Creative & Strategy Operations Manager

What Youll Do: We're growing our Creative and Strategy capabilities across APJ, and we're looking for a creatively fluent, highly connected and commercially minded Creative & Strategy Operations Manager to run resourcing across our APJ Creative and Strategy teams. Based in Delhi-NCR and working across Australia, Singapore and India, you'll ensure we have the right people, skills and specialist partners in place for every brief - managing internal resource bookings, monitoring capacity and utilisation, anticipating future demand and building a trusted regional bench of freelance talent and creative suppliers. 1. APJ Resourcing & Capacity: - Own day-to-day resource planning for Creative and Strategy across Australia, Singapore and India, maintaining a clear forward view of live work, pipeline, availability and bookings. - Lead regional resourcing meetings, resolving competing requirements through reprioritisation, cross-market support or external talent. - Match people to briefs based on capability, experience, location, availability, cost and team chemistry - not simply who is free. - Identify capability gaps, over-allocation, under-utilisation and delivery risks early, providing leadership with practical recommendations. - Support pitches, project mobilisation, priority accounts and periods of peak demand. 2. Freelance Bench & Supplier Management: - Build and engage a diverse, high-quality APJ bench of freelancers, specialist consultants, creative collectives, studios and production partners across Creative and Strategy. - Assess portfolios, reels and case studies with practice leadership, maintaining useful profiles of suppliers' capabilities, experience, location, availability, rates and performance. - Own the supplier lifecycle from sourcing and rate negotiation through briefing, onboarding, extensions and offboarding. - Partner with internal teams to ensure contracts, statements of work, confidentiality requirements, purchase orders and compliance processes are completed before engagements begin. - Maintain preferred supplier lists and rate cards, monitor contract dates and spend, and capture performance feedback to inform future bookings. - Identify gaps or risks in the bench and use patterns in freelance demand to recommend permanent hiring, new suppliers or alternative delivery models. 3. Commercial & Operational Performance: - Ensure resource plans align with project scope, timing, budget and expected margin. - Monitor utilisation, billability, workload, overtime and freelance dependency, keeping resource systems and forecasts accurate and current. - Compare planned and actual effort to identify over-servicing, under-resourcing and unplanned freelance investment. - Turn capacity, utilisation and supplier-spend data into clear recommendations for workforce planning and capability investment - balancing commercial performance with quality and sustainable workloads. 4. Better Ways of Working: - Improve brief intake, prioritisation, resource requests and approvals, establishing one trusted view of Creative and Strategy resourcing across APJ. - Create simple, scalable processes that make better use of the companys regional and global capabilities. - Explore how AI, automation and better data can improve forecasting, skills mapping, resource matching, supplier discovery and reporting. - Help shape resourcing, timelines and cost assumptions for significant pitches and new engagements. - Provide additional operational coordination for selected priority or complex projects, while delivery ownership remains with the relevant Client Marketing or Project Management lead. What Were Looking For: Must-haves: - At least six years of experience within a creative, advertising, digital, design or integrated marketing agency environment. - Meaningful experience in creative operations, creative resource management, integrated production, traffic management or agency project delivery. - A genuine creative-agency background and strong understanding of how Creative and Strategy work moves from brief to idea to execution. - Confidence assessing portfolios, creative disciplines, strategic case studies and the capabilities required for different types of work. - An active network of freelance creatives, strategists, specialist partners and studios across APJ, or credible evidence of building cross-market talent networks quickly. - Strong existing relationships within India, together with experience sourcing or managing talent across markets such as Singapore and Australia. - Demonstrable experience managing freelancers or external suppliers, including sourcing, rates, onboarding, contracts, performance and spend. - A sound understanding of capacity planning, allocation, utilisation and agency commercial models. - Strong organisational skills and the ability to keep multiple changing bookings, priorities and stakeholders aligned. - Confidence working with senior Creative, Strategy, Client Marketing and Operations stakeholders. - Excellent judgement, communication and problem-solving skills. - A collaborative, empathetic approach and the ability to build trust with both permanent employees and independent talent. - Comfort working across cultures, locations and time zones. - Strong working knowledge of resource planning, project management and reporting tools. - Note: this role requires someone who understands creative talent and agency delivery. General workforce-planning, recruitment or procurement experience alone will not be enough. Strong pluses: - Experience working in B2B, technology or complex integrated marketing. - Experience resourcing both Creative and Strategy rather than a single discipline. - Relationships with emerging AI creatives, technologists and AI-enabled production partners. - Hands-on curiosity about generative AI and how it can improve creative workflows, resource planning and operational decision-making. - Experience introducing a resource management platform, freelance management system or preferred-supplier programme. - Experience working within a global agency network or cross-market delivery model.