Creative Operations Lead

Gusto•San Francisco, NY

2d•$172,000 - $253,000•Hybrid

About The Position

At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff—like payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR—so owners can focus on their craft and customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we’re proud to support more than 400,000 small businesses across the country, and we’re building a workplace that represents and celebrates the customers we serve. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy . About Design at Gusto Design at Gusto is made up of over 80 creative, collaborative people who care deeply about our mission to empower small businesses and their employees. We're a cross-functional group that is always looking for opportunities to build comprehending and empathy for the people who use Gusto. We don't care much about swim lanes and though we care deeply about quality and craft, we are never precious about it. We work closely with cross-functional partners in Product, Engineering, Data, and Marketing to design, build, and ship experiences that make a real difference. We believe great design can make hard things possible, even delightful. We are building an AI-native design organization — and we mean that seriously. We're looking for designers who are already working this way: using AI to prototype ideas quickly, shorten customer feedback loops, and ship quality UX directly to customers. This isn't a future goal — it's how we work now, and it's changing what the design role looks like at Gusto and across the industry. About the Role: The work coming out of Gusto's Creative team has never been more ambitious or more central to our mission. Across brand, campaigns, production, and content, our creative work shapes how we reach, connect with, and serve small businesses and their employees. The volume, variety, and quality bar for that work keeps rising, and we're building the operational foundation to match it. We want world-class creative work to happen predictably and at scale, without the friction that slows great teams down. We're looking for a Creative Operations Lead who brings genuine creativity to operational problems. The systems don't exist yet—you'll invent them. This isn't a role for someone who follows playbooks; it's for someone who writes them. You'll design and run the AI-enabled systems, processes, and programs that allow our brand, creative, and marketing teams to do their best work, predictably and at pace. You'll also coach and develop a production manager, building shared team capability as the function grows. In this role, you will rethink our operational approaches from the ground up using an AI-first mindset to rethink and scale how we work:

Requirements

8+ years of experience in creative operations, production management, or program management within a brand, creative, or marketing function
Demonstrated success building creative operations infrastructure from scratch or significantly improving an existing system at a scaling company—not just coordinating within one
Solid production background. Hands-on experience managing large campaigns. This includes video and photo shoots, as well as content programs in different formats.
End-to-end ownership of agency and vendor management: scoping, contracting, invoicing, payment, and performance review
Experience owning a creative or production budget, including forecasting, actuals tracking, and Finance partnership
A genuinely AI-native approach to operations—you use AI to redesign workflows, not just hasten them up, and you can point to specific systems you've built that others now rely on
Proven ability to work across multiple functions (marketing, brand, people, finance) and build trust as a reliable, anticipatory operational partner
A natural problem solver who brings creativity and ingenuity to operational challenges—someone who designs elegant systems, not just workable ones
Robust communicator and systems thinker who can document processes, build shared operational fluency, and make structure feel like an enabler rather than a constraint

Responsibilities

Design and run the AI-enabled creative operating system.
Build Gusto's complete creative ops infrastructure from the ground up. This includes frameworks for intake and prioritization.
Develop resourcing models, briefing workflows, and production systems.
Automate what should be automated, and free the team for work that requires human judgment, craft, and creativity.
Own vendor, production, and budget management:
Lead agency and vendor relationships from scoping to payment to performance review.
Partner with Finance to own budget tracking, forecasting, and reconciliation.
Ensure every production has the right partners, locked budgets, and clear timelines before work begins.
Improve throughput, quality, and predictability.
Build systems and visibility tools. These tools will provide the management with real-time insight into pipeline health, capacity, and output quality. This allows the team to scale its impact without increasing its tension.
Build cross-functional creative infrastructure:
Partner with Marketing, Brand, People, and other functions to align on shared processes, SLAs, and expectations.
Create an operating model that gives every cross-functional partner clarity on how to engage the creative team—when, how, and at what cost.
Create systems that enable teams to get what they need without bottlenecking through ops.
Establish asset management and production oversight:
Build or improve digital asset management (DAM) systems to ensure creative assets are organized, discoverable, and properly versioned.
Define standards for naming, storage, archiving, rights management, and distribution that help the team execute consistently as it evolves.