Head of Creative Operations

The Planet Group; San Francisco (CA); Remote; USD 152,000 - 165,000; Full time

Job summary

The Planet Group is seeking a Head of Creative Operations to build and lead the operational infrastructure for a global creative organization. This hands-on leadership role focuses on establishing systems, workflows, and staffing models that enable fast, high-quality work across campaigns, events, and partnerships.

Reporting to executive creative leadership, you’ll partner with marketing, product, and external partners to optimize capacity, manage projects, and drive AI-enabled production

Qualifications

• Significant experience leading creative operations in complex environments.
• Ability to build operating models for multiple function needs.
• Strong capacity planning and resource allocation skills.
• Proven project management leadership in large teams.
• Experience evaluating AI-enabled tools and workflows for efficiency.

Responsibilities

• Build and lead the creative operations function with scalable systems.
• Develop flexible operating models for diverse work.
• Own capacity planning and resource allocation.
• Lead the project management team and set standards.
• Create clear workflows, roles, milestones, and approvals.
• Optimize processes and tooling for efficiency.
• Drive AI and emerging tech adoption with best practices.
• Manage external agencies and production partners.
• Partner with marketing, product, and finance for prioritization.
• Develop reporting metrics for workload and performance.
• Enable creative excellence with outcome-focused leadership.

Skills

Creative ops leadership

Project management leadership

Resource planning

Cross-functional leadership

AI/automation adoption

Data-driven decisions

Job description

Position: Head of Creative Operations

Location: Remote (PST Hours)

Duration: 6months

Pay: $110-$120/hr depending on experience

The Planet Group is seeking a Head of Creative Operations to join our client, a global network of millions of interest-based, user-generated micro-communities centered around niche topics, hobbies, and discussions, operating at a massive scale with distributed moderation.

As Head of Creative Operations, you'll build and lead the operational infrastructure that enables our creative organization to do its best work. This person will establish the systems, workflows, resource models, and tools that help teams move quickly, collaborate effectively, and deliver high-quality work against the business's most important priorities.

Work spans a wide range of creative needs: high-volume, iterative user acquisition campaigns; ambitious consumer brand campaigns across TV, OOH, social, and experiential; major industry events at CES and Cannes; brand partnerships; and performance-driven B2B digital advertising. You'll build an operating model that adapts to the needs of the work, balancing speed and efficiency with the strategic thinking, creative ambition, and production rigor each project requires.

You will also champion the thoughtful adoption of AI and emerging technologies to improve how creative work is developed, produced, and delivered -- identifying opportunities to increase speed, scale, and efficiency without compromising creative quality.

Reporting to the Executive Creative Director, you'll partner closely with creative leadership, marketing, cross-functional stakeholders, and external agencies to manage the flow of work across the organization. You'll bring clarity to competing priorities, ensure the right people are working on the right projects, and create the conditions for great creative work to happen.

This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who can balance strategic thinking with operational execution. You know how to build processes that create clarity and accountability without slowing people down or getting in the way of the work.

Head of Creative Operations Responsibilities:

• Build and lead creative operations. Establish a clear operating model for the creative organization, including project intake, prioritization, scoping, staffing, timelines, and delivery. Create scalable systems that support both B2C brand and B2B marketing needs, bringing consistency to how work gets done without imposing a one-size-fits-all process.
• Develop flexible operating models for different kinds of work. Understand the distinct demands of user acquisition, performance marketing, consumer brand campaigns, experiential activations, social content, industry events, brand partnerships, and B2B advertising. Establish the right workflows, team structures, production approaches, and delivery expectations for each -- balancing high-volume iteration and speed with the strategic development and craft required for larger, more conceptual work.
• Own capacity planning and resource allocation. Develop a clear view of team capacity, capabilities, and commitments. Partner with creative leadership to allocate resources against business priorities, identify gaps, and recommend when to shift resources, engage external partners, or add capabilities.
• Lead and develop the project management function. Manage and develop the creative project management team, establishing consistent standards, clear expectations, and strong accountability. Build a proactive, solutions-oriented culture that anticipates problems, resolves blockers, and keeps work moving.
• Create clarity and accountability. Establish effective workflows, roles, decision-making processes, and communication rhythms across creative, marketing, and cross-functional teams. Ensure projects have clear owners, briefs, milestones, and approval paths, with visibility into progress, dependencies, and trade-offs.
• Optimize how creative work gets made. Evaluate existing processes and tools, identify friction and inefficiencies, and continuously improve how work moves from brief to delivery. Introduce structure where it adds value and eliminate unnecessary process where it doesn't.
• Drive the thoughtful adoption of AI and emerging technologies. Identify and implement AI-enabled tools and workflows where they can meaningfully improve creative development, production, asset versioning and adaptation, project management, and operational efficiency. Partner with creative leaders and teams to test new approaches, establish best practices, and scale what works. Balance innovation with creative quality, brand integrity, responsible use, and appropriate human oversight.
• Manage external creative partners. Establish effective ways of working with agencies, production companies, freelancers, and other external partners. Help determine when work should be handled in-house versus externally, and ensure external resources are deployed effectively to meet the needs of each project and the business.
• Partner across the business. Build strong relationships with marketing, brand, product marketing, user acquisition, media, production, finance, and other stakeholders. Balance incoming requests with business priorities while protecting focus and ensuring the creative team is working on the highest-impact opportunities.
• Bring visibility to performance. Develop reporting and operating metrics that provide a clear picture of workload, capacity, delivery, resource utilization, budget, and operational health. Use these insights to surface trade-offs, inform decisions, and improve team effectiveness.
• Enable creative excellence. Create an environment where talented people can focus on doing their best work. Your job is not simply to make creative production more efficient; it's to help the organization make better work, with greater consistency and impact.

Head of Creative Operations Responsibilities:

• Significant experience leading creative operations, creative production operations, or integrated project management within a complex in-house creative organization, agency, or similar environment.
• Experience building or evolving creative operating models that support multiple business functions, stakeholders, channels, and types of work.
• A strong understanding of the different operational demands of high-volume performance marketing and user acquisition, integrated consumer brand campaigns, TV and OOH, social, experiential, industry events, brand partnerships, and B2B advertising.
• Proven ability to lead and develop project managers, establish clear expectations, and build a high-performing operations function.
• Strong expertise in resource and capacity planning, prioritization, workflow design, workload management, and production operations.
• Experience managing external agencies, production partners, freelance talent, and creative budgets.
• Experience evaluating and implementing AI-enabled tools and workflows to improve creative operations, production efficiency, and team effectiveness.
• Excellent cross-functional leadership and communication skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and navigate competing priorities.
• A track record of bringing order to ambiguity, solving problems proactively, and driving change without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Strong analytical and organizational skills, including the ability to use data to identify bottlenecks, inform resource decisions, and measure operational performance.
• A genuine understanding of the creative process and respect for the people who do the work. You know that operational excellence should enable great ideas, not constrain them.

What Success Looks Like:

• A clear operating model: Teams understand how work enters the organization, how priorities are set, who owns decisions, and how projects get delivered.
• The right process for the right work: High-volume, iterative campaigns move efficiently, while major brand campaigns and complex activations get the strategic attention, collaboration, and production rigor they require.
• Better resource allocation: Leadership has an accurate view of capacity and can make informed decisions about what the team should take on, defer, resource externally, or invest in.
• A stronger project management function: Project managers operate proactively, anticipate challenges, and consistently deliver against agreed priorities.
• Smarter use of technology: AI and automation reduce repetitive work, accelerate production where appropriate, and free creative teams to focus on higher-value thinking and making.
• Less friction, more focus: Creative teams spend less time navigating process and competing requests and more time developing and delivering excellent work.
• Stronger cross-functional partnerships: Stakeholders have greater visibility into timelines, trade-offs, and outcomes, and understand how to work effectively with the creative organization.
• A scalable creative organization: The systems, team structure, and external partnerships can flex as the company's B2C and B2B marketing needs evolve.
• Experience with both client-side and agency-side roles desired.