Creative Operations Manager

Overview

At Microsoft, we're building a modern, AI-forward marketing organization that learns faster, activates smarter, and drives measurable impact. Our in-house creative studio produces the work that brings Microsoft's commercial brand to life across every channel and customer touchpoint. This role keeps that studio running day to day.

The Creative Operations Manager runs the intake queue, traffics work to the right teams against real capacity, and owns the systems and reporting that keep everything visible. You are the person who knows what is in flight, who is working on it, whether it is on track, and what it will cost. When a brief arrives incomplete or a schedule is at risk, you catch it early and resolve it.

This is a hands-on role for someone who enjoys building order out of competing demands. You will work closely with creative leads, producers, and marketing stakeholders, and you will have real ownership of the tools and processes the studio depends on. We expect you to use AI-enabled tooling and automation to reduce manual work in intake, status reporting, and resourcing.

Key outcomes: a clean and current intake queue; briefs that meet standard before work begins; accurate capacity and assignment data; a reliable master schedule; and weekly reporting stakeholders trust. Success is measured by on-time delivery, cycle time, brief completeness, and the accuracy of capacity and budget reporting.

At Microsoft, our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more guides how we partner with customers to deliver trusted, impactful solutions. With a growth-mindset culture, we innovate responsibly and measure success by shared progress across people, teams, and customers. Join us to do meaningful work that changes the world and helps shape what is next for everyone.

Responsibilities

Intake and brief quality

• Run the intake queue day to day, triaging incoming requests and keeping the queue current and accurate.

• Hold the bar on brief quality, pushing back on incomplete or unclear briefs before work is scheduled.

• Work with requesters to sharpen scope, deliverables, and timing so projects start with a clear definition of done.

Trafficking and resourcing

• Traffic work to the right teams and assign resources against current capacity.

• Track utilization and surface conflicts, bottlenecks, and over-allocation before they affect delivery.

• Partner with producers and creative leads to rebalance assignments as priorities shift.

Work management systems

• Serve as administrator for the work management platform, owning templates, workflows, permissions, and reporting views.

• Keep project data clean and current so reporting reflects reality without manual reconciliation.

• Identify and implement automation and AI-enabled improvements that remove repetitive administrative work.

Schedule and dependencies

• Maintain the master calendar across the studio's active work.

• Map schedule dependencies across projects and flag downstream risk as dates move.

Budget tracking

• Track project budgets against estimates and flag variance early with a clear explanation of the driver.

• Support estimating, purchase-order processing, and invoice reconciliation in partnership with finance.

Freelance roster

• Manage the freelance roster, including sourcing, onboarding, rate management, and performance feedback.

• Coordinate contracts and onboarding logistics so freelance talent is productive quickly.

Reporting

• Produce the weekly status and capacity reporting for the studio and its stakeholders.

• Maintain operating metrics such as throughput, on-time delivery, and cycle time, and surface trends that need attention.

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Business, Marketing, Communications, Finance, Engineering, or related field AND 2+ years of marketing operations, program management, project management, or related experience OR equivalent experience.

Additional or preferred qualification

• 5+ years of experience in creative operations, studio operations, project management, or agency traffic management, or equivalent experience.

• Hands-on experience with a work management platform such as Workfront, Asana, Wrike, or Airtable.

• Experience in an in-house creative studio or a creative agency, supporting designers, writers, and producers.

• Administrator-level ownership of a work management platform, including building templates, workflows, and reports.

• Experience with resource and capacity planning across concurrent projects and competing priorities.

• Experience tracking project budgets and managing freelance rosters, rates, and onboarding.

• Familiarity with digital asset management, review and approval tooling, and creative production workflow.

• Experience applying AI or automation to reduce manual operational and reporting work.Excellent written and verbal communication, with the confidence to push back constructively on incomplete requests.

Marketing Technology IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $86,100 - $169,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $113,300 - $187,400 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

Marketing Technology IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $106,400 - $203,600 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $137,600 - $222,600 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations. (