A content operations manager looks after an organisation’s content operations: the workflows, tools, standards and routines that everyone else’s content work depends on. They concentrate on the conditions around content rather than producing every piece, and much of what they achieve is invisible when it’s going well.
The title is newer and less settled than most content roles. Large organisations sometimes have a dedicated post or a small team. In smaller ones the same responsibilities sometimes sit with a head of content or a content strategist, whether or not anyone calls them operations.
Why an organisation needs a content operations manager
Operational work is easy to leave to everyone, which in practice means nobody. Each team fixes its own corner: one keeps a spreadsheet of review dates, another builds a workaround in the CMS, a third stops using the approval route because it takes too long. A content operations manager gives that work an owner who can see across teams, find where work stalls, duplicates or depends on one person’s memory, and change the arrangement rather than patching it again.
The role works only with matching authority. A manager who can recommend a simpler approval route but not change it becomes a well-informed complainer. The remit commonly includes the CMS and other content tools, workflow and approval design, the content calendar, training for publishers and the rules for using AI in content work. It can overlap with IT, digital, editorial and governance roles, and gaps between them are where problems settle. Success shows in fewer errors, clearer responsibility and faster safe changes rather than in more output.
How AI changes the role
The job gains a technical layer. Someone has to decide which content tasks suit AI, which sources assistants may draw on, who can change their instructions and how results are checked. The content operations manager is often best placed to coordinate those decisions with technology and risk colleagues, without inheriting responsibilities that belong to them. Prompt libraries, automated checks and monitoring may join the CMS on the list of things the role maintains. Where an organisation also has a content manager, the operations manager builds and runs those arrangements while the content manager decides what assistants should produce and to what standard.
It also needs some resistance to automation for its own sake. Automating a reminder won’t clear an approval queue if no reviewer has the time or authority to approve; the arrangement needs fixing first. Part of the work becomes making sure people can see, question and correct what automated steps do, so a wrong change can be traced and reversed.
Questions people ask
- Is this a project manager?
Not exactly. A project such as a CMS migration may fall to the role, but its main work carries on after any project ends: keeping the arrangements running and improving them.
- Is it a senior role?
It needs enough influence to change processes across teams, which usually means backing from whoever leads content or digital. Scope varies by organisation: some posts lean towards platforms and tooling, others towards people and process.
- Does the role write content?
Not usually. Its distinctive responsibility is improving how content work happens, and any writing time tends to get squeezed by it.
- What skills does the role need?
A combination that’s rarely taught together: enough editorial judgement to know what good content needs, enough technical fluency to configure tools and work with developers, and the patience to change how people work without issuing decrees. Editorial, content design and digital project backgrounds all lead into it.
Learn more
- How to measure content operations maturity – Rob Mills compares three content operations maturity models and argues for using them as conversation starters rather than prescriptions, which is useful for anyone setting an operations role’s priorities.
- Who does what? – the Contentious guide to content roles, including where operations responsibilities sit when a team is too small for a dedicated post.