- 2Twenty-five pieces are marked scheduled in our platform but no post exists behind them in the scheduling tool, and the client portal is telling clients they are live. Find where the two systems diverged, repair the state, and make the divergence impossible to repeat silently.
- 3A client approves their new site. Now find out where their domain and hosting actually live, get access, and move the DNS across · having noticed, before you touch anything, that their company email runs on the same records.
- 4Search Console is de-indexing a client site from a stale sitemap. The site was rebuilt as a one-pager, every old URL now 404s, and sitemap.xml and robots.txt are missing at every path. Diagnose it, redirect the dead URLs, restore the files, then verify the fix in Search Console rather than assuming it.
- 5A client sat down and answered twenty FAQ questions for their DM automation. Six flows were built from it and all six are switched off. Build the rest, localise every one to the correct site of a seven-location brand, switch them on, and test-message each trigger yourself before you call it done.
- 6A paused DM flow inside one client's automation workspace is carrying a different client's booking link. Establish how it got there, confirm nothing was ever sent, then audit every other flow for the same class of mistake before you close the ticket.
- 7Stand up an offers subdomain for a multi-site group on their existing registrar, host one landing page per campaign, and give each campaign its own booking link so that spend can finally be attributed to covers.
- 8Their booking platform reports booking source. Work out whether a per-campaign booking widget is possible so that £300 of ad spend can be tied to the £10k it generated · then build it, or say plainly why it cannot be done and what you would do instead.
The core role
- Own day-to-day marketing operations across ~10 restaurant brands: scheduling pipelines, content runway health, task delivery to fulfilment
- Build and maintain client-facing AI automations (ManyChat DM and comment flows, per-client AI agents) · localised per brand, click-tested, kept true to each client's source of truth
- Run the marketing infrastructure: Meta Business partner access, Buffer channel wiring, integrations · and troubleshoot them with logs and isolation, not guesses
- Deliver complex ad-hoc client work (landing pages, booking-flow fixes, outreach campaigns, data pulls) to a standard that goes straight to the client
- Work WITH AI properly: Claude and similar as power tools, you as the editor · everything AI-produced is verified against reality before it moves anywhere
What you'll do
- Take a two-line brief, confirm the spec back in five, then deliver end-to-end with full ownership
- A real example: a client needs a new website. You build it with Claude Code, spend four hours making it genuinely good rather than merely done, send it for approval, then work out where their domain and hosting actually live, get access, and move the DNS across. The part that matters is noticing their email runs on those same records, and making sure nothing touches them.
- Click-test every link, test-message every flow, and attach the proof when you report it done
- Escalate blockers inside 30 minutes with what you already ruled out · a teammate can often unblock in an hour what would otherwise cost days
- Close each day in your own words: what shipped, what is verified, what is blocked, tomorrow's one priority
- Spot the class of problem behind the instance and fix that: write the runbook, add the guardrail, kill the recurrence
How we work
- Paid trial before anything permanent · one to two weeks on real work at the full rate. Execution and initiative do not show up on a CV, and we would rather both find out properly than guess.
- Definition of Done here = verified outcome plus evidence, every time
- One system of record (Slate) · priorities live there the moment they are agreed
- Everything client-facing gets a two-minute check against their own site, files or listings before it goes out
- Named credentials on every system from day one · you never work through someone else's logins
- Direct line to the founder, minimal meetings, real autonomy · this seat exists so nothing needs a second pass
Inside the setup
- Slate · our own internal platform (Next.js, Supabase) running scheduling, tasks, client portals and finance
- AI everywhere: Claude Code and agents in daily production use, ManyChat AI deployments clients pay for, an always-on agent machine
- Remote, async-friendly, with UK working-hours overlap for client and founder contact
- Small senior team: founder, creative director, lead editor, editors · no layers between you and the work
The ideal person
- Initiative is the whole job. We can teach the stack. We cannot teach someone to realise that a DNS change might take a client's email down before they make it. If you need a specific instruction for every step, this seat will frustrate you and we will both know within a fortnight.
- Software-engineering-adjacent background plus real marketing operations experience · you have administered a martech stack, written automations you had to keep alive, and been the last pair of eyes before a paying customer saw the result
- Verification is your reflex, not a process you follow · you report things done once you have watched them work
- You use AI as a power tool and stay the editor: prompting well, checking the output against reality, and knowing what it should not be allowed to touch
- Fluent with everyday software at speed: screen recordings, DNS basics, browser automation, APIs, file sharing
- You compress: a 60-second voice note over a 30-minute recording, five lines over five paragraphs
- You look before you ask, push back with reasons when you disagree, and act on direct feedback fast
Read this bit twice
We would rather you closed this tab than spent twenty minutes on the form and a fortnight finding out. This seat is not for you if:
- You need a defined process before you can start. For most of this work there isn't one, and writing a procedure for every task would take longer than doing it.
- You have never held the credentials to a live system that a paying customer depends on.
- Your first move on a broken integration is to escalate it rather than read the logs and isolate it.
- You want a strategy or reporting seat. Our software does the reporting and the founder sets direction · this is systems, operations and delivery.
- You cannot overlap UK working hours by at least four hours a day.
- You report things as done because you finished them, rather than because you watched them work.
How hiring runs here
- 1
Apply
This form. About 20 minutes, longer than most on purpose · it is the first part of the job.
- 2
We read it properly
Every application gets read. Strong ones hear back inside a few days, and we tell you either way.
- 3
One short call
Twenty minutes with the founder. No panel, no take-home exercise written for its own sake.
- 4
Paid trial
One to two weeks on real client work at the full rate. Execution and initiative do not show up on a CV · you do the actual job, paid, and we both decide from there.
If you are the person teams hand things to when it has to be right first time, and you build with AI rather than around it, this is a senior seat with real systems to own and a founder who wants to hand you the keys.
We start with a paid trial of one to two weeks on live work. No long interview process, no take-home exercise written for its own sake · you do the actual job, paid, and we both decide from there.
Your details are only shared with the SocialsGroup hiring team.