Sr. Manager, Business Planning , Events, Sports, and Sponsorships

We are seeking a highly strategic Senior Manager to join the Business Planning Team within the AWS Events, Sports, and Sponsorship (ESS) organization. This role serves as a trusted partner to senior leadership, executive-level stakeholder management, shared services partnership ownership, and organizational influence to ensure the team’s highest priorities are delivered with precision and impact.
The successful candidate will translate business priorities into actionable strategies, manage complex cross-functional initiatives, and ensure alignment across various teams both inside and outside of ESS. This role also serves as a critical pan-ESS overlay function—driving connective tissue across SSEP, Sponsorship, Global 1P and 3P Events, and Content and Platform Ops.
This role will own dedicated partnerships with shared service teams within the broader AWS Marketing organization on behalf of ESS including Strategy & Ops, Marketer Experience, Customer Research, and Data: Science and Engineering amongst others. The role will work across these centralized functions to drive cross-team alignment and build roadmaps to prioritize and deliver the highest-impact work. Through ownership of these cross-org partnerships, this role will ensure our organization retains speed, influences joint outcomes, and earns trust
The ideal candidate is a proactive problem-solver with exceptional communication skills, strong business acumen, a very strong “dot connector”, and has the ability to deliver results at all levels without direct authority while operating with exceptionally high strategic judgment in a fast-paced environment.

Key job responsibilities
Strategic Support & Planning

• Partner with the Head of Business Planning to define, communicate, and execute on organizational priorities and long-term strategy
• Track progress against key business goals and surface risks or opportunities to leadership
• Translate executive vision into actionable workstreams with clear milestones, owners, and timelines

Operations & Execution

• Oversee day-to-day business operations and ensure efficient execution of cross-functional initiatives
• Identify operational gaps and implement scalable processes and measurement frameworks to improve team effectiveness
• Manage and drive cross-functional priorities, including agenda-setting support for leadership meetings and offsites
• Establish and maintain mechanisms for inspecting progress, escalating blockers, and driving accountability

Shared Services Partnership Management
Own and drive ESS partnerships with centralized shared service organizations (examples below), ensuring aligned roadmaps, prioritized intake, and measurable outcomes:

• Data: Science & Engineering (D:SE): Ensure the highest-priority measurement projects are being worked on, provide business inputs for ROI modeling and calculations, review measurement frameworks for business context alignment, and drive increasing ROI pan-ESS.
• Marketing Strategy & Operations (MS&O): Partner across Strategic Opportunities and Customer Segmentation (SOCS), Marketing Ops (MarOps), Marketing Insights and Reporting Analysis (MIRA), and Taxonomy. Define pan-ESS needs, prioritize requests, build joint roadmaps, escalate risks, and continuously inspect mechanisms to ensure efficiency and bar-raising outputs.
• Customer Research: Ensure our interlock with Customer Research is focused on the highest priority items that we want to track through surveys including brand health, CSATs, and co-identifying new research opportunities.
• Define cohesive intake mechanisms, escalation paths, and inspection cadences for each shared service partnership
• Represent ESS interests in shared service prioritization forums, ensuring the right influence and alignment to deliver the highest outputs
• Within the broader AWS Marketing organization, shared service teams now function as centralized resources, requiring dedicated partnership owners to coordinate alignment, build joint roadmaps, and ensure ESS’ needs are prioritized and resourced. This role is central to navigating and building out that operating model effectively.

Cross-Functional Coordination & Pan-ESS Alignment

• Serve as the pan-ESS overlay driving connective tissue across SSEP, Sponsorship, Global 1P and 3P Events, and Content and Platform Ops.
• Act as a liaison between the ESS LT and internal stakeholders, ensuring clear communication and alignment
• Lead or support high-priority, cross-functional projects from inception to completion
• Facilitate decision-making by synthesizing complex information and presenting clear recommendations as it relates to portfolio planning, xMBRs, narrative writing.
• Ensure consistency of strategy, messaging, and operational approaches across ESS sub-teams

About the team
The ESS Business Planning team sits within AWS Events, Sports, and Sponsorship organization and serves as the strategic and operational backbone for the org. As ESS drives customer engagement through world-class events—from flagship properties like AWS re:Invent to regional Summits, and Sports Marketing activations through our portfolio of Sports and Entertainment partners—the Business Planning function ensures that strategic priorities are translated into execution, cross-functional partnerships deliver maximum impact, and the organization operates with efficiency and accountability.