What does the Director of Resource Management, NA do at WPP Production? As the Director of Resource Management for WPP Production (North America), you will step into a strategic builder role-architecting and championing a unified resourcing ecosystem from the ground up across the US and Canada. Rather than inheriting a legacy playbook, you will have the autonomy and scope to shape this enterprise capability, serving as the strategic connector between Operations, Studio, Origination, and Delivery into a single, cohesive workflow.
In this pivotal leadership role, you will lead the evolution from reactive staffing to a forward-looking, data-informed capacity engine. You will establish the frameworks, operational rhythms, and cross-functional alignment needed to connect upstream pipeline demand with our multi-disciplinary talent across client delivery, shoot origination, studio, and post-production.
Acting as an objective partner across Delivery, Operations, Finance, and Client Leadership, you will bring change leadership, governance, and resource intelligence to life. Your impact will be foundational: strategically casting cross-capability teams that protect margin health, optimize utilization, and enable world-class creative work to flourish. You will report directly to our Managing Director, North America and partner closely with our Regional Talent Lead, Studio Leadership, and Head of Client Delivery.
Key Responsibilities Strategic Casting & Regional Resource Optimization
- Cross-Capability Deployment: Oversee the process of resource allocation across North America, strategically partnering with deploying talent across all of WPP Production
- Workload & Capacity Balancing: Forecast bandwidth, identify capacity bottlenecks, resolve project/client resource clashes, and rebalance staffing across offices and hubs in real time.
- Change Management & Operating Model Design: Design and implement the enterprise capacity operating model. Define the RACI between Resource Management, Discipline Leads, Talent, and Delivery. Drive behavioral change across teams that are used to working in silos.
- Demand Intake & Pipeline Visibility: Partner with Growth and Client Leadership to translate the new business pipeline and organic growth forecasts into actionable resource demand.
- Offshore liaising: Work closely with our offshore capabilities within the global network. Establish a system for cross-capability deployment, alignment on resource process across all talent supporting North America. Partner closely with Production Operations to seamlessly integrate offshore capacity delivering a cost effective ecosystem.
Process Standardization & North America Integration
- Cohesive Operating Model: Partner with Operations and Studio and Production Leadership to build, roll out, and maintain a standardized resourcing workflow across all North American accounts and production centers.
- Collaboration with Client Delivery: Work hand-in-hand with the Head of Client Delivery to shape team structures, scope feasibility, phasing, and Statements of Work (SOWs).
- Cross-Agency & Network Mobility: Facilitate talent mobility across WPP operating agencies and network production units to realize WPP's one company vision.
- Align with Talent: Work closely with our North America Talent Lead to align resource management and talent acquisition and cohesive functions within the organization
Freelance & Extended Talent Ecosystem Management
- Contingent Workforce Strategy: Strategize forecast freelance needs; proactively build a plan for a streamlined process for last minute requests
- Compliance & Onboarding: Partner with Talent Acquisition to manage approvals, rate structures, contracts, NDAs, and onboarding workflows for freelance staff.
Data-Driven Operations & Platform Utilization
- Tool & Data Governance: Drive adoption and data hygiene across resource planning and tracking platforms (currently Xytech); define the data architecture and workflows that make these tools usable
- Utilization & Business Intelligence: Track key operational metrics, including bench time, billable utilization, burn rates, and freelance spend; provide regular executive reporting to leadership.
People & Relationship Leadership
- Conflict Resolution & Negotiation: Act as a diplomatic, solutions-oriented negotiator balancing creative ambitions, delivery schedules, and client commercial realities.
Requirements - Experience: 8-10+ years of progressive resource management, creative operations, or production management experience within an advertising agency, production company, or global content studio network.
- Production Literacy: In-depth working knowledge of the modern production lifecycle across Origination (live action, stills, social shoots), Studio (versioning, localization, retouching, dynamic content creation), and Post-Production (editorial, CGI, motion, audio).
- Systems & Tools: Proficiency in modern operations and exposure to Resource Planning tools. Understanding of how Resourcing and Financial tools work together for Commercial decision purposes
- Scale & Complexity: Demonstrated success managing multi-office, cross-discipline talent pools across North America, with experience managing budgets, SOW alignments, and utilization targets.
- Operational & Systems Acumen: proficiency in modern operations platforms (Smartsheet, Monday.com); familiarity with enterprise AI/agentic platforms is a plus.
- Soft Skills: Exceptional emotional intelligence, persuasive communication, dispute-resolution abilities, and composure in fast-moving, high-volume production environments.
#LI-Hybrid #LI-RS1
The base salary for this position at the time of this posting may range as listed below. Individual compensation varies based on job-related factors, including location, business needs, level of responsibility, experience, and qualifications. We offer a competitive benefits package, click here for more details.
US Pay Range
$75,000-$180,000 USD
