Let’s chat about what traits actually matter when you’re hiring a Marketing Operations Professional and how to build a strong MOPs team
Hiring for marketing operations professionals isn’t just about checking boxes for platform certifications or job titles. The right Marketing Operations Professional (MOPs) hire is a blend of technical ability, strategic thinking, and collaboration skills—and finding that balance can make or break your team’s ability to scale and drive real impact.
Here are seven essential qualities to look for when evaluating your next MOPs hire:
#1) Do your potential MOPs hire understand how data works?
While understanding data might sound straightforward forward there are complexities to this topic. A surprising number of candidates can navigate a platform but struggle with foundational data concepts. A solid MOPs hire should understand system architecture, like how Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRMS) are structured — e.g. Objects, property relationships, how data flows in/out of the systems.Â
A winning candidate is excited about working in Excel Spreadsheets or Google Sheets. They can conceptualize how to think about data, whether analyzing or mapping data for attribution and/or reporting. The critical takeaway is that the candidate does not need to be a data scientist, but they must be digitally fluent in how marketing and sales data interact across tech stacks and teams. Without that fluency, everything downstream (like automation or reporting) starts to fall apart.
#2) Do they know the systems?
Ideally, your candidate has experience in your core tools—whether that’s Marketo, HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pardot. Certifications in these platforms are a bonus, but even more important is whether they actually know how to apply them in real-world scenarios.
Don’t write off someone just because they haven’t worked in your exact stack. If they understand the principles of how marketing automation and CRM platforms work, a competent MOP professional can usually cross-train. A HubSpot pro can learn Marketo. A Pardot admin can pick up Salesforce. What matters is whether they can think systemically—and adapt.
#3) Do they have the ability to “figure things out”?
Marketing ops is full of curveballs. Whether it’s a bug in a campaign flow, a last-minute field mapping request from sales, or an unexpected reporting gap, your MOPs person will often need to troubleshoot independently.
Curiosity, grit, and resourcefulness are essential qualities for this role. You want someone who knows how to use Google or AI intelligently, test strategically, and rely on documentation or community forums to find solutions, because they will encounter problems if no one provides a solution.
#4) Do they know how to work with cross-functional teams?
Hiring a Marketing Operations Professional doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You want to look for a team player who knows how to play nice in the sandbox. A good MOPs hire knows how to navigate cross-functional work with product, marketing, sales, and customer success teams. They can actively listen, document requirements, understand requirements, respectfully disagree if necessary, to translate problems into clean, scalable solutions.
Bonus points if they’re good at managing up—because most projects require balancing business requests with technical feasibility and data integrity.
>>Related: 7 Ways to Break into Marketing Operations: Your Step-by-Step Guide<<
#5) Does your potential MOPs hire know how to say “no”?
This one’s underrated—and crucial. MOP professionals have to be stewards of the data infrastructure. That means they need to be comfortable pushing back when requests threaten to compromise data quality, add unnecessary complexity, or break existing systems.
Saying “yes” to every request might make them popular at first, but over time, it leads to bloated workflows and broken reporting. You want someone who can say no politely but firmly, and offer better alternatives instead.
#6) Do they thrive on building reports and monitoring data?
Many MOP folks love building campaigns or flows, but fewer enjoy the less glamorous side of reporting, hygiene, and data monitoring. A gardener might hate to weed, but understands that the grunt work makes the flowers bloom. The same is true for an operations person, good data governance makes all the flashy reporting meaningful.
Leadership doesn’t get the insights they need without good reporting and data quality. If these fall by the wayside, your tech stack will quickly become a black box. Your hire must be excited (or at least willing) to dive into data and ensure it’s clean, consistent, and valuable.
#7) Are they organized, and can they manage the project?
The role of Marketing Ops is to put out fires. There are always many competing project priorities, ranging from quick-turn automated campaigns to long-term attribution projects. Essential tasks will slip through the cracks if your MOPs hire isn’t organized or adept in self-management.
You don’t need a certified project manager, but you do need someone who can keep timelines, communicate progress, and manage dependencies across teams. This skill is make-or-break, especially when it comes to strategic, longer-term projects.
Final Thoughts:
Hiring the right Marketing Operations professional won’t just know how to use the tools—they’ll understand how those tools serve your broader business goals. Look for someone curious, thoughtful, and who knows how to bridge the gap between systems and strategy. Because when you hire the right person, marketing ops becomes more than a support function—it becomes a growth engine.
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