Head of Live

Seen Presents is an experiential events agency driven by understanding human emotion and culture. We create online and offline authentic connected live experiences to drive brand resonance and understanding for consumer focused lifestyle and entertainment brands. We are seeking a strategic and commercially minded Head of Live to lead and evolve our live and experiential function across London and our US network. This senior leadership role is responsible for shaping how the department operates, ensuring the project, production, and content teams are structured, resourced, and supported to deliver consistently high quality work. The Head of Live will focus on ways of working, operational efficiency, capability development, and cross office and department alignment, acting as the senior owner of standards, processes, and performance across the live department.

Key Responsibilities

• Department Leadership & Strategy
  • Set the vision, structure, and operating model for the live department across project, production, and content teams.
  • Establish clear ways of working, roles, responsibilities, and governance across disciplines and regions.
  • Drive alignment and collaboration between London and US teams, ensuring consistency while respecting local needs.
  • Act as a senior leader within the agency, contributing to wider business strategy and growth planning.
  • Mentor and coach all members of the department, acting as the voice of reason and guidance.
  • Oversee all projects leaving the department with ultimate responsibility for delivery success.
• Ways of Working & Operational Excellence
  • Design, implement, and continuously improve processes that support efficient, scalable delivery across live teams.
  • Define best practice frameworks for briefing, planning, approvals, and handovers between disciplines.
  • Identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks, introducing tools, systems, and working practices to improve performance.
  • Champion clarity, accountability, and decision making across the department.
  • Ensure exceptional delivery across all projects, attending site when needed and joining project kick offs and regroups.
• Resourcing & Capability
  • Own the resourcing strategy for the live department, ensuring the right mix of skills, seniority, and capacity across teams.
  • Work closely with senior team members across Operations, Finance, and Resource to forecast demand and plan resourcing against business needs.
  • Build sustainable team structures that support growth, wellbeing, and long term capability.
  • Oversee recruitment, onboarding, and development planning across project, production, and content teams.
• Performance & Financial Oversight
  • Set and monitor departmental KPIs related to utilisation, efficiency, margin, and team performance.
  • Partner with Finance and Operations to ensure the live department is commercially effective and scalable.
  • Work with senior members of the department to ensure they understand and track GP targets and deliver against them.
  • Ensure consistent standards around scope definition, staffing models, and cost efficiency.
  • Use data and insight to inform decision making and continuous improvement.
• Stakeholder & Senior Collaboration
  • Act as the senior point of contact for live operations internally, supporting client, commercial, and creative teams.
  • Provide strategic input into pitches, live projects, and planning to ensure work is appropriately structured and resourced.
  • Support senior clients and partners from an operational delivery and strategic perspective where required.
  • Lean in where needed to draft budgets or project plans, or edit and advise on plans created by the wider team.
  • Coach and develop senior leaders within the Live function.
  • Drive organisational change, maturity, and continuous improvement across delivery.

Key Skills and Experience Required

• Experience within live events or experiential agencies, with senior operational or departmental leadership responsibility.
• Proven competence in leading project management, production, and content teams.
• Strong experience designing and embedding effective ways of working, operating models, and governance.
• Demonstrated ability to manage and optimise resourcing, capacity planning, and utilisation.
• Solid knowledge of the US experiential and live events market.
• Experience working across UK and US teams, aligning processes and standards.
• Strong commercial and financial acumen, with experience overseeing departmental performance.
• Confident senior leader with the ability to influence, align, and drive change at leadership level.

Personal Attributes

• Strategic and structured thinker with a strong operational mindset.
• Highly organised and process driven without being bureaucratic.
• Collaborative and calm, able to bring clarity in complex environments.
• Data informed and outcome focused, comfortable driving change.
• Committed to building strong teams and sustainable ways of working.

Hours and Location

We operate a hybrid working arrangement. Our office is based in Shoreditch and we deliver events globally. It is expected that you will spend no more than 20 days a year overseas. Working hours will be standard office times, however deadlines and installations may require occasional unusual hours. We are in the office 3 days a week Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

D&I Statement

At Seen Presents we are committed to providing an inclusive environment where everyone feels seen, heard, and celebrated. We welcome applications from everyone. If you are invited to an interview, please let us know if there are any reasonable adjustments we can make to best accommodate your needs.