Head of Creative Operations & Production

** Overview*
* At Microsoft, we're 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 Microsoft's 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 cess 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 studio's 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 studio's 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…