Senior Resource & Operations Manager in London

YourStudio is a dynamic strategy and creative agency specialising in next-generation experiences and environments for global brands. With studios in London, Melbourne, New York and LA, we work supportively as one global team to deliver award-winning retail experiences that are recognised globally.

As the Senior Resource & Operations Manager, you are the guardian of YourStudio’s most valuable asset: its people. Moving beyond daily scheduling, you act as a critical business partner to the Director team, ensuring that our global creative ambitions are balanced with commercial reality.

You are expected to manage upwards and downwards with authority, holding the line on process and negotiating positive outcomes when project scopes or timelines threaten the agency’s health or the quality of our output. Your seniority is reflected in your ability to curate high-performing teams, forward plan talent requirements, and drive the evolution of our global operating systems, whilst supporting day-to-day troubleshooting.

You recognise that this role is built on internal relationships, soft skills and negotiation, bringing warmth and personability to daily resourcing conversations that are the backbone of the global operations.

What You’ll Do

• Tactical Planning, Influence and Persuasion: Interrogating the Brief. Act as the first line of defense in project kick-offs; challenging on unrealistic timelines, deliverables or misaligned skill sets and opportunity to plan for the highest quality work before resource is committed.
• Creative problem solving. This role welcomes the "challenging conversations" regarding solving resourcing conflicts, ensuring directors have confidence in their teams, preventing over-servicing and under-performance, serving as a neutral but firm arbiter between creative desires and commercial needs.
• Move beyond request - fulfilments to strategic casting - ensuring the right "A-Team" is in place for high-stakes global brands, even if it requires re-negotiating lower-priority project schedules.
• Ensuring compact, high performing teams are allocated for the duration of the project programmes, and supporting the set up of teams - this role supports the quality of creative output of the business.

Commercial & Financial Stewardship:

• Profitability Watchdog. Work directly with the FD to analyse weekly project and utilisation reports, identifying red flags in margin erosion caused by inefficient resourcing.
• Commercial performance vs labour weighting; advising on the right mix of team and timing to guarantee optimal returns.
• Freelance P&L Ownership. Take full accountability for the global freelance budget; proactively reducing reliance on external spend by optimizing the internal "Global Bench".
• Forecasting. Lead long-term (3-6 month+) capacity planning, identifying when "permanent requirements" are necessary to support sustainable growth.

Operational Ownership:

• System Evolution. Own and refine the central systems (e.g., Forecast), ensuring they provide the "big picture" data needed for board-level decision-making.
• Global Glue. Standardise processes across London, the US and Melbourne Studios to ensure a "one global team" experience that is frictionless for the team.

Strategic Team Development & Future-Proofing:

• Talent Mapping & Casting: By deeply recognising individual skill sets and nuances, you will outline strategic opportunities for development and growth, ensuring our people are challenged and progressing within their roles.
• Strategic Growth Planning: You will maintain a sophisticated balance between solving immediate, day-to-day resource needs and looking to the future to build out our global service offering.
• Headcount Advocacy: You will be responsible for identifying and justifying permanent resourcing requirements, using data-driven insights to inform the People team and Directors when it is time to shift from freelance to permanent hires.

High-Level Collaboration & Global Connectivity:

• You will serve as the primary 'glue' for the day-to-day running of our global teams, working as a peer to Project Managers, Creatives, and the Director team.
• Streamlining & Efficiency. You will hold a global remit to join and streamline processes across all studios, ensuring we maximise our collective resources and operate with peak efficiency.
• Navigating Ambiguity with Authority. You will not shy away from ambiguity; instead, you will act as a positive, dependable, and firm leader when addressing challenges and navigating periods of transition.
• Challenging Conversations. You will be the authoritative voice in the room when resource conflicts arise, possessing the confidence to hold challenging conversations and push back on senior stakeholders to protect the integrity of the team and the project.

What you'll bring:

• 5 - 8 years of experience running resourcing and operations within a fast-paced global creative agency or design studio.
• Proven ability to manage multi-studio tracking tools (e.g., Streamtime / Forecast), run 3-6 month capacity planning, and align processes across global time zones.
• Strong financial acumen with experience managing freelance budgets, protecting project margins, and using data to justify permanent headcount.
• Exceptional relationship-building skills, bringing warmth and empathy to tough resourcing conversations while confidently managing senior stakeholders.

What we offer:

• We value culture and collaboration, for this reason we operate a 3 day in the office and 2 day WFH hybrid working policy.
• Generous holiday allowance, including 25 days plus bank holidays, a well-being day, 2 community days and your birthday off! Alongside additional extra service allowance (pro-rata for fixed-term contracts).
• Private Healthcare.
• 2 week Working Abroad Opportunity.
• Opportunities to work from our global studios whilst travelling.
• Dedicated learning platform.
• Enhanced parental leave policies.
• Lunch club, Thursday office drinks, Summer and Christmas parties.

YourStudio is an equal opportunity employer — we welcome applications from all backgrounds and encourage you to apply even if you don't meet every requirement. Accommodations are available upon request throughout the recruitment process.