Senior Director, Global Sales Operations

About us

At Udemy, we’re on a mission to transform lives through learning. Through our intelligent skills platform and a global community of instructors, we’ve helped over 70 million learners and 16,000 organizations achieve their goals. Come join us in ensuring everyone, everywhere has access to the skills they need to unlock their potential and create possibilities for themselves and others.

This hybrid position requires two days per week in our Denver office.

About you 

You’re a collaborative, data-driven, and creative problem-solver who loves diving into the details. You thrive in dynamic environments like ours where you can strategically build systems, processes, and tools to create best-in-class customer experiences. You love influencing our company’s growth journey and enabling our internal go-to-market teams to efficiently generate revenue and scale.

About this role 

We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Head of Sales Strategy and Operations to join our mission at Udemy to improve lives through learning. In this role, you will be responsible for leading and executing initiatives to drive sales growth, optimize operational efficiency, and enhance overall sales performance. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in sales strategy development, sales operations management, people leadership and a proven track record of driving profitable revenue growth in the SaaS industry at scale of $1B+ ARR.

The Head of Sales Strategy and Operations will play a pivotal role in driving business results, profitability, forecasting accuracy, and creating scalable processes within the Udemy Business organization. This position requires a proactive leader with strong analytical capabilities, critical thinking, problem-solving skills and operational excellence mindset. The ideal candidate will collaborate closely with sales leadership and be the ops partner to the Global Sales leader of Udemy Business, while ensuring alignment with other key business functions such as Marketing, Customer Success, Partners and Finance.They will lead a direct team of Sales ops partners aligned to Regions and Business Development function, and Sales compensation.

What you'll be doing

Sales Strategy:

• Develop and implement a comprehensive sales strategy including segmentation and coverage model aligned with the company's goals and objectives.
• Analyze market trends, customer insights, and competitive landscape to identify growth opportunities and market positioning strategies.
• Collaborate with executive leadership to define sales targets, forecast sales performance, and track key metrics to measure success.

Sales Operations Management:

• Support sales leadership to deliver the financial and operational results every quarter.
• Lead the sales operations team to ensure rigor and efficiency in sales processes, including sales forecasting, pipeline management, and deal reviews.
• Own all aspects of quota and capacity planning.
• Develop and lead all Sales Revenue, and Sales and Customer success compensation operation teams
• Optimize sales workflows, systems, and technologies to streamline operations and enhance productivity.
• Support sales enablement programs to empower the sales team with the necessary tools, resources, and training to drive revenue growth.

Performance Analytics and Reporting:

• Establish OKRs and metrics to evaluate sales performance, productivity, and revenue growth.
• Conduct regular performance reviews including weekly forecasting, MBR (Monthly Business Review), QBR (Quarterly Business Review), etc., analyze sales data, and generate actionable insights and recommendations for continuous improvement.
• Provide insights to the business based on data analysis of historical performance to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Prepare and present comprehensive sales reports, forecasts, and dashboards to executive leadership and stakeholders.

Cross-Functional Collaboration:

• Act as the primary business partner to the Udemy Business SVP of Sales, providing strategic guidance and support.
• Collaborate closely with marketing, customer success, and finance teams to align sales strategies with overall business objectives, pricing strategies, opex budget guidelines, etc.
• Drive cross-functional initiatives to improve customer acquisition, retention, and upsell opportunities through data-driven insights and customer feedback.

Leadership and Team Development:

• Provide strong leadership, mentorship, and guidance to the sales strategy and operations team, fostering a culture of accountability, innovation, and continu