Head of Creative Operations & Production

Overview

At Microsoft, were building a modern, AI-forward marketing organization that learns faster, activates smarter, and drives measurable impact. Our in-house creative studio produces the work that brings Microsofts commercial brand to life across every channel and customer touchpoint. This role exists to make that studio run exceptionally well - fast, predictable, cost-aware, and built to scale.

The Head of Creative Operations & Production owns how the studio runs and how the work gets made. On the operations side, that means the intake and prioritization model, resourcing and capacity planning, the work management and asset platforms, budget, and the reporting that shows stakeholders what they are getting. On the production side, it means the production slate end to end (pre-production, production, and post) along with crew and vendor rosters, rights and clearances, and delivery standards.

These are two adjacent disciplines, and this role brings them together under one operating standard. You will own the model, not the creative output: your partners lead the creative work, and you make it possible for them to do it at pace and at quality. Success looks like creative teams spending their time on craft rather than chasing status, and stakeholders getting reliable answers on what is in flight, what it costs, and when it lands.

You will lead a team that includes operations managers and producers, and you will build the systems, standards, and tooling that let the studio scale without adding proportional headcount. We expect this leader to use AI-enabled tooling and automation to streamline intake, reporting, resourcing, and production workflow wherever it removes manual effort.

Key outcomes: a single, well-run front door for creative demand; accurate capacity and forecasting; predictable on-time delivery; clear cost-per-asset visibility; and a production capability that reliably delivers to spec. Success is measured by throughput, on-time delivery, cycle time, utilization, rework rate, and stakeholder confidence in the studio.

At Microsoft, our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more guides how we partner with customers to deliver trusted, impactful solutions. With a growth-mindset culture, we innovate responsibly and measure success by shared progress across people, teams, and customers. Join us to do meaningful work that changes the world and helps shape what is next for everyone.

Responsibilities

Intake and demand management

• Own a single front door for creative demand, with clear brief standards and a published intake service-level agreement.
• Run the triage and prioritization framework with marketing stakeholders, so the studio works on the highest-value requests and trade-offs are explicit.
• Hold the bar on brief quality, returning incomplete requests rather than absorbing ambiguity downstream.

Resource and capacity management

• Forecast demand against supply and allocate people to work with a clear view of utilization.
• Manage freelance and partner surge capacity to absorb peaks without compromising quality or timelines.
• Give leadership an accurate, current picture of what the studio can absorb and what it cannot.

Workflow, systems, and tooling

• Own the work management platform end to end - templates, workflows, permissions, and reporting.
• Own the digital asset management, review, and approval tooling, including taxonomy and metadata standards that make assets findable and reusable.
• Apply AI and automation to intake, routing, reporting, and production workflow to reduce manual effort and cycle time.

Production operations

• Own production standards and the pre-production, production, and post-production pipeline across the slate.
• Build and maintain crew and vendor rosters, and set the standard for how production partners are selected and managed.
• Ensure permits, releases, talent usage, and rights tracking are handled correctly, including expiration monitoring.
• Set delivery specifications and the handoff path into asset management so finished work is properly archived and reusable.

Financial management

• Own the studio budget, including project estimating, statement-of-work and purchase-order management, and vendor negotiation.
• Establish cost-per-asset visibility and use it to guide where work is produced and how it is resourced.
• Operate and refine the studios funding model, tracking variance and reporting it clearly.

Governance

• Build brand, legal, accessibility, and localization review paths into the workflow itself rather than bolting them on at the end.
• Partner with brand, legal, and accessibility teams so approvals are fast, traceable, and consistently applied.

Measurement and reporting

• Define and report the studios operating metrics: throughput, on-time delivery, cycle time, utilization, and rework rate.
• Own the quarterly business review narrative to stakeholders, connecting studio performance to marketing outcomes.

People leadership

• Lead and develop a team of operations managers and producers, setting a high bar for craft, judgment, and ownership.
• Build the organizational design of the studio as it scales, including where to add capability and where to automate.
• Influence senior stakeholders across marketing and the commercial organization, representing the studio with clear rationale, evidence, and trade-offs.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelors Degree in Business, Marketing, Communications, Finance, Engineering, or related field AND 10+ years of marketing operations, program management, project management, or related experience OR equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications:

• 12+ years of experience in creative operations, production management, or studio leadership, or equivalent experience spanning both agency and in-house environments.
• Demonstrated experience owning a creative or production budget, including estimating, vendor negotiation, and variance management.
• Demonstrated experience leading and developing teams, including producers and operations managers.
• Experience standing up or materially scaling an in-house creative studio, rather than maintaining an established one.
• Depth across both creative operations and production management, with the judgment to know which discipline a given problem belongs to.
• Hands-on ownership of a work management platform such as Workfront, Asana, Wrike, or Airtable, including administration and reporting.
• Experience with digital asset management, taxonomy and metadata design, and review and approval tooling.
• Experience applying AI and automation to operational or production workflows.
• Working knowledge of talent usage rights, clearances, and releases in a production context.

Marketing Technology M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $130,900 - $251,900 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $165,600 - $272,300 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.