Sr. Marketing Governance Strategy Manager

Sr. Marketing Governance Strategy Manager

Company: Kia America, Inc. Location: Irvine, CA, US, 92606

At Kia, we're creating award-winning products and redefining what value means in the automotive industry. It takes a special group of individuals to do what we do, and we do it together. Our culture is fast-paced, collaborative, and innovative. Our people thrive on thinking differently and challenging the status quo. We are creating something special here, a culture of learning and opportunity, where you can help Kia achieve big things and most importantly, feel passionate and connected to your work every day. Kia provides team members with competitive benefits including premium paid medical, dental and vision coverage for you and your dependents, 401(k) plan matching of 100% up to 6% of the salary deferral, and paid time off. Kia also offers company lease and purchase programs, company-wide holiday shutdown, paid volunteer hours, and premium lifestyle amenities at our corporate campus in Irvine, California.

Status Exempt General Summary The Sr. Marketing Governance Strategy Manager serves as the strategic integration lead within the Marketing organization, ensuring enterprise marketing priorities are translated into structured, executable plans across teams and channels. This role partners with Marketing leadership during strategy development cycles to provide feasibility, sequencing, and prioritization input, helping ensure that strategic initiatives are operationally realistic and cross-functionally aligned. Operating at the intersection of strategy and execution, the role establishes integrated roadmaps, aligns interdependencies, and maintains governance mechanisms that improve predictability, reduce execution risk, and strengthen enterprise-wide coordination. By bringing structure, visibility, and disciplined planning to the marketing portfolio, this position ensures that strategies are not only well-defined, but executable and sustainably delivered.

Regional–Corporate Liaison (Support): Acts as the liaison across Kia Headquarters (HQ), Kia North America (Kia NA) and Kia America (KUS) on strategic guideline alignment, driving pre-analysis, options & risk/impact recommendations, negotiation talking points, and approval packets to support the final decision. This role produces pre-checks, recommendations, negotiation drafts, and approval-packet assembly to support final approval.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Priority One – 30% Strategic Planning Integration & Development Partner with Marketing leadership during annual and quarterly planning cycles to align cross‑functional timing across production, media, retail, PR, partnerships, and finance. Translate Brand and General Marketing strategies into integrated execution roadmaps. Identify priority conflicts or resource constraints early and recommend sequencing adjustments. Establish structured launch frameworks that clarify accountability and cross-team coordination.

Priority Two – 25% Enterprise Alignment & Governance Cadence Lead recurring strategic alignment checkpoints to ensure clarity on priorities, risks, and required decisions. Maintain and manage the enterprise marketing master roadmap to ensure cross-channel synchronization. Provide structured visibility into launch readiness, timing and budget risks, while tracking decisions and escalation pathways to maintain momentum and accountability. Deliver executive-ready summaries that connect execution status to business impact.

Priority Three –20% Change & Impact Management Coordinate implications of scope, budget, or timing changes across the marketing portfolio. Assess downstream impacts on production schedules, retail readiness, and financial planning. Maintain structured change, dependency, and risk logs, and drive cross‑functional mitigation strategies to address bottlenecks and protect launch integrity.

Priority Four – 15% Strategic Reporting Specification & Decision Support Infrastructure Design the Kia HQ reporting specification, including definitions, formulas, data sources, and verification checklists. Review and validate Kia HQ and Kia NA strategic inputs and prepare decision‑support materials to ensure accuracy, narrative consistency, and alignment for leadership decisions. Maintain governance documentation and ensure organization‑wide accessibility and adoption of standards.

Priority Five – 10% Planning Standards & Continuous Improvement Develop and maintain standardized planning frameworks, milestone definitions, and governance checkpoints. Establish measurable indicators related to execution predictability and delay drivers. Analyze recurring execution challenges and refine processes and the Marketing operating model to enable scalable growth.

Personally Performed Duties Maintain the enterprise marketing master roadmap across brand, launches, and general marketing. Build and refresh integrated project plans and detailed timelines that translate strategy into executable workstreams, sequencing, and milestone ownership. Coordinate end-to-end execution readiness across internal teams and agency partners from kickoff through delivery, ensuring handoffs, approvals, and dependencies are managed to plan. Own end‑to‑end change coordination, including impact assessment, recommendations, decision tracking, and communications. Prepare decision‑support materials to enable timely leadership review and approvals. Develop and share execution health insights to drive process and governance improvements.

Qualifications/Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience required. Masters or MBA is a plus.

Job Requirement 8+ years of experience in marketing operations, integrated marketing planning, or project management within a cross-functional marketing organization 5+ years of experience working in production, media, PR, experiential, and/or partnerships workstreams highly preferred. Experience defining reporting requirements and translating data into clear, executive-level insights and recommendations. Automotive OEM experience is preferred.

Specialized Skills and Knowledge Required

Strategy-to-execution planning: translate priorities into clear plans and actions. Advanced Excel/PowerPoint; familiarity with planning tools and execution logs (risks/decisions/dependencies). Governance cadence discipline with early risk visibility and follow-through. Cross-functional stakeholder management (teams, agencies, HQ/regions). Integrated planning/program management across milestones, approvals, and dependencies (incl. change impacts). Executive-ready communication (written/verbal summaries and recommendations). Analytical problem-solving: synthesize data, surface tradeoffs, recommend actions. Budget/financial systems familiarity.

Competencies Care for People Chase Excellence Every Day Dare to Push Boundaries Empower People to Act Move Further Together

Pay Range $108,698.72 - $146,709 Pay will be based on several variables that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to, job-related skills, experience, relevant education or training, etc.

Equal Employment Opportunities KUS provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, including pregnancy and childbirth and related medical conditions, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, legally protected physical disability or mental disability, legally protected medical condition, marital status, sexual orientation, family care or medical leave status, protected veteran or military status, genetic information or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. KUS complies with applicable law governing non-discrimination in employment in every location in which KUS has offices. The KUS EEO policy applies to all areas of employment, including recruitment, hiring, training, promotion, compensation, benefits, discipline, termination and all other privileges, terms and conditions of employment.