Director of Physical Production

Los Angeles, California, United States

Role: Director of Physical Production

Location: Los Angeles, CA (Daily studio presence required)

Compensation: $120-150K

Reports to: Head of Production

The Role

We're looking for a Director of Physical Production to lead TubeScience's on-the-ground production operation. This is a senior leadership role for someone who can walk a studio floor, run a tight schedule, transform a production team, and build the operational infrastructure that lets a high-volume creative machine scale.

You'll own everything that happens between a production brief and wrapped footage: studios, equipment, crews, freelancers, vendors, schedules, and the team that makes it all run. You'll work cross-functionally with Strategy, Post-Production, and Casting to make sure physical production never becomes a bottleneck.

This is perfect for someone who's run physical production at scale before: managed studios, led production teams, built processes that actually stick, and done it all in an environment where speed and volume are the norm. You're equal parts production leader, systems builder, and people developer - and you know the difference between being busy and being effective.

You also believe the best production orgs are built around doers - people who own the work end-to-end and stay close to the craft. You're excited about a world where automation, remote teams, and AI absorb the meta-work so the team can spend more of its time on the work itself.

🎬 What You'll Do

Own physical production end-to-end - studio shoots, location work, multi-environment productions - ensuring every shoot is planned, staffed, and executed on time

🧭 Help shape what the production org looks like as we scale - investing in talent close to the craft, and leaning into automation, remote teams, and AI to absorb the work better suited to them

Drive production throughput and cycle time improvement across all teams - set expectations, build reporting, diagnose bottlenecks, and hold teams accountable to delivery standards

🏛 Manage studio operations including facility readiness, equipment inventory and lifecycle, and scheduling across simultaneous shoots - gear and space should never be the reason a production stalls

Lead and develop the production team - coaching for autonomy, raising the bar on craft, and building a team that reflects how we want to operate at scale

Own the freelance crew pipeline and vendor relationships - sourcing, vetting, rate management, and maintaining a reliable bench of on-call production talent and specialized services

Build the operational systems - processes, documentation, and reporting - that make the operation consistent, scalable, and not dependent on any one person's institutional knowledge

Manage production spend with discipline - balance quality and speed with cost awareness across crew, equipment, vendors, and facilities

You'll Need to Have

7+ years in production operations, with 3+ years managing teams in a high-volume environment - broadcast, digital media, daily programming, or high-cadence ad production. Not feature films or one-off commercials.

🏛 Hands-on experience managing studios, equipment operations, and freelance crew pipelines - not just schedules, but the physical infrastructure.

Zero tolerance for loose schedules, unclear ownership, and "we'll figure it out day-of."

A track record of building operational processes that outlive individual team members - not just running what exists, but making it meaningfully better.

🧱 A systems-first mindset - preventing problems rather than fighting fires, with a clear instinct for what automation, AI, and remote teams can take on, and the judgment to decide what they can't.

A bias toward craft and doers. You've built or worked in orgs where the best operators stay close to the work itself - not just coordinating it - and you build teams that reflect that.

A proven ability to make people better - through clear expectations, direct feedback, and genuine investment in their growth.

Strong planning discipline, real business judgment, and fluency with production management tools

An energy for volume and velocity - our pace should be exciting, not overwhelming.