Creative Operations Lead, Customer & Brand Partnerships

Salesforce•Chicago, IL

1d•$117,400 - $177,600•Hybrid

About The Position

Salesforce is seeking a Creative Operations Lead to serve as the operational arm and strategic business partner to the Creative Lead for Customer & Brand Partnerships Creative. This role is crucial for elevating how the creative organization operates by driving planning, intake, prioritization, and business-side management of core creative teams. The ideal candidate will act as a trusted strategic partner, building and maintaining operational rigor to enable the team to focus on creating marketing content. This role involves translating business needs into operational plans, ensuring strategic alignment and appropriate resourcing for incoming work. The Creative Operations Lead will also collaborate with other Creative Operations partners to set strategy, direction, and delivery of core processes and frameworks, fostering a shared language and consistent ways of working across global creative teams. Key responsibilities include budget management, creative intake workflows, and driving clarity, consistency, and connection across global teams and output.

Requirements

5+ years in creative operations, marketing operations, business operations, or agency account management (experience in creative environments strongly preferred).
Demonstrated experience partnering with senior creative leaders or business leaders to run operational functions (planning, budgeting, resourcing, prioritization, process).
Strong understanding of creative workflows, intake, scoping, cross-functional partnership, and project lifecycle alignment.
Proven ability to navigate ambiguity, drive clarity, and create scalable structure in evolving or fast-paced environments.
Exceptional communication, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills.
Experience implementing and optimizing operational frameworks, processes, and measurement systems.
Experience working cross-functionally with PMOs, production teams, business partners, or agency structures.
BA/BS degree or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

You thrive in operational roles where you help leaders run their business with clarity and impact.
You love designing processes, creating structure, and driving alignment across multiple partners.
You enjoy working at the intersection of creative, operational, and business strategy.
You’re energized by the opportunity to build a new operational model that will enable creative teams to do their best work.
You understand creative teams deeply and know how to protect creative focus through strong operational partnership.
You build trust quickly, communicate clearly, and bring a consistent and thoughtful point of view to prioritization and planning.
You love to solve problems, reduce ambiguity, and make the complex feel manageable.
You believe that operational maturity is the key to unlocking creative excellence—and you’re excited to help us get there.

Responsibilities

Serve as the day-to-day operational and business management partner to Creative Leaders, helping them run their business across planning, budgeting, prioritization, and measurement.
Support the Creative Leader in driving the strategy, culture, structure and management of the team, helping to identify and action on efficiencies and opportunities for team development, exposure and retention.
Act as a translator between business and creative teams, ensuring expectations, timelines, and priorities are aligned before work enters delivery.
Lead quarterly and annual planning cycles for respective creative teams and internal partners, establishing clear priorities, intake pathways, and operational rhythms.
In partnership with Creative Ops leadership, own budget management for Leaders including forecasting, opening POs and tracking.
Be prepared to support any book of creative business based on need, including but not limited to: Events and Experiences, Partnerships and Customer Marketing, Integrated Campaigns, and Brand Creative.
Be the first point of interception for all new work, partnering with Creative Leadership to validate scope, timing, resourcing needs, and alignment to business priorities.
Manage the implementation, adoption and evolution of intake and triage workflows to ensure clarity on “what’s coming” and prevent overcommitment or misalignment.
Evaluate incoming requests with a strategic lens to protect creative focus and ensure resources are applied to the highest-value work, while working with other Operational partners to provide teams alternative solutions to completing work where necessary.
Represent Creative leadership with cross-functional partners (e.g., Real Estate, Events, HR, PMO), ensuring consistent engagement, operational clarity, and shared expectations.
Partner with the PMO and Production Studio to hand off approved work, allocate resources effectively, and maintain visibility into workload and capacity.
Work with Creative Ops leads to drive standardization across planning, intake, capacity tracking, and measurement frameworks.
Implement scalable processes that support clear ownership and reduce operational friction.
Establish and maintain operational dashboards, reporting, and metrics that provide leaders visibility into workload, impact, and ROI.
Use data to inform prioritization, operational planning, and business decision-making.