Head of Studio

Job Title: Head of Studio
Location-Type: Remote (NYC or LA Area Preferred)
Start Date Is: ASAP
Duration: Permanent
Compensation Range: $180-220K
Benefits: Eligible for Health, Dental, Vision, 401K
Must be authorized to work in the U.S. This position is not eligible for sponsorship.

Our client is a growing immersive design and experiential agency creating high-impact physical experiences and environments for culture-driven brands. The studio brings together strategic design, creative thinking, and production expertise to deliver work across experiential, spatial, and integrated disciplines. The agency is highly creative, entrepreneurial, and collaborative, with a strong emphasis on producing exceptional work while building an environment where teams can do their best thinking.

Position Overview

The Head of Studio is a senior leadership role responsible for ensuring the studio not only operates effectively, but consistently produces work at an exceptional creative standard.

This person will own the systems, resourcing, processes, and operational infrastructure that turn creative ambition into successful delivery. They will work closely with creative and production leadership to ensure projects are properly scoped, staffed, budgeted, and executed without compromising the quality of the work. This is both an operational and strategic position. The Head of Studio will translate creative and agency strategy into the scoping, budgeting, staffing, and process discipline necessary to deliver ambitious work on time and on budget. They will also help determine how the studio evolves including its capabilities, tools, processes, talent, and ways of working. The ideal candidate can operate at multiple levels: building systems that allow a growing studio to scale while remaining close enough to the work to understand what great creative looks like and identify risks before they become larger issues.
Responsibilities include:

Studio Leadership & Growth

• Help establish and maintain a high standard for the studio's creative output and overall delivery.
• Think strategically about how the studio should evolve, including capabilities, talent, tools, technology, and ways of working.
• Partner with creative, production, and agency leadership to translate vision and strategy into operational reality.
• Help create an environment that enables ambitious creative work while maintaining strong operational and financial discipline.

Team Development, Oversight & Resourcing

• Lead and mentor senior operational and production team members across the studio.
• Oversee and continue developing the Creative Producer function, ensuring producers are both operationally rigorous and creatively fluent.
• Establish effective resource planning across projects based on scope, budget, timing, workload, and required skill sets.
• Monitor utilization and team capacity to ensure projects are sustainably staffed.
• Help identify, attract, and develop the talent required as the studio grows.
• Create clear accountability and strong collaboration across creative, production, operations, and project delivery teams.

Scoping & Budgeting

• Own scoping, budgeting, and margin standards across the studio's portfolio of work.
• Ensure project estimates appropriately balance creative ambition with financial and operational realities.
• Partner with internal teams on project-level scopes, budgets, staffing plans, and margin health.
• Establish clear escalation points for changes involving scope, budget, timing, resources, or deliverables.

Process & Operations

• Oversee and continuously improve the studio's end-to-end operating process, from intake and scoping through kickoff, production, and final delivery.
• Identify gaps, inefficiencies, and potential risks before they impact creative teams, clients, or project delivery.
• Build processes that support great creative work rather than adding unnecessary layers or bureaucracy.
• Evaluate the tools and systems used across the studio and identify opportunities to improve how teams collaborate, plan, and deliver work.
• Help build scalable infrastructure while maintaining the flexibility required in a fast-moving creative environment.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Serve as a strategic partner to Creative, Production, and Agency Leadership.
• Balance creative integrity and ambition with operational, financial, and resource considerations.
• Support new business and RFP efforts by providing guidance around scoping, staffing, budgets, and production feasibility.
• Ensure strong communication and collaboration across creative, production, operations, external partners, and client-facing teams.

Qualifications:

• 12–15 years of experience in studio leadership, creative operations, experiential production, or production management.
• Significant experience within an **experiential, immersive, or design-led agency/studio environment** with exposure to physical and experiential work.
• Strong understanding of how creative concepts move from idea through design, fabrication, production, and real-world execution.
• Proven experience owning scoping, budgeting, and resourcing across a portfolio of work, rather than solely at the individual project level.
• Experience building, refining, or scaling the operating processes of a creative organization.
• Strong understanding of resource planning, team structure, utilization, project economics, and production delivery.
• Experience managing and developing senior team members and/or managers.
• Ability to operate effectively within an entrepreneurial, evolving environment where processes and structures are still being built.
• Strong creative sensibility and an understanding of workflows spanning design, spatial, digital, experiential, and production disciplines.
• Ability to earn credibility with both creative and production teams and balance creative ambition with executional realities.
• Excellent judgment, communication, and organizational skills with a calm, collaborative presence under pressure.
• Low-ego leadership style with the ability to make decisions, create clarity, and move teams forward.