Vice President, Creative & Design

The Vice President, Creative & Design is a leadership position within Sphere Studios’ Creative & Design department, reporting to the SVP, Head of Creative & Design. This role is responsible for staffing, prioritization, and workflow management across a high-volume creative studio environment. Acting as the central point of coordination for this team of creatives and designers, the role assigns talent to workstreams based on skillset, capacity, and project priority. As a key partner to the SVP, Head of Creative & Design, this role aligns day-to-day resourcing decisions with broader creative vision and business priorities, ensuring the team is set up to deliver at the highest level, balancing competing deadlines while maintaining quality and creative consistency across all deliverables, including campaigns, content, and experiential work. Equally important, this role serves as a people-first leader and advocate for the creative team, supporting individual growth, managing workload and addressing day-to-day challenges, from multiple stakeholder demands to technology needs. This role requires a balance of operational rigor and emotional intelligence—bringing structure to ambiguity while fostering a healthy, motivated, and high-performing team. By combining resource strategy with hands-on people management, this leader plays a critical role in sustaining both creative excellence and team wellbeing.

What will you do? 

Project Staffing & Resource Management
• Oversee project staffing and team assembly, ensuring the right talent is deployed effectively across all initiatives
• Partner with Project Managers and Producers to scope and bid labor needs
• Act as the resource gatekeeper and liaison between Creative & Design and cross-functional teams (Production, Technology, Marketing, Sales, Venue Operations)
• Manage onboarding/offboarding of team members, and oversee freelance hiring as needed

 People Management
• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of creatives and designers, fostering a high-performing, collaborative culture
• Define roles, responsibilities, and career paths to support growth and retention
• Partner with HR and Recruiting on staffing, employee matters, and organizational needs
• Promote a healthy team environment by managing workload, burnout risk, and day-to-day challenges

 Creative Operations & Optimization
• Evaluate and streamline creative workflows and the end-to-end creative/design process to enhance scalability, speed, and output quality across advertising, marketing campaigns, original artwork, and event content
• Partner with Business Operations to analyze operational data to improve efficiency, team structure, and resourcing decisions, ensuring the department is structured and resourced to meet evolving demands
Partner with Technology to implement tools and systems that reduce friction and enable innovation
• Maintain visibility across the project pipeline, proactively identifying and resolving bottlenecks

Departmental Finance & Budgeting
• Partner with the SVP Head of Creative & Design to represent the department in executive-level planning and budgeting, ensuring alignment with broader business goals

• Partner with Studio Leadership and Finance to determine the department’s operating budget, including annual planning, forecasting, resource allocation, and cost control across all projects and functions

What do you need to succeed? 

• 12+ years of experience in creative operations, production operations, artist management or a related field, with significant experience in a leadership role driving organizational effectiveness and operational performance
• Deep experience supporting creative teams, with a strong understanding of production workflows across digital, experiential, and campaign-based work
• Demonstrated success in resource management and team planning, including staffing, capacity modeling, and aligning talent to project priorities in high-volume environments
• Demonstrated experience in people management and talent development, including hiring, performance management, and fostering a high-performing, collaborative team culture while managing workload and burnout risk
• Proven track record of leading operational improvements, including workflow optimization, organizational design, and scaling teams in fast-paced or high-growth environments
• Strong analytical and data fluency, with the ability to translate metrics and workload data into actionable insights, inform resourcing strategies, and drive data-informed decision-making
• Strong cross-functional leadership skills, with experience building alignment across creative, production, technology, marketing, and business teams
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to clearly convey strategies, decisions, and recommendations to stakeholders at all levels, including executive leadership
• Strong business acumen, with experience in budgeting, forecasting, and aligning creative operations with broader organizational goals
• Proven ability to design and implement scalable processes, tools, and operating models that improve efficiency, visibility, and team performance
• High level of business judgment and comfort operating in ambiguity, with the ability to balance strategic thinking and hands-on execution in a fast-paced environment

 Special Requirements

• Requires occasional travel and non-traditional work hours

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