Location: NYC (hybrid - 3x onsite)
Job Type: 8-month W2 hourly contract (extension/conversion based on performance)
Compensation Range: $60-67/hr
Benefits: health/vision/dental, 401k, and more (https://shorturl.at/GMPcb)
Brand is advancing a multi-year transformation to build an AI-enabled, integrated, and agency-light content operating model. This involves Adobe-enabled transformation, creative workflow redesign, selective in-housing of production/post-production, marketer self-service, digital asset management (DAM), agency optimization, and value realization.
We are seeking a strategic, hands-on transformation leader to turn emerging AI capabilities into practical, governed, and scalable ways of working. Partnering across Brand Creative, Creative Operations, Brand AI Transformation, Finance, Sourcing, Marketing Transformation, Product, Tech, Legal, Risk, and agencies, this role determines which work moves in-house, stays with agencies, operates hybrid, or becomes marketer self-service.
This is not a traditional finance, project coordinator, or tech-product role. The ideal candidate combines transformation strategy, creative ops, AI fluency, operating-model design, and commercial discipline to assess ambiguous workflows, establish facts, recommend future-state models, mobilize stakeholders, and execute roadmaps with measurable business cases.
Primary Outcomes
- Define the future-state creative and content operating model.
- Identify and prioritize viable in-housing opportunities (creative, production, post-production, high-volume adaptation).
- Translate creative and business needs into clear Adobe and enterprise-tech requirements.
- Design and execute pilots validating quality, speed, capacity, controls, and economics before scaling.
- Establish an agency-light model preserving external partners for high-value strategy, original creative, specialist craft, and variable capacity.
- Build credible value cases connecting workflow changes to agency-scope and budget decisions.
- Create operating mechanisms to sustain capabilities post-transformation.
Responsibilities:
Transformation strategy and operating-model design
- Lead current-state assessments of creative, production, post-production, and asset-management workflows to resolve fragmentation, handoffs, rework, and capacity constraints.
- Design future-state workflows, roles, decision rights, governance forums, service tiers, and handoffs across internal teams and agencies.
- Recommend work allocation across four delivery models: in-house, agency, hybrid, and marketer self-service based on value, complexity, volume, risk, craft, automation potential, and capacity.
- Translate strategy into sequenced roadmaps, implementation requirements, decision points, and measurable outcomes.
- Ensure pilots have a clear path to operationalization, ownership, training, support, and steady-state delivery.
Creative operations and in-housing strategy
- Assess creative workflows from brief/intake through concept, production, review, approval, delivery, trafficking, and archiving.
- Evaluate opportunities across photography, video, motion graphics, retouching, versioning, resizing, templates, and social content.
- Develop make-versus-buy assessments evaluating quality, speed, cost, capacity, risk, expertise, and demand variability.
- Define the talent, skills, capacity, workflow, and technology needed to internalize selected work.
- Establish pilot criteria and scale gates (quality, utilization, turnaround, rework, stakeholder acceptance, unit economics).
- Support the transition of approved work from agencies to internal teams, including scope definition, knowledge transfer, documentation, and readiness.
- Partner with Sourcing and Finance to align in-housing plans with agency contracts, retainers, and SOWs.
AI and Adobe capability strategy
- Translate creative jobs-to-be-done into structured business, workflow, data, governance, and tech requirements.
- Assess where AI can automate or augment work versus where human judgment and specialist craft must remain primary controls.
- Partner with Adobe, Product, and Tech teams to evaluate relevant tools (Creative Cloud, Firefly, Firefly Services, Adobe Express, GenStudio, Frame.io, AEM Assets, Workfront), distinguishing out-of-the-box, configuration, integration, and new-build needs.
- Design use cases and pilots with explicit inputs, outputs, success criteria, human review points, and handoffs.
- Evaluate AI outputs for strategic fit, quality, brand consistency, repeatability, rights, and control readiness.
- Help establish responsible-AI practices, including approved boundaries, human review, documentation, transparency, brand governance, and escalation paths.
- Remain technology-agnostic to avoid forcing workflows into ill-fitting tools.
Workflow, data and governance
- Define intake requirements, standardized briefs, workflow stages, approval paths, exception handling, and SLAs.
- Establish data requirements to measure demand, capacity, cycle time, revision rounds, automation, asset reuse, spend, and value.
- Partner with Workfront and DAM teams to improve asset traceability from request through storage.
- Define requirements for metadata, taxonomy, naming, rights, ownership, approval evidence, and asset retrieval.
- Develop governance models for templates, self-service, AI-assisted content, brand validation, and agency use.
- Clarify responsibilities and handoffs among transformation teams, Creative Ops, Brand Creative, DAM, Legal, Risk, Tech, and business owners.
Value realization and commercial strategy
- Build bottom-up business cases for prioritized in-housing and automation opportunities.
- Distinguish total external spend, addressable spend, gross avoidable cost, internal delivery cost, and net realized value.
- Connect capability/workflow changes to agency labor, production, facility, markup, revision, and retainer impacts.
- Partner with Finance and Sourcing to validate assumptions against invoices, SOWs, POs, rate cards, staffing plans, and delivery volumes.
- Develop scenario and sensitivity analyses covering volume, complexity, staffing, tech, residual external services, and ramp timing.
- Establish benefit owners, measurement methods, and reporting cadences; distinguish committed savings, cost avoidance, productivity, capacity creation, and reinvestment.
- Produce decision-ready recommendations for senior leadership.
Change leadership and adoption
- Develop stakeholder and change-impact assessments for new workflows, roles, and decision rights.
- Create adoption plans covering communications, training, office hours, documentation, champions, feedback, and reinforcement.
- Facilitate working sessions, surface conflicting requirements, and drive decisions.
- Coach teams through transitioning from project-based execution to repeatable operating capabilities.
- Ensure roles are designed around future-state outcomes and human-AI collaboration rather than just automating tasks.
Executive communication and program leadership
- Develop concise, decision-oriented materials for senior Brand, CFO, CMO, and cross-functional leadership.
- Translate complex creative, technology, and financial issues into clear choices and tradeoffs.
- Manage an integrated portfolio of transformation opportunities, pilots, dependencies, risks, decisions, and benefits.
- Operate independently in ambiguous environments, establishing structure, momentum, and accountability across diverse teams.
Qualifications:
- Significant experience leading enterprise transformation, operating-model redesign, or workflow transformation.
- Demonstrated experience in creative operations, marketing operations, in-house agencies, creative production, content supply chain, or agency transformation.
- Working knowledge of end-to-end creative workflows (briefing, resource planning, production, post-production, approvals, asset delivery/reuse).
- Demonstrated ability to move from strategy to execution (diagnosis, future-state design, pilots, implementation, operational handoffs).
- Practical understanding of generative AI and automation in creative/marketing environments (use cases, human oversight, quality, governance, adoption).
- Experience evaluating technology capabilities against business and workflow requirements.
- Experience developing business cases, cost models, and value frameworks.
- Ability to analyze agency scopes, commercial models, staffing plans, rate cards, and production costs.
- Strong executive communication, facilitation, and influence skills across cross-functional stakeholders.
- Strong judgment, intellectual curiosity, and ability to work independently in ambiguous environments.
- Advanced PowerPoint and Excel capabilities for executive narratives, operating models, frameworks, and financial scenarios.
Strongly preferred
- Experience implementing or transforming an enterprise creative technology ecosystem.
- Familiarity with Adobe Creative Cloud, Firefly, Firefly Services, Adobe Express, GenStudio, Frame.io, AEM Assets, or Workfront.
- Experience designing or scaling an in-house agency or internal creative studio.
- Agency-side strategy, creative operations, or production-transformation experience.
- Experience with photography, video, social, motion, versioning, retouching, or content-adaptation workflows.
- Experience with DAM, metadata, taxonomy, rights management, and asset governance.
- Experience designing marketer self-service or template-governance programs.
- Experience in regulated industries with formal legal, compliance, privacy, or model-risk requirements.
- Experience with supplier strategy, sourcing, contract restructuring, or agency roster optimization.
- Change-management or process-design certification.
- Target candidate backgrounds.
- Creative operations or in-house agency transformation leader.
- Content-supply-chain transformation consultant.
- Agency operating-model or creative-production strategist.
- Marketing transformation leader with creative workflow knowledge.
- Creative technology or AI transformation strategist.
- Senior program leader who has built internal creative capabilities.
- Expected Deliverables
- Validated current-state workflow and spend assessment for priority in-housing workstreams.
- Future-state creative operating model and work-allocation framework.
- Prioritized portfolio of AI and in-housing opportunities with clear selection criteria.
- Detailed pilot plans for agreed photography, video, social, versioning, or self-service use cases.
- Adobe and enterprise capability requirements mapped to prioritized workflows.
- Capacity, talent, and skills model for steady-state internal delivery.
- Governance and handoff framework across Brand, Creative Ops, Tech, Legal, Risk, and DAM.
- Validated value-realization model linked to agency scope and budget actions.
- Executive roadmap with decisions, dependencies, owners, milestones, and scale gates.
- Knowledge-transfer package enabling internal teams to sustain the operating model.
Job ID: JN -092026-145894
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At Cella, a randstad digital company, we welcome people of all abilities and want to ensure that our hiring and interview process meets the needs of all applicants. If you require a reasonable accommodation to make your application or interview experience a great one, please contact HRsupport@randstadusa.com.
Pay offered to a successful candidate will be based on several factors including the candidate's education, work experience, work location, specific job duties, certifications, etc. In addition, Cella by randstad digital offers a comprehensive benefits package, including: medical, prescription, dental, vision, AD&D, and life insurance offerings, short-term disability, and a 401K plan (all benefits are based on eligibility).
This posting is open for thirty (30) days.
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