Operations Manager - Global Ad Operations

Operations Manager — Global Ad Operations

Team: Global Ad Operations · Reports to: Head of Global Ad Operations Location: Bulgaria — [Varna / Sofia / Remote] Contract: Permanent, full time 

About us

Improve Digital, part of Azerion, monetises the inventory of publishers across Europe and beyond. We run a managed monetisation service, a self-service product for long-tail publishers, and in-app and video solutions. Our stack is our own Prebid wrapper, Google Ad Manager, and a set of supply-side platform integrations that grows every quarter.

We operate as a global operations team alongside multiple local business units, each with its own sales and account management. That structure is a real advantage commercially and a real source of friction operationally. This role exists because of the second part.

The role in one paragraph

We are looking for someone to run the operating system of our ad operations function — not to be its most senior technician. You will own how work enters the team, how it is prioritised, how much capacity we have, what quality means, and how we hold our own standards when a business unit changes its priorities for the third time in a week. You will manage a distributed team across three countries — through their lead, plus two functional specialists. Roughly fifteen people in total, across three countries and two languages.

What we are looking for

How you work — this matters more to us than your CV

• You finish the task to get the result, not just the deadline. "Delivered, but it did not work" is not delivered — you either stay with it or say the approach was wrong and change it.
• You raise the whole team, not just the people who always deliver. Routing the important work to your strongest few is the easy path; it is also how you lose them and how nobody else grows. You see how the group actually works and close the gaps deliberately — delegation, coaching, documentation, honest feedback.
• You will sometimes open the tool and solve a real problem yourself — and never mistake that for the job. Sometimes it is the fastest way to unblock the team. But if you are deep in individual tasks while capacity is unmeasured and adoption is behind, the role is not being done.
• You hold focus. This place offers an endless supply of interesting problems. We need someone who can tell what moves the results from what is merely engaging, say no or not now, and still be on the same priorities in week eight as in week one.

Experience

• Managing an operations, technical support or ad operations team, including managing through team leads
• Measuring workload in a defined unit and using it to argue for, or against, headcount
• Designing a process and getting it adopted by people who do not report to you
• Holding a position with someone senior, outside your reporting line, without capitulating or escalating immediately
• Saying no, or "not this week", with the trade-off made explicit
• Real performance conversations — expectation set, followed up, seen through either way
• Developing someone already competent into someone materially more capable, and being able to name them and what changed
• Working knowledge of programmatic advertising: header bidding, Google Ad Manager, Prebid, ads.txt, sellers.json, supply-side platform integrations — enough to scope work and judge its quality
• Fluent English, working across time zones and cultures

Not required

• Being the deepest technical expert on the team
• Managing a large team before — we care more about how you have managed than how many

How we work

• Distributed across Bulgaria, Italy and, shortly, the Philippines — with in-person time where it matters
• Google Workspace, Slack, Zoho CRM and Desk, BigQuery, Looker Studio
• We prefer a documented standard over a heroic individual, and a measured claim over a confident one

Your first ninety days will involve

• A backlog of feature and platform integrations waiting for adoption
• More onboardings running concurrently than one process can currently absorb
• One territory still on separate systems, migrating onto ours during your first year
• Get to know an experienced local team and onboard a new team in a new country to ramp

We would rather tell you this now than have you discover it in month two. If that list reads as a problem set rather than a warning, this is probably your job.

Process

1. Introductory conversation with the Head of Global Ad Operations, 45 minutes
2. Structured interview against a published competency set — you will receive the competency list in advance
3. Two work samples: a capacity analysis on real anonymised data, and a ninety-day plan. Sent to you 48 hours ahead; 
4. Conversation with the Account Management Manager, your closest peer
5. Decision, with feedback either way (if you got this far in the process)