Ticketing Operations Manager

Job Highlights

The Ticketing Operations Manager administers the day-to-day fulfillment, stewardship, and financial operations that keep HGO's ticketing function running accurately and on schedule. This role manages subscriber benefit programs and communications, coordinates ticket fulfillment across a wide range of stakeholder groups and constituencies, and owns departmental expense coding, reconciliation, and budget tracking.

This position supports the Senior Director of Ticketing and Experience and the Associate Director of Ticketing Operations with day-to-day inventory monitoring, and partners with Marketing, Finance, and the sales and service team to ensure fulfillment, billing, and reconciliation processes run smoothly.

This is an individual contributor role reporting to the Associate Director of Ticketing Operations.

Join Us!

We are looking for talented, passionate, and dedicated people who are eager to make contributions to our community and our mission. If you are excited about this position but your experience does not align perfectly, we encourage you to apply! You may be just the right candidate for this position or another role at HGO.

About the Houston Grand Opera

The mission of HGO is to enrich our diverse community through the art of opera. We do so by creating, curating, exploring, and producing outstanding experiences centered around the human voice. HGO has received a Tony Award, three Grammy Awards, and three Emmy Awards – we are the only opera company in the world to win all three honors.

Our strategic focus is two-fold: creating profoundly enriching experiences for our diverse audiences and clearly defining and positively promoting the HGO brand. We believe every team member enriches our organization by exposing a broad range of ways to understand and engage our community and discover, design, and deliver enriching experiences.

Compensation and Benefits

We offer robust benefits to full-time employees, including:

- Comprehensive and affordable health benefits.

- Generous paid time off.

- 403b retirement plan with employer match.

- Flexible work schedule.

- Professional development fund and opportunities.

- Discounted parking in the Theater District garage and nearby lots, plus easy access to Metro transportation.

- Free tickets to our mainstage and community productions and events.

Key Responsibilities

Subscriber Stewardship

- Manage subscriber benefits, stewardship programs, and fulfillment, including Opera Unwrapped, Opera University, the Opera America Passport program, subscriber pre-sales, dress rehearsal ticketing, and related offerings.

- Manage the monthly subscriber newsletter, including strategic content planning, content generation, and timely delivery of content and other deliverables to the Marketing team.

Ticketing Operations

- Manage ticket fulfillment for members of the media and press.

- Manage fulfillment of charitable ticket bequests and blocks of tickets donated to VetTix and other partner organizations.

- Manage the season ticket mailing project.

- Manage dress rehearsal ticket fulfillment for all stakeholder groups according to their individual benefits or collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), including donors, administrative staff, artists (principal, chorus, orchestra, supers, and dancers), technical and production staff, the Baur Family High School Voice Studio, HGO Guild volunteers, community partners, and educational partners.

- Configure SheerID to verify age-based or constituency-based eligibility for ticketing discounts and benefit programs.

- Assist the Senior Director of Ticketing and Experience and the Associate Director of Ticketing Operations with day-to-day monitoring and management of inventory holds and allocations.

Departmental Expense Management & Budget Tracking

- Code and submit departmental expenses accurately and promptly.

- Create and route credit card reports for submission on a timely basis.

- Maintain monthly expense reconciliation, ensuring all expenses are coded to the correct budget lines and project IDs, and submit recode requests for any expenses recorded incorrectly.

- Track departmental year-to-date expenses against budgeted amounts and prepare monthly expense pacing reports for the Ticketing and Experience team budget lines.

- Track and reconcile bad debt and on-account funds, alerting Account Executives when intervention is required.

- Manage payment plan processing for the department, ensuring timely processing and alerting the sales and service team to failed transactions that need their intervention.

- Manage credit card chargeback reviews for the ticketing team — assembling supporting documentation for the Finance team to dispute chargebacks and processing finalized chargebacks in Tessitura.

Qualifications

- Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Accounting, Arts Administration, or related field (or equivalent combination of education and experience).

- Minimum 3 years of experience in ticketing operations, fulfillment, box office administration, philanthropy operations, or a related operational/financial role.

- Working knowledge of Tessitura or a comparable CRM/ticketing platform, including configuration of eligibility or verification tools (e.g., SheerID).

- Strong attention to detail and accuracy, particularly in financial coding, reconciliation, and reporting.

- Demonstrated ability to manage multiple concurrent fulfillment projects and deadlines across diverse stakeholder groups.

- Basic understanding of budgeting and expense-tracking practices; experience preparing pacing or variance reports preferred.

- Discretion in handling sensitive financial and constituent data.

- Strong written communication skills, including content planning and copywriting for subscriber-facing communications.

- Strong organizational and process-management skills, with the ability to work independently and follow through on recurring administrative cycles.

Equal Opportunity

Houston Grand Opera is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions at HGO are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion or belief, national, social or ethnic origin, sex (including pregnancy), age, physical, mental or sensory disability, HIV Status, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital, civil union or domestic partnership status, past or present military service, family medical history or genetic information, family or parental status, or any other status protected by federal, state, or local laws or regulations. HGO will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. HGO encourages applicants of all ages.