North America Resource Strategy Director

Wpp Group; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 75,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

WPP Production (North America) seeks a Director of Resource Management to architect a unified resourcing ecosystem across the US and Canada. Lead cross-functional teams, shape the operating model, and drive data-informed decisions to optimize utilization and margin while enabling world-class creative work.

You will partner with Operations, Studio, Origination, and Delivery, align with Talent and Client Leadership, and report to the Managing Director, NA.

Qualifications

• 8-10+ years of progressive resource management, creative operations, or production management within an ad agency, production company, or global content studio network.
• Production lifecycle literacy across Origination, Studio, and Post-Production.
• Proficiency in modern operations tools and understanding of how resourcing and financial tools work together.
• Experience managing multi-office, cross-discipline talent pools across North America with budgets, SOWs, and utilization targets.
• Familiarity with enterprise AI/agentic platforms is a plus.
• Soft skills: emotional intelligence, persuasive communication, dispute-resolution, and staying calm under pressure.

Responsibilities

• Oversee resource allocation across North America and partner with deployment across all WPP Production.
• Forecast bandwidth, identify capacity bottlenecks, resolve conflicts, and rebalance staffing.
• Design and implement the enterprise capacity operating model with clear RACI responsibilities.
• Translate pipeline and growth forecasts into actionable resource demand.
• Coordinate with offshore capabilities to integrate capacity cost-effectively.
• Build and maintain standardized resourcing workflow across North American accounts.
• Collaborate with Head of Client Delivery to shape team structures and SOWs.
• Facilitate talent mobility across agencies and network production units.
• Align resource management with North America Talent Lead for cohesive functions.
• Strategize freelance needs and onboarding, manage approvals and contracts.
• Drive data governance and BI reporting; track utilization and freelance spend.
• Lead with diplomacy to balance creativity, delivery, and commercial realities.

Skills

Emotional intelligence

Persuasive communication

Dispute-resolution

Calm under pressure

Tools

Smartsheet

Monday.com

Job description

WPP Production (North America) seeks a Director of Resource Management to architect a unified resourcing ecosystem across the US and Canada. Lead cross-functional teams, shape the operating model, and drive data-informed decisions to optimize utilization and margin while enabling world-class creative work.

You will partner with Operations, Studio, Origination, and Delivery, align with Talent and Client Leadership, and report to the Managing Director, NA.