Operations Manager in Cheltenham

Ready to make your mark? We are distillery; a global independent creative practice, trusted by world-leading B2B, purpose and consumer organisations to deliver tangible value through our marketing specialisms. Our purpose is to empower ambitious business leaders and marketers to make a difference. We achieve this through compassion, curiosity and a commitment to achieve outstanding results every time.

Our office bases are located in Singapore, San Francisco and London and our days are fast-paced and exciting, within an atmosphere that is super comfortable, creative, and collaborative. This role is offered in the UK, and the successful candidate can work primarily remotely within the UK. This role is offered as 6 months maternity cover starting asap.

The Global Operations Manager is the engine room of distillery. You are responsible for ensuring our operations platform, Productive, is leveraged to its full potential to drive agency efficiency and profitability across. This isn’t just about oversight; it’s about driving utilisation across our global teams and maintaining an eagle-eye view of all business budgets and resourcing across our 3 offices.

You will be the bridge between Finance and Delivery teams in 3 regions turning operational data into actionable commercial insights that safeguard our margins and fuel our growth.

• Productive Platform Power-User
• Drive Platform Adoption: Act as the global champion for Productive, ensuring 100% data integrity and driving high utilization of the tool across all teams.
• Operational Productivity: Analyse team workflows within Productive to identify bottlenecks, ensuring every resource is tracked accurately and billed effectively.
• System Evolution: Continuously optimize the platform setup (services, rate cards, and project templates) to reflect our evolving business model.
• Commercial & Budgetary Control
• Full Budget Oversight: Maintain a bird’s-eye view of all global business budgets, tracking spend against forecasts and flagging variances before they become issues.
• Profitability Guard: Partner with the Financial Controller to monitor project-level profitability, ensuring cost allocation and recoverability meet our targets.
• Procurement & Vendor Management: Manage global subscriptions and external partner agreements, negotiating terms to ensure we maximize service levels while minimizing budget leakage.
• Resource & Capacity Mastery
• Utilization Optimization: Monitor real-time utilization rates across APAC, EMEA, and NA, proactively moving resources to balance workloads and maximize billability.
• Capacity Forecasting: Use Productive’s data to forecast future hiring needs or freelance requirements based on pipeline.
• Freelance Management: Own the contracting and on/offboarding process of freelancers based on budget and capacity requirements.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Ensure all resourcing schedules are live and accurate, providing leadership with a clear view of "who is doing what" at any given second.
• Reporting & Process Excellence
• The "Source of Truth": Produce weekly and monthly "Operational Health" reports focusing on utilization, realized rates, and budget burn.
• Workflow Innovation: Identify opportunities to integrate AI or automation to streamline repetitive tasks, freeing up the creative team to focus on delivery across multiple offices.
• Milestone Mapping: Maintain the global operational calendar, ensuring all critical business milestones are documented and visible to stakeholders.

• Agency experience in operations or resource management, with a heavy leaning toward the commercial/finance side.
• Expert-level knowledge of Productive.io (or similar): You should be comfortable training others and configuring the tool for complex global needs.
• Commercial DNA: You don’t just see "tasks"; you see billable hours, margins, and budget impact.
• Financial Literacy: Strong experience working with P&Ls, cost-of-sale analysis, and forecasting.
• Process Architect: A proven ability to build repeatable workflows that people actually want to follow.

The salary band for this contract role sits between £40k - £55k depending on experience.

At distillery, diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the heart of everything we do. With 75% of leadership roles globally held by women and 42% of our team coming from diverse backgrounds, we are committed to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive.

Through initiatives like Studio d. and projects such as our diversity typeface, we amplify diverse voices, foster creativity, and make a positive impact. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diversity and encourage people of all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or any other protected characteristic.

We actively encourage progressive, divergent thinking and innovative ways to deliver. We welcome applications from individuals of all experiences and perspectives to join us in shaping a more equitable, inclusive, and innovative future.