Global Production Operations Lead

BRAND: Publicis Production
Job Function: Operations
Location: London, United Kingdom
Experience Level: Senior Management
Workplace Type: Hybrid

Company description

Within Publicis Groupe's Intelligent Creativity business, we specialize in bringing creative ideas to life, and to consumers. By combining 100 years of craft excellence with 6,000 experts across 52 locations of the world's biggest studio network, we leverage the industry's richest data, through the power of agentic AI, to radically redefine content production with Intelligent Content. We intuitively deliver this through Marcel Make, the world's first Intelligent Content agent. The result? Predictively performing content that unlocks business growth in unprecedented ways. No more guesswork. No more waste.

Just content that works, working a lot harder.

Overview

We are seeking an experienced Global Production Operations Lead to join our 'CaST' team.

CaST stands for Creative at Scale Team and is a production agency within the Publicis Groupe that solely supports the Haleon brand portfolio (formerly GSK consumer goods). This team is comprised of agency producers, a client services layer, a business affairs department, and a dedicated post-production team.

The Global Production Operations Lead will be the operational backbone of the Haleon production engine. This role drives the efficiency, governance, and scalability of production delivery across all global markets and hubs - enabling the Global MD to focus on strategic client leadership and growth. The role combines deep operational expertise with a forward-looking approach to AI, modular production, and continuous improvement.

Responsibilities

1. SUPPLY CHAIN & CAPACITY MANAGEMENT

Centralised Logistics & Coordination

• Orchestrate workflows across all global production hubs and studios, ensuring delivery against SLAs and consistent global standards.
• Drive adoption of aligned processes, documentation, and operational models across markets.

Capacity Planning

• Own global capacity forecasting, demand modelling, and equitable workload distribution across markets, hubs, and studios.
• Implement contingency planning and scenario modelling to reduce operational risk and maintain delivery continuity.
• Manage and report on resource utilisation to ensure targets are consistently met or exceeded.

2. OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Production Operations

• Own the global operational roadmap, maintaining full oversight of the production structure and holding all parties to account on delivery and change.
• Identify gaps, risks, and opportunities across workstreams, working closely with the Global MD to implement operational design modifications.
• Establish and enforce end-to-end governance frameworks: intake → scope → plan → execute → QA → release → archive, including change request standards.

Tools, Data & Reporting

• Develop and maintain global operational dashboards (e.g. Streamline/Jira) to track delivery, resource utilisation, and risk - ensuring consistent adoption across markets.
• Partner with the Global Performance & Reporting Lead on data collection, KPI tracking, and remediation planning.
• Establish data feedback loops with the media team to monitor asset performance and surface actionable insights.
• Develop, track, and report on operational KPIs for internal and external stakeholders, ensuring transparency and accountability.

Financial Operations

• Partner with the Finance Lead on demand collection, financial data reconciliation, and regular performance reviews.
• Monitor financial efficiency, identify variances, and propose corrective actions in a timely manner.

3. AI & MODULAR LEADERSHIP

This role is a key driver of transformation agenda for Haleon, ensuring AI and modular production are embedded at the core of how we work - not layered on top.

• Own the piloting and scaling of AI-enabled and modular production workstreams, working with the Global MD to build the business case and delivery model.
• Embed automation and AI tooling at the foundation of operational processes - from briefing to asset management.
• Identify opportunities to reduce cost, accelerate delivery, and improve quality through modular content frameworks and intelligent production workflows.
• Champion AI literacy across the production team, developing training and guidance that enables confident adoption at all levels.
• Stay ahead of the curve on emerging production technologies, bringing recommendations to the Global MD and broader leadership team.

4. CONNECTIVITY & COLLABORATION

Cross-Market & Cross-Capability Collaboration

• Run weekly global operations review forums to triage issues, share learnings, and drive alignment across regions.
• Ensure strong integration with operations leads across Le One capabilities (strategy, creative, production, data), supporting unified client delivery.
• Act as the connective tissue between global and market-level teams, reducing recurring issues and building operational cohesion.

5. CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT & ONBOARDING

• Build and maintain a future-state operational roadmap driving efficiency, scalability, standardisation, and risk mitigation.
• Conduct ongoing reviews to identify structural improvements, cost savings, and quality enhancements across markets.
• Develop and maintain global onboarding frameworks and training programmes covering brand, operational models, tools, and ways of working.
• Manage collection and analysis of client satisfaction data (CSS), developing improvement plans to continuously enhance the client experience.

6. LEADERSHIP

• Build a close, trust-based relationship with the Global MD, with a thorough understanding of annual business expectations and delivery priorities.
• Lead, develop, and inspire the operations team - fostering a culture of accountability, inclusion, and continuous learning.
• Serve as a senior operational partner to Delivery teams, country Production Leads, and internal stakeholders, enabling high-quality work in a positive and constructive environment.
• Represent operational excellence in senior client and stakeholder forums, demonstrating the rigour and ambition behind the production model.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in program/project management and production operations; executive client management, deep PMO/resource management; tooling fluency; strong stakeholder management; data/analytics and operational finance capability.
• Adept in optimising production operating models to meet set of KPIs.
• Utilization forecasting, scenario modelling, heatmaps, skills matrices; staffing models across on/offshore and follow-the-sun.
• End-to-end process workflows (and knowing when and how to make changes), management of brief templates, approval chains, SLAs, KPIs.
• Experienced with piloting newer production technologies (including AI) and scaling at enterprise level.
• Knowledge of content production engines; transcreation and translation assets at scale.
• Proven experience in client facing scenarios; highly skilled at external and internal senior and executive level stakeholder management.

Additional information

Diversity and inclusion is a core part of who we are at Publicis Production. We're committed to building an inclusive culture that encourages, celebrates and supports our wonderfully diverse employee group - whatever their age, gender identity, race, sexual orientation, physical or mental ability or ethnicity. Diversity and inclusion doesn't just fuel our creativity and innovation, it brings us closer to our people and audiences. We will continue to strive to create a culture and environment where everyone feels empowered and more importantly comfortable enough to bring their full, authentic selves to work. We are committed to providing reasonable adjustments for employees with disabilities and for candidates in our application process. If you need assistance or adjustment due to a disability, please contact us.