Creative Operations Manager

Applecart•New York, NY

3d•$95,000 - $115,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Applecart is seeking a Creative Operations Manager to establish and oversee the daily operational system for its expanding creative department. This is a hands-on role focused on managing the creative workflow, prioritizing incoming requests, ensuring workflow visibility, tracking deadlines, coordinating creative production, and implementing process improvements. The successful candidate will collaborate with various internal teams, including Design Director, Client Services, Media, and Account leads, to ensure creative projects are accurately scoped, assigned, monitored, reviewed, and delivered on time. The role requires someone organized, proactive, and capable of maintaining composure in a fast-paced environment with rapidly shifting priorities. The ideal candidate can manage daily production details while also identifying opportunities to enhance workflow efficiency, transparency, and scalability.

Requirements

4+ years of experience in managing creative operations and workflows, creative project management, production management, agency operations or a similar role at a fast-paced agency, media, campaign, performance marketing or client service environment
Strong understanding of creative production processes, including intake, briefing, production, review, revisions, delivery and file handoff
Experience with paid media, digital advertising, programmatic display, social ads
Excellent communication skills, with the ability to give clear status updates and surface risks early
Experience working with designers, creative leads, account/client service teams, media teams and external vendors
Comfort managing both day-to-day project details and broader process improvements
Strong attention to detail and a high level of accountability
Ability to stay calm, organized and solutions-oriented under pressure
Experience with project management tools such as Asana or similar platforms
Familiarity with Adobe Creative Cloud workflows, source-file management and digital asset organization

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting political, advocacy, public affairs, issue-based or other fast-turn campaign work a plus
Experience managing creative workflows with remote, offshore or vendor-based design teams a plus
Experience building creative operations processes in a growing or evolving function a plus

Responsibilities

Manage the day-to-day creative queue, including intake, task setup, prioritization, assignments, status updates and delivery tracking
Review incoming creative requests to confirm scope, assets, specs, timing, priority and required context before work moves into production
Partner with the Design Director to triage standard, rush and same-day creative requests based on business need, capacity and delivery requirements
Maintain clear visibility into what is assigned, in progress, at risk, ready for review, delivered and awaiting feedback
Coordinate with designers to ensure work is moving through the queue accurately and efficiently
Track asset counts, deliverables, due dates, revision rounds and handoffs across multiple active requests
Help manage rush requests by clarifying priorities, surfacing tradeoffs and communicating timing clearly
Ensure working files, source files, final exports and supporting assets are organized and accessible in approved systems
Help enforce intake standards, file management requirements, version control and creative workflow expectations
Identify bottlenecks, recurring issues and process gaps, then recommend practical improvements
Track and report on creative volume, capacity, turnaround, rush requests, revision and workflow trends
Partner with Client Services, Media and Account leads to clarify expectations, reduce unnecessary back-and-forth and improve handoffs
Help onboard new designers, vendors or contractors into the creative workflow and production process
Support implementation of new tools, templates and processes as the creative function scales