Strategy & Operations Manager - Demand Gen Programs (APJ)

About this role

SLSQ327R270

The Prospecting Programs team works directly with Databricks' Sales Development and Sales leaders to build a world-class top-of-funnel engine. We give every xDR and AE the programs, plays and insights they need to turn market potential into predictable pipeline and revenue.

We work where strategy, AI and the field meet. We own the programs that are moving scaled, AI-native prospecting from an experiment to the way Databricks prospects by default.

We're hiring a Manager, Prospecting Programs to own prospecting programs across our APJ business. That covers markets as different as ANZ, Japan, Korea, India and ASEAN, each with its own buyers, languages and ways of selling. You'll be the APJ Sales Development organization's strategic and operational partner, and the role has three core pillars:

• Run prospecting programs end to end : Be a true business partner to Sales Development leadership. You'll design, align, prioritize, launch, report on and inspect the global and regional prospecting programs that run in APJ. You'll turn global programs into regional versions that work in each market, and you'll run day-to-day program management with real rigor: cadences, timelines, owners and follow-through.

• Agentify programs: Teach our AI prospecting platform how to prospect. You'll build agentic plays for different scenarios: defining account and contact targeting criteria, researching the messaging and content that work with APJ buyers, and curating industry- and market-specific content and use cases. You'll work with Enablement to roll these plays out to the field and make sure they're actually adopted, not just launched.

• Keep improving programs: Use data to judge whether programs are working. You'll define success metrics, separate what works from what doesn't, run A/B tests on messaging, targeting and sequence design, and make data-driven recommendations and pivots. You'll close the loop so that what we learn goes back into program design and into the agents themselves.

Alongside Sales Development leadership, you'll work with Sales Programs, Strategy & Operations, Enablement, Marketing, Industry teams and Analytics to plan and prioritize programs, curate content and drive adoption.

The ideal candidate is a self-starter with endless curiosity who works across teams to solve complex problems end to end. You're AI-fluent, operationally rigorous and opinionated about how high-volume prospecting should run. You'd rather redesign a workflow from first principles than maintain a legacy one.

This is a rare chance to define what scaled, AI-native prospecting looks like at one of the fastest-growing companies in tech, and to set the blueprint for the industry.

The impact you'll have

• Own Prospecting Programs for all of APJ. That includes outcomes and inspection, metric design, measurement and reporting, governance, benchmarking, enablement, content strategy and change management.

• Shape the AI prospecting product roadmap. Bring field feedback and APJ needs to the product team. Feed the platform the content, criteria and plays that make it Databricks' core prospecting engine for both Sales and Sales Development.

• Drive prioritization and alignment. Run regular cadences with Sales Development and Sales Strategy leaders across APJ to gather feedback, set priorities and run programs, including SPIFs, contests, pipeline reviews and reporting reviews.

• Own reporting and inspection. Build the data foundation and the executive- and field-facing reporting that shows what works and what doesn't across sequences, tactics, personas, segments and markets. Turn that reporting into clear decisions, not just dashboards.

• Own sequence governance. Standardize, audit and manage Outreach sequences on an ongoing basis, both AI-driven and manual. Review design and effectiveness centrally, retire underperformers and scale what works.

• Be a force multiplier. Bring fresh thinking to old problems, build AI-powered toolkits and workflows that scale beyond you, and raise the technical bar for the whole team.

• Connect the pieces. Integrate prospecting programs with broader Sales, Marketing and Industry programs so the field gets one coherent motion. Own the feedback loop between the field, the programs and the platform.

What success looks like

• First 30 days: You know the APJ Sales Development org, its leaders and the current program portfolio. You've set up a regular operating cadence with regional leadership, baselined the core program metrics, and delivered at least one quick win, such as a cleaned-up sequence library or a new inspection view.

• First 90 days: You've launched agentic plays tuned to APJ markets, run structured A/B tests that produced clear learnings, and set up a trusted, single source of truth for program reporting across the region.

• First 9 months: Scaled, AI-native prospecting is the default operating model in APJ. Coverage, conversion and xDR productivity have improved measurably, and the playbooks you built are being reused in other regions.

What we look for

• AI fluency is non-negotiable. AI tools are part of how you work every day. You can show where they've multiplied your output.

• A "built something from nothing" background. Strong examples include program or GTM strategy at a hypergrowth company, owning Sales Development or prospecting programs, or consulting followed by hands-on operating experience. We want people who thrive where no playbook existed yet, and who wrote one.

• Exceptional attention to detail and instinct for data integrity. The role needs consistent, high-quality delivery: accurate exec-facing work, on-time delivery, honest status and zero-defect output. You spot discrepancies, trace them to the root cause, and won't ship a number you can't defend.

• Program ownership. You want to do the operational parts of the job, not just design them.

• A strategic view of high-volume prospecting. You have a point of view on how scaled coverage,…