🚦Director of Creative Operations

Mission

Kaizen to drive project delivery with clarity, efficiency, consistency, and profitability.

Responsibilities

• Own the Project and Resource Management function, including capacity planning and forecasting, team allocation and utilization, and delivery health.
• Lead and grow the Project Management team, setting standards and expectations for scope management, delivery excellence, margin health, and cross-functional relationships.
• Continuously improve the project delivery system with smarter processes, smoother workflows, simpler SOPs, better tools, clearer communications, and greater visibility.
• Partner with the COO to set clear, strong benchmarks for team utilization, then take full ownership of upholding them.
• Partner with the Finance and Analytics teams to ensure delivery and margin health are visible and understandable through accurate and timely reporting and forecasting.
• Partner with leaders across Creative, Account, Talent, and Finance to align pipeline and revenue with staffing and execution needs, translating them into resourcing plans and hiring recommendations.
• Partner with the COO and the Talent team to vet and prioritize hiring requests.
• Oversee on-demand resourcing engine (contractors, freelancers, and vendors), including roster quality and relevance, rate negotiation, allocation, and utilization.
• Mentor and develop a diverse team of Project Managers along their career paths, leading by example, elevating their management and leadership capabilities.
• Report directly to the COO.
• Work in a hybrid environment, with a minimum of 3 days in-office (with flexibility).

Rewards

• Salary range of $150K – $200K, based on proficiency, capability, and experience.
• Career support system with clear paths to raises and growth opportunities.
• Higher autonomy with greater role effectiveness.
• Benefits package (family, health, wellness, dental, vision, prescription, etc.)
• Paid time-off (holidays, vacation days, sick and wellness days, etc.)
• Warm office environment with designated desks and a fully stocked kitchen.
• And more to support the whole you.

• Team player in it for the long game.
• Lifelong learner exemplifying a growth mindset.
• Pursue personal and professional development while supporting others in theirs.
• Exemplify the company’s core values.
• Aim for excellence and keep raising the bar.
• Prefer open, direct, and frequent communication and feedback.
• Embrace the messy reality of life and work with optimism and responsibility.
• Embody a strong back, soft front, open mind, light heart, high EQ, and enduring grit.

• Understand the depths and nuances of creative agency operations, including cross-functional integration and collaboration to deliver excellence.
• Communicate clearly, directly, and proactively, including difficult conversations.
• Simplify complexity into clear systems, structures, and processes.
• Embrace ambiguity as raw materials to distill into clarity.
• Obsess over establishing strong alignment and clear accountability to drive results.
• Pay close attention to results (and make results visible and understandable to others).
• Channel productive paranoia in planning to mitigate risks.
• Keep eyes and ears open for bottlenecks and inefficiencies to eliminate.
• Envision, design, assess, and implement solutions that simply work and stick.
• Stand by your best ideas while staying open to better ones.
• Use AI to enhance deep thinking, not replace it.

Must-haves

• Competency and proficiency as outlined above.
• Minimum 8 years in project management or equivalent at a creative, branding, marketing, or advertising agency.
• Minimum 5 years in a leadership role.
• Proven capability to scope, plan, prioritize, schedule, and orchestrate both speedy projects and complex campaigns or programs.
• Strong communication skills (written, verbal, presentational, and interpersonal).
• Proficiency with modern project management tools (Asana or equivalent).
• Proficiency with Google Apps (Drive, Cals, Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc.)

Nice-to-haves

• Experience in serving enterprise clients.
• An inclination to learn, do, and teach.
• Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and/or Professional Scrum Master (PSM) or equivalent.
• A degree useful to this role (Project Management, Business Admin, MBA, etc.)