Job Title: VP of Production

Location: 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, responsibilities, budget scale, and production scope owned.

About the Role

The Vice President of Production is the senior leader responsible for IMT's Production department, setting the standard for how the agency plans, manages, and delivers complex experiential programs.

This role owns the overall health and performance of the Production function, including production excellence, team leadership and development, resource planning, financial stewardship, vendor strategy, operational consistency, and quality control across the agency's portfolio of work.

The VP of Production leads and develops Production Directors and senior production talent, ensuring teams have the structure, resources, tools, and leadership required to execute successfully. They maintain visibility across the agency's production portfolio, proactively identifying risks, resource constraints, financial concerns, and opportunities for improvement before they impact the work.

This role requires both exceptional production expertise and strong people leadership. The VP of Production must have significant hands-on experience personally producing complex, large-scale experiential programs and the technical knowledge and judgment to guide and challenge experienced production leaders. At the same time, they must know how to lead through others, develop high-performing teams, establish accountability, and build a scalable department rather than becoming the primary producer on individual programs.

Key Responsibilities

Production Department Leadership

• Own the overall strategy, structure, performance, and evolution of IMT's Production department.
• Establish and maintain agency-wide production standards, expectations, workflows, tools, and best practices.
• Create clarity around roles, responsibilities, decision-making, and accountability across Production.
• Establish consistent standards for how programs are scoped, budgeted, staffed, produced, documented, and closed out.
• Maintain visibility across the agency's production portfolio and proactively identify operational, financial, staffing, and executional risks.
• Partner with the VP of Growth and Executive Leadership to establish department priorities and ensure Production supports the agency's broader business objectives.
• Continuously evaluate the department's structure, capabilities, and processes as the agency and client portfolio evolve.
• Build a Production organization that can scale without becoming dependent on individual team members or institutional knowledge.

Production Excellence & Quality Control

• Set the agency standard for production excellence across experiential programs, activations, tours, conferences, livestreams, and other complex executions.
• Provide senior production oversight and quality control across the agency's largest, most complex, or highest-risk programs.
• Pressure-test production strategies, schedules, budgets, scopes, vendor plans, technical approaches, and contingency plans.
• Ensure teams appropriately evaluate feasibility, safety, operational complexity, timing, and cost before committing to production approaches.
• Serve as the senior escalation point for significant production risks, vendor challenges, executional issues, and critical decision-making.
• Maintain enough visibility into major programs to identify issues early while empowering Production Directors and producers to own day-to-day execution.
• Step into deeper production leadership when circumstances require it without becoming the default producer for individual programs.
• Ensure lessons learned and best practices are documented and applied across teams and client portfolios.

Team Leadership & Development

• Lead, manage, and develop Production Directors and senior production leadership.
• Establish clear expectations and accountability for production leadership across the department.
• Coach Production Directors on team leadership, production judgment, financial management, client partnership, and decision-making.
• Build clear career paths and expectations across production roles and levels.
• Identify, develop, and retain high-potential production talent while creating succession plans for critical roles.
• Ensure managers are actively coaching and developing their teams rather than relying solely on annual performance reviews.
• Partner with HR and leadership on hiring, performance management, promotions, compensation recommendations, and organizational planning.
• Foster a culture that balances collaboration and support with ownership, accountability, and high performance.
• Create an environment where experienced producers feel supported by leadership that understands the realities and complexities of their work.

Resource & Capacity Planning

• Own production resource planning across the agency in partnership with Production Directors, Operations, and Account leadership.
• Maintain visibility into current and upcoming production demand, team utilization, travel requirements, and capacity constraints.
• Proactively identify staffing gaps and resource needs before they impact teams or client delivery.
• Determine when work should be supported by full-time employees, freelancers, contractors, or specialized production partners.
• Ensure resources are allocated based on program complexity, team capabilities, workload, and business priorities.
• Partner with leadership on long-term production workforce planning and hiring strategy.
• Balance efficient utilization with sustainable workloads and the needs of the business.

Financial & Commercial Leadership

• Own financial discipline and accountability across the Production department in partnership with Finance, Operations, and Account leadership.
• Establish expectations for production budgeting, estimating, forecasting, procurement, reconciliation, and project closeout.
• Maintain visibility into project health, production margins, staffing utilization, vendor commitments, and financial risks across the portfolio.
• Hold Production Directors accountable for actively managing the financial health of their programs and teams.
• Ensure financial risks, scope changes, overages, and margin concerns are identified early and accompanied by clear recommendations and action plans.
• Partner with Finance and Operations to improve reporting, forecasting, and financial visibility across Production.
• Identify opportunities to improve efficiency and profitability without compromising production quality or client experience.
• Ensure production teams understand the commercial implications of production decisions and operate with strong financial stewardship.

Vendor & Procurement Strategy

• Establish and oversee the agency's production vendor strategy across fabrication, scenic, technical production, AV, labor, logistics, staffing, transportation, show services, venues, and other production disciplines.
• Maintain strong relationships with key production partners and continually evaluate vendor capabilities, performance, pricing, and capacity.
• Ensure teams are appropriately bidding, negotiating, contracting, and managing vendors.
• Identify opportunities to consolidate spend, negotiate preferred relationships, and improve purchasing leverage where beneficial.
• Establish standards for vendor evaluation and accountability while ensuring IMT maintains access to a diverse and competitive vendor network.
• Partner with Finance, Operations, and Legal to ensure compliance with agency procurement, contracting, insurance, and approval processes.

Executive, Client & Cross-Functional Leadership

• Serve as the senior Production representative within agency leadership.
• Partner closely with Account, Creative, Influencer/Talent, Innovation, Finance, Operations, and Executive Leadership.
• Ensure Production is engaged early enough in creative development, scoping, budgeting, and planning to appropriately evaluate feasibility and risk.
• Participate in senior client conversations when production expertise, escalation, or executive leadership is required.
• Communicate complex production challenges, risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations clearly to executive and client stakeholders.
• Partner with Account leadership to ensure production strategy supports client objectives while protecting executional quality and financial health.
• Advocate for the needs of the Production department while balancing broader agency and client priorities.
• Support new business and major RFP efforts when senior production expertise is required.

Qualifications

• 12-15+ years of progressive experiential/event production experience, including significant experience in Executive Producer, Production Director, Head of Production, VP of Production, or equivalent senior production leadership roles.
• Extensive hands-on experience personally producing complex, large-scale, multimillion-dollar experiential programs from initial scoping and pre-production through onsite execution, reconciliation, and closeout.
• Expert-level working knowledge of experiential production, including fabrication, scenic, technical production, AV, show services, venue operations, permitting, labor, logistics, transportation, staffing, safety, and onsite execution.
• Demonstrated ability to independently evaluate and pressure-test production plans, budgets, schedules, technical approaches, vendor scopes, and contingency plans.
• Deep vendor knowledge and established industry relationships, with demonstrated experience sourcing partners, evaluating capabilities, negotiating pricing and scope, and managing complex vendor ecosystems.
• Proven experience leading senior production talent, including Production Directors, Executive Producers, Senior Producers, and multidisciplinary production teams.
• Demonstrated success building, restructuring, or scaling production teams, including organizational design, staffing strategy, career development, performance management, and succession planning.
• Experience overseeing multiple complex client portfolios and concurrent programs while maintaining visibility into production quality, staffing, financial performance, and risk.
• Strong financial and commercial acumen, including experience managing multimillion-dollar production portfolios, budgets, forecasting, procurement, utilization, reconciliation, scope management, and project profitability.
• Strong client-facing communication and executive presence, with demonstrated ability to advise senior client and agency stakeholders on complex production decisions.
• Proven ability to balance strategic department leadership with deep production involvement when circumstances require it.
• Strong cross-functional leadership skills and experience partnering with Account, Creative, Finance, Operations, Influencer/Talent, and other agency disciplines.
• Demonstrated ability to build trust and credibility with experienced producers through both production expertise and effective leadership.
• Ability to travel and work nontraditional hours as required for major programs and events.

Success Metrics

• Production operates as a cohesive, scalable department with clear standards, ownership, and accountability.
• Production Directors effectively own their client portfolios and teams without requiring routine intervention from executive leadership.
• Major production risks, resource constraints, and financial concerns are identified and addressed proactively.
• Production teams consistently deliver high-quality work that meets client expectations, budgets, timelines, and agency standards.
• Production margins, forecasting, budget management, reconciliation, and project closeout demonstrate consistent financial discipline.
• Staffing and resources are proactively planned across the portfolio, reducing reactive resourcing and unsustainable workloads.
• Production leaders and team members demonstrate measurable professional growth, with clear career paths and succession plans in place.
• Vendor relationships and procurement practices support competitive pricing, strong execution, and healthy project economics.
• Production partners effectively with Account, Creative, Finance, Operations, Influencer/Talent, and Executive Leadership.
• Senior production talent views department leadership as both a credible production resource and an effective people leader.
• The Production department can scale with agency growth while maintaining quality, profitability, accountability, and team engagement.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary and benefits
• Paid holidays, PTO, and recovery days
• Opportunities f