Customer Planning Senior Manager, Creative & Production in City of Westminster

About the role

Here at the John Lewis Partnership, we are looking for a highly organised individual to take ownership of our non-campaign pipeline. While our campaign team delivers major promotional activities, this role is the heartbeat of our "always-on" business, ensuring our day-to-day operational creative needs are planned, prioritised, and delivered to the highest standard. From Visual Merchandising/Point of Sales updates and product packaging to supporting Financial Services and Hospitality, you will be instrumental in ensuring our creative output runs efficiently alongside our main customer plan.

Salary Band is £55,500 to £88,500. Expected salary up to £75,000 depending on the experience you would bring to the role.

Contract type - This position is a 12-month Secondment/Fixed Term contract.

Working pattern/flexible working - The Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach, meaning you'll be able to work a mixture between the office and home-based upon your personal needs, whilst balancing the needs of the business. We typically aim for three days a week in the office for collaboration and attendance at key meetings.

Location - This role is based at our London Head Office campus in Pimlico.

Key responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end roadmap for all non-campaign creative activity, managing the intake and governance of diverse requests - ranging from VM/POS updates and packaging design to ad-hoc stakeholder requirements - to ensure they are commercially viable and operationally clear.
• Act as the primary interface between the C&P team and key business stakeholders, aligning operational needs with wider business goals.
• Lead resource planning to balance urgent, reactive requests with scheduled BAU work.
• Define and apply a clear prioritisation framework to protect core creative capacity while streamlining workflows for high-volume, low-complexity tasks to improve speed-to-market.
• Partner closely with the Campaign Planning team to guarantee cross-functional visibility, ensuring that operational activities and major campaigns remain aligned and manageable.

Essential skills/experience you’ll need

• Strong experience in operational planning, project management, or creative operations in a fast-paced environment.
• Proven ability to manage high-volume, "always-on" request pipelines where priorities frequently shift.
• Experience managing stakeholders across multiple business functions (e.g., Product, Retail, Hospitality, Operations).
• A proactive approach to process improvement - identifying ways to simplify workflows for repetitive or operational tasks.
• Exceptional organisational skills with the ability to maintain visibility over multiple concurrent workstreams.

Desirable skills/experience you may have

• Familiarity with retail, packaging lifecycles, VM (Visual Merchandising), or POS production processes.
• Experience using project management or workflow software to track creative production.
• Strong influencing skills to manage expectations for stakeholders who may not be familiar with creative production cycles.

Important points to note:

• Some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates).
• If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process.
• We occasionally close vacancies early in the event we receive a high volume of applications, and therefore, we recommend you apply early.
• If you require a reasonable adjustment due to a disability which means you may need longer to complete your application please contact us as soon as possible.
• We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working.