We're looking for a Talent & Partnerships Lead to join the XCM Creative Production team. This person will own the day-to-day sourcing, vetting, and engagement of celebrity and creator talent across Amazon's global brand campaigns. They'll serve as the connective tissue between XCM's Big Rock creative vision and the agency and management ecosystem that represents top-tier talent, ensuring the right names surface at the right time for the right briefs. Beyond individual deals, this role shapes XCM's broader talent strategy: building a forward-looking pipeline, tracking cultural relevance, maintaining agency relationships, and advising creative leadership on where to place bets.
Key job responsibilities
**Talent Sourcing & Pipeline**
- Build and maintain a continuously updated talent pipeline spanning actors, musicians, athletes, creators, and cultural figures across categories and markets.
- Proactively surface talent options for upcoming campaigns, matching creative intent, audience alignment, brand safety, and budget parameters.
- Track cultural moments, emerging creators, and shifting audience affinities to keep recommendations current.
**Agency & Management Relationships**
- Serve as XCM's primary point of contact with major talent agencies (CAA, WME, UTA, ICM) and independent management firms.
- Cultivate relationships that give the team early access to talent availability windows, deal structures, and scheduling constraints.
- Negotiate initial deal terms and coordinate with Business Affairs on contract execution.
**Big Rock Alignment**
- Partner with Big Rock creative leads and producers to translate campaign briefs into talent profiles and shortlists.
- Participate in early creative development to flag casting feasibility, timing conflicts, and budget trade-offs before concepts lock.
- Ensure talent selections ladder up to XCM's annual tentpole calendar and cross-campaign strategy.
**Talent Strategy**
- Develop and maintain XCM's talent strategy framework: who we pursue, why, and how we sequence investments across the portfolio.
- Advise leadership on category gaps, competitive landscape (who competitors are signing), and long-term partnership opportunities vs. one-off bookings.
- Own post-campaign talent performance analysis. Track social lift, earned media, brand perception shifts, and audience resonance to inform future casting.
**Cross-Functional Coordination**
- Collaborate with Legal, Business Affairs, and Brand Safety on vetting, contracting, and risk assessment.
A day in the life
You start the morning scanning overnight agency submissions, a handful of availability checks you sent yesterday now have answers. One A-list name opened up for the Q4 window, another passed. You update the talent tracker and flag the opening to the Big Rock lead before their 10am creative review.
Mid-morning, you're on a call with a UTA agent walking through their client roster for a Spring sports campaign. You're listening for schedule flexibility and deal appetite as much as star power. You take notes on two athletes worth a deeper conversation and schedule follow-ups.
Before lunch, you join the weekly Big Rock sync. The team is debating two creative directions for a Holiday tentpole. You pull up comps, share recent social engagement data on the talent in question, and flag a timing conflict with one candidate's press tour. The room shifts direction based on what you surface.
After lunch, you're building a shortlist deck for a new brief that just landed. You pull from your pipeline, cross-reference budget thresholds with Business Affairs, and write up a point of view on each name: why them, what's the risk, what's the negotiation leverage.
Late afternoon, you hop on a quick sync with the XCM production team about an upcoming shoot. Talent's team has a rider question and a scheduling wrinkle. You broker a solution that keeps the shoot date intact without blowing the line item.
About the team
XCM's Creative team is the internal marketing team setting design and brand direction for Amazon's global brand. Our mission is to be the most customer-centric collective of creative thinkers, dreamers and doers. This manifest itself through visual design, branding, photography, video, social, digital, advertising and user experience design. We are responsible for branding and the creative development of style guides for the Amazon master brand and collaborate with business partners around the world to support a wide range of devices, services, features, and retail categories. We apply strategic insight to delight customers -driving discovery, engagement, and trust. We're growing quickly and hiring the best. This is day one.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- 5+ years of digital content management, communications, or content strategy experience
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- 3+ years of entertainment, brand or production entity experience
The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.
USA, CA, Santa Monica - 120,500.00 - 163,000.00 USD annually
