Head of Production Operations

Publicis Groupe; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 1,800,000 - 3,200,000; Full time

Job summary

Publicis Groupe Africa seeks an Operations Director to lead end-to-end production operations across Johannesburg and Cape Town, building a high-performing, data-driven function that delivers work on time and on budget.

You'll own ways-of-working, tooling, capacity planning, commercial hygiene, governance, and continuous improvement to unlock growth and margin while elevating client experience across brands and markets.

Qualifications

• 8–12+ years in production/studio operations or delivery management within an agency/production environment.
• Bachelor’s degree in Operations/Business/Production or equivalent experience; certifications (Agile/Scrum, Lean) advantageous.
• Demonstrated success instituting standardized WoW/SOPs and data-driven continuous improvement.
• Strong commercial acumen: utilization, recovery, and margin protection.

Responsibilities

• Own the production operations roadmap and drive improvements to processes, tools, and governance.
• Standardize SOPs from brief to delivery, ensuring consistent adoption by all teams.
• Maintain RACI clarity between Client/Brand Leads, Project/Delivery Management, and Resource/Traffic.
• Lead tool enablement, dashboards, and operational telemetry for throughput and cycle time.
• Run capacity planning rhythms and manage freelancer/supplier bench and onboarding.
• Drive utilization, recovery, and margin discipline with Finance/Commercial.
• Set operational SLAs/KPIs and monitor on-time, on-budget delivery; lead root-cause analysis.
• Lead and mentor Ops/Traffic teams and collaborate with HR on hiring and onboarding.
• Maintain risk governance, data privacy, and business continuity playbooks.

Skills

Leadership of multi-disciplinary teams

Data-driven decision making

Operations management

Commercial acumen

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Operations/Business/Production

Tools

Production tooling rollouts

Job description

Publicis Groupe Africa seeks an Operations Director to lead end-to-end production operations across Johannesburg and Cape Town, building a high-performing, data-driven function that delivers work on time and on budget.

You'll own ways-of-working, tooling, capacity planning, commercial hygiene, governance, and continuous improvement to unlock growth and margin while elevating client experience across brands and markets.