Art & Media Operations Manager in Manchester

We are looking for an experienced Art & Media Resource and Production Manager to support the planning, resourcing, commercial control and day-to-day delivery oversight of our Art and Media department. This role sits within the Art and Media team and acts as the operational link between creative leadership, project teams, producers, commercial leads and external stakeholders. The role is responsible for ensuring that the department has the right people, skills, capacity and structure in place to deliver current and upcoming work effectively, while keeping resource usage aligned with project budgets and delivery priorities.

The successful candidate will need to be highly organised, commercially aware and confident working with senior creative stakeholders. They should be able to protect the quality of the creative output while also challenging decisions where scope, resource demand or creative ambition begins to exceed the agreed project budget or programme. Ultimately, the role exists to enable creative leadership to focus on creative direction, strategic decision-making and team development by providing confident operational planning, resource coordination and commercial oversight.

Key Responsibilities:

• Department Look-Ahead Planning: Maintain a clear short, medium and long-term view of upcoming Art and Media workload across live, awarded and probable projects. Work with project leads and departmental leadership to understand forecast demand, key milestones, creative review dates and critical delivery deadlines. Identify resource clashes, pressure points and capacity risks early, escalating where required with clear options and recommendations. Enable proactive planning by ensuring future project needs, resource demands and delivery priorities are visible well in advance.
• Resource Planning and Management: Own the day-to-day resource plan for the Art and Media team across internal staff, freelancers and external partners. Allocate resource against projects based on availability, skillset, seniority, budget and delivery priority. Track booked, actual and forecast resource usage across projects. Ensure the right level of resource is assigned to the right work at the right time. Manage sickness, absence and holiday cover to minimise impact on delivery. Support the prioritisation of urgent work when multiple projects or deadlines compete for the same people. Help balance departmental workload to avoid both underutilisation and burnout.
• Budget Alignment and Commercial Control: Work with project teams to understand the resource budgets allocated to Art and Media scopes at project award stage. Translate awarded budgets into usable resource plans, such as day allocations, team structures and delivery phasing. Track actual and forecast resource usage against agreed project budgets. Identify when a project is likely to exceed its allocated Art and Media days or cost allowance. Challenge scope creep, inefficient working patterns or over-allocation before they become commercial issues. Provide clear reporting to creative and project leadership on budget position, burn rate, remaining allowance and areas of risk. Ensure that creative delivery remains aligned with the commercial parameters agreed with the client.
• Creative Leadership Support and Challenge: Support departmental creative leadership with practical planning, operational structure and resource decision-making. Act as a trusted partner to senior creatives, helping them understand the commercial and delivery impact of creative decisions. Provide constructive challenge where proposed creative approaches or review cycles place delivery, resource or commercial objectives at risk.
• Strategic Hiring and Skills Planning: Review the current skills make-up of the Art and Media team against current and future project needs. Identify capability gaps, skills shortages and areas where the department may be over-reliant on specific individuals or freelancers. Work collaboratively with the Art & Media senior leadership team to identify capability gaps and make recommendations for strategic hires, freelance support, training and external partnerships. Support recruitment planning by helping define role requirements, seniority levels and priority hires. Maintain an awareness of future department needs across disciplines such as concept art, 3D, animation, motion graphics, real-time content, technical art, UI/UX, media production and interactive content. Develop a strong understanding of the effort, complexity and production requirements across creative disciplines to support accurate forecasting and resource planning. Help build a more resilient, scalable and commercially sustainable Art and Media team.
• Priority Management and Critical Deadlines: Support the department in managing competing priorities across pitches, live delivery, client reviews and internal milestones. Identify critical deadlines and ensure the required resources are protected and focused. Work with project managers, producers and creative leads to resolve conflicts between project needs. Help unblock issues where resource constraints, review delays or unclear priorities are affecting progress. Ensure urgent work is properly triaged, rather than simply added on top of existing workload. Work with departmental leadership to balance live project delivery alongside bid support, research and development, internal initiatives and strategic investment activities.
• Stakeholder Management: Act as a key point of contact between Art and Media leadership, project delivery teams, producers, commercial leads and other departments. Support internal reviews by ensuring the right people, materials and information are available. Attend relevant project meetings to understand upcoming needs, risks and changes. Communicate resource and budget impacts clearly to internal stakeholders. Where required, support external stakeholder reviews by helping align creative resource, deadlines and deliverables. Ensure that changes in client expectations, scope or programme are understood and reflected in the resource plan.
• Reporting and Process: Maintain clear and accurate resource planning tools, schedules and reports. Provide regular updates on team capacity, project allocation, budget position and resource risks. Recommend improvements to departmental planning, approval processes and ways of working. Identify opportunities to improve resource utilisation, planning accuracy and operational efficiency through continuous review and refinement of departmental processes. Help establish practical systems for tracking project days, freelance usage, budget burn and upcoming demand. Support post-project reviews to understand where resource planning, budgets or team structures could be improved.

You Should Have:

• Experience in a production, resourcing, operations or delivery management role within a creative, media, design, experiential, games, animation, VFX, advertising, digital or similar environment.
• Strong understanding of creative production workflows and the pressures involved in delivering high-quality creative work.
• Experience managing resource plans across multiple projects and disciplines.
• Good commercial awareness, including experience tracking time, budgets, burn rates or project allowances.
• Comfortable working with senior creative stakeholders and challenging decisions where required.
• Experience with freelancers, external partners and mixed internal/external team structures.
• Ability to manage competing priorities and make calm, practical decisions under pressure.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Highly organised, structured and detail-focused.
• Confident using planning, scheduling and reporting tools.

It would be great if you have:

• Experience working with art, media, animation, real-time, games, interactive, immersive or themed entertainment teams.
• Familiarity with creative software and production pipelines across 2D, 3D, motion, video, interactive and real-time content.
• Experience supporting recruitment, strategic hiring or team capability planning.
• Experience working in a project-based business where teams are allocated against sold budgets or agreed day allowances.
• Experience working with project managers, producers, creative directors and commercial teams.
• Understanding of scope control, change management and project profitability.

What it's like working at CONDUCTR:

CONDUCTR is proud to be recognised as a Great Place to Work®, officially certified for our outstanding workplace culture and employee satisfaction. We’ve also been named on the UK’s Best Workplaces™ 2026 list, recognised as a top 50 company to work for in the UK. We’re also honoured to be placed on UK’s Best Workplaces™ lists for: Wellbeing, Development, Women, and Tech, ranking highly among the top 100 companies for employee support, growth and career development - and we’re just getting started! On top of that, we’re one of the UK’s fastest growing companies - recently ranked 5th nationwide - creating exciting opportunities for our team to grow as fast as the business.

Our 5 core values articulate this best, and we are looking for people who can demonstrate them:

• We go above and #beyond
• We work as a #team & make it fun
• We creatively #kick-ass
• We #do it efficiently, on time & on budget
• We deliver work that makes us #proud

Does this sound like the job for you? Apply via this post by sharing your LinkedIn profile & CV. If you sound like you are a good fit, we will reach out for an initial informal interview.