Job Title: Production DirectorLocation: Hybrid (Culver City)
Department: Production
Reports To: VP of Growth
About the job - LA based, able to work a hybrid schedule with office hours in Culver City, CA.
- Ability to travel and work nontraditional hours, including evenings and weekends, as required for events.
- Applications must include examples of experiential projects or programs personally produced, with a brief description of the role and responsibilities you owned.
Position SummaryThe Production Director is responsible for leading production operations for one of the agency's largest client accounts. This role provides leadership across production operations, procurement, financial stewardship, process development, team management, and program execution.
The Production Director is accountable for building scalable systems and processes that support efficient execution, strong financial performance, and team development. They serve as a strategic partner to Account, Creative, Finance, Innovation, Influencer, and Executive Leadership teams while ensuring production teams are equipped, supported, and held accountable for successful delivery.
While this role maintains a strong understanding of event production, the primary focus is operational leadership, people management, procurement oversight, and driving consistency across programs.
Key Responsibilities Production Operations Leadership - Maintain production processes, workflows, tools, and best practices.
- Drive operational improvements that increase efficiency, accountability, and profitability.
- Partner with leadership to identify and resolve operational challenges before they impact execution alongside The Core.
- Serve as a senior escalation point for production-related risks, decisions, and resource planning.
Procurement & Financial Management - Ensure compliance with agency purchasing, contracting, budgeting, and financial approval processes.
- Partner with Finance and Operations teams to maintain financial visibility and accountability.
- Monitor project health, profitability, staffing utilization, and production-related expenditures.
- Support budget reviews and financial forecasting for key programs.
- Hold production teams accountable for active budget management throughout the project lifecycle, including timely reconciliation and project closeout.
Team Leadership & Development - Directly manage and develop production team members while creating clear career paths, succession plans, and leadership development opportunities across the client production team.
- Establish clear expectations, accountability measures, and performance goals.
- Conduct regular coaching, mentoring, and career development conversations.
- Create development plans for team members and identify future leaders within the team.
- Foster a collaborative, solutions-oriented culture focused on continuous improvement.
Cross-Functional Leadership - Partner closely with Account, Creative, Influencer, Talent, Operations, and Finance teams.
- Participate in client-facing conversations as a senior production leader when appropriate.
- Align internal stakeholders around production priorities, risks, and resource needs.
- Support strategic planning efforts and operational decision-making.
Program Oversight - Provide executive-level oversight across multiple concurrent programs and activations.
- Ensure teams maintain timelines, budgets, quality standards, and client expectations.
- Support production teams in solving complex challenges and removing operational barriers.
- Step into executional leadership when required on critical programs or high-priority initiatives.
- Maintain a holistic view across the client portfolio, proactively identifying competing priorities, resource constraints, financial risks, and executional challenges.
- Ensure risks, bandwidth concerns, and budget issues are surfaced early with clear recommendations and action plans.
Qualifications - 10+ years of progressive experiential/event production experience, with significant hands-on experience personally producing complex, large-scale, high-budget programs from pre-production through onsite execution and reconciliation.
- Deep working knowledge of experiential production, including fabrication, technical production, AV, scenic, show services, venue operations, permitting, logistics, labor, transportation, staffing, safety, and onsite execution. Livestream knowledge is a plus.
- Strong vendor knowledge and industry relationships, with the ability to evaluate vendor capabilities, scopes, bids, pricing, timelines, and production approaches.
- Demonstrated ability to build and pressure-test production plans, scopes, schedules, budgets, and contingency plans, not simply oversee teams responsible for developing them.
- Experience serving as an Executive Producer or equivalent senior production lead on complex experiential programs, with accountability for the overall production approach and successful delivery.
- Demonstrated experience overseeing multiple concurrent programs and leading production teams while maintaining visibility into the details necessary to identify risk and guide decision-making.
- Proven experience managing and developing experienced production talent, including providing meaningful direction and mentorship to senior-level producers.
- Strong financial acumen, including budget development and management, forecasting, procurement, reconciliation, scope management, and project profitability.
- Strong client-facing communication and executive presence, with the ability to confidently communicate production recommendations, risks, tradeoffs, and solutions.
- Ability to balance strategic oversight with hands-on production leadership, knowing when to empower the team and when deeper involvement is required.
- Strong cross-functional leadership skills and experience partnering with Account, Creative, Finance, Operations, and other agency disciplines.
- Ability to travel and work nontraditional hours as required for events.
Success Metrics - Production operations run efficiently and consistently.
- Procurement and financial processes are executed accurately and compliantly.
- Team members demonstrate measurable growth and development.
- Process improvements drive operational efficiency and scalability.
- Strong partnership maintained across departments and client stakeholders.
- Department goals achieved while maintaining profitability, quality, and team engagement.
