Senior Manager, Creative Operations

Havenly Brands (Havenly, Interior Define, Burrow, The Citizenry, The Inside, and St. Frank)•Quinte West, ON

About The Position

We’re hiring a Senior Creative Manager to lead creative operations and team management across Havenly Brands. This is a newly created role—and a critical one. Reporting directly to the Head of Creative, you’ll serve as the day-to-day leader of our design team, translating creative vision into structured execution across all brands and channels. This isn’t a pure design role. While a strong creative eye is essential, the primary value of this position is operational: building systems, managing workflows, driving accountability, and ensuring the team consistently delivers high-quality work on time and at scale. You’ll also champion the team’s adoption of AI and creative automation tools, embedding emerging technologies into production workflows rather than treating them as side experiments. You’ll manage a team of graphic designers, oversee their output across campaigns, product launches, and ongoing marketing needs, and serve as the connective tissue between creative strategy and hands-on execution.

Requirements

Strong creative eye
Operational skills: building systems, managing workflows, driving accountability
Experience managing a team of graphic designers
Experience overseeing output across campaigns, product launches, and ongoing marketing needs
Experience with creative production pipeline management (intake, briefing, assignment, review, revision, delivery)
Experience developing and enforcing creative briefs, naming conventions, file organization systems, and version control standards
Experience establishing and reporting on creative team KPIs (turnaround time, revision rates, throughput, quality benchmarks)
Experience conducting 1:1s, setting quarterly goals, and running performance reviews
Experience facilitating creative standups, sprint planning, and retrospectives
Experience identifying skill gaps, recommending training, and supporting hiring
Experience tracking and reporting on creative performance across channels (paid media, email/lifecycle, organic social, site)
Experience translating performance data into actionable creative insights
Experience leading creative post-mortems
Experience integrating AI tools into creative production (AI image generation, prompt engineering, automated asset adaptation, AI-assisted concepting)
Experience operationalizing AI workflows, prompt libraries, and quality assurance protocols for AI-generated content
Knowledge of emerging creative technologies (generative AI, automation platforms, DAM systems, production tooling)
Experience training and upskilling teams on AI tools and automation workflows
Experience defining governance standards for AI-generated creative (brand consistency, quality thresholds, metadata tagging, rights management)
Experience identifying opportunities to automate repetitive production tasks
Experience ensuring creative output aligns with brand guidelines
Experience maintaining and evolving brand asset libraries, templates, and style guides
Experience QAing creative work for brand consistency, craft quality, and technical accuracy
Experience serving as a creative operations point of contact for various teams (Marketing, E-commerce, Merchandising, Product, Retail)
Experience translating stakeholder requests into actionable creative briefs
Experience managing expectations around scope, timelines, and deliverables
Experience coordinating with photography and content production teams

Responsibilities

Own the creative production pipeline end-to-end: intake, briefing, assignment, review, revision, and delivery across all Havenly Brands properties.
Build and maintain structured creative workflows, project timelines, and capacity plans that keep the team ahead of the volume and complexity of incoming requests.
Develop and enforce creative briefs, naming conventions, file organization systems, and version control standards.
Establish and report on creative team KPIs: turnaround time, revision rates, throughput, and quality benchmarks.
Directly manage graphic designers—providing clear direction, constructive feedback, and professional development support.
Conduct regular 1:1s, set quarterly goals, and run performance reviews.
Facilitate daily or weekly creative standups, sprint planning, and retrospectives.
Build a culture of craft, accountability, and creative ambition within the team.
Identify skill gaps, recommend training, and support hiring as the team scales.
Serve as the first point of escalation for design feedback, creative conflicts, and cross-functional requests before they reach the Head of Creative.
Track and report on creative performance across channels—paid media, email/lifecycle, organic social, and site—partnering with Growth and Marketing to understand what’s working and why.
Translate performance data into actionable creative insights: identify top-performing formats, concepts, and messaging, and build upon them in future work.
Lead creative post-mortems on campaigns and key initiatives, synthesizing learnings and rolling them into the team’s next iteration cycle.
Build a feedback loop between performance results and the design team so data informs creative decisions without replacing creative instinct.
Champion the integration of AI tools into creative production—including AI image generation, prompt engineering, automated asset adaptation, and AI-assisted concepting.
Partner with the Head of Creative to operationalize AI workflows, prompt libraries, and quality assurance protocols for AI-generated content.
Stay current on emerging creative technologies—generative AI, automation platforms, DAM systems, and production tooling—and evaluate their applicability to the team’s work.
Train and upskill designers on AI tools and automation workflows, building team-wide fluency and reducing friction.
Help define governance standards for AI-generated creative: brand consistency, quality thresholds, metadata tagging, and rights management.
Identify opportunities to automate repetitive production tasks—template creation, format adaptation, asset versioning—to free designers for higher-value creative work.
Ensure all creative output aligns with brand guidelines across Havenly, Interior Define, Burrow, and The Expert Collection—each carrying a distinct visual identity and market position.
Maintain and evolve brand asset libraries, templates, and style guides in partnership with the Head of Creative.
QA all work leaving the creative team for brand consistency, craft quality, and technical accuracy.
Serve as the primary creative operations point of contact for Marketing, E-commerce, Merchandining, Product, and Retail teams.
Translate stakeholder requests into actionable creative briefs and manage expectations around scope, timelines, and deliverables.
Coordinate with photography and content production teams to ensure alignment between design, photography, and video assets.