Resourcing Director

Aquent is thrilled to partner with a globally recognized leader in beauty and specialty retail, a company celebrated for delivering innovative customer experiences and crafting iconic, high-impact marketing campaigns. This is an incredible opportunity to join a dynamic organization that consistently pushes the boundaries of creativity and market engagement. Your expertise will directly influence how this industry giant optimizes its creative output and operational excellence, making a tangible impact on its globally recognized brand.

About the Opportunity

We are seeking a visionary and dynamic leader to transform how a large-scale creative and marketing organization plans, allocates, and optimizes its resources. This is a pivotal, highly visible leadership role where you will drive strategic resource planning, capacity management, and operational efficiency across a complex marketing ecosystem. Imagine being at the helm of an initiative that ensures the right talent and resources are always aligned with the right projects at the right time, fundamentally shaping the future of creative delivery.

You will play an instrumental role in evolving the organization's creative operating model, bringing unparalleled visibility into capacity, utilization, workflow, and critical resource decisions. This unique position offers the chance to blend high-level strategic planning with hands-on operational leadership, implementing scalable processes and innovative technology solutions that elevate the quality and efficiency of creative work. Your contributions will directly impact the speed, quality, and effectiveness of marketing campaigns that reach millions.

What You'll Drive

• Lead enterprise-level resource and capacity planning across diverse creative, marketing, and production functions.
• Develop and meticulously maintain capacity forecasts, utilization models, strategic staffing plans, and resource allocation strategies that align with critical business priorities.
• Proactively identify resource constraints, skill gaps, workload imbalances, and potential capacity risks, implementing agile adjustments to support evolving business needs.
• Collaborate closely with Creative and Marketing leadership to translate overarching annual and quarterly priorities into actionable workforce and resource plans.
• Orchestrate work allocation across internal creative teams, production resources, external agencies, freelance talent, and contractors.
• Establish robust frameworks for determining optimal work distribution, deciding when projects should be handled internally versus leveraging agencies, specialized partners, or innovative AI-enabled solutions.
• Provide strategic support for creative resource budgeting, offering recommendations that expertly balance quality, speed, cost, and available talent.
• Evaluate and continuously optimize end-to-end creative and marketing workflows, enhancing project intake, prioritization, planning, and governance.
• Systematically identify and eliminate operational bottlenecks, inefficient processes, and unnecessary handoffs that impede creative production.
• Develop intuitive dashboards and comprehensive reporting frameworks to provide transparent visibility into workload, resource utilization, project health, throughput, and capacity.
• Collaborate strategically with agency and production partners on staffing requirements, scope planning, resource forecasting, and operational integration.
• Leverage in-depth resource and workflow data to inform organizational planning, guide investment decisions, and steer future capability development.
• Partner with technology vendors and internal stakeholders to implement and optimize cutting-edge resource planning and workflow management tools.
• Champion continuous improvement and lead operational transformation initiatives that dramatically increase efficiency, flexibility, and the overall quality of creative output.

What You'll Bring (Must-Haves)

• 10+ years of progressive experience in creative operations, resource management, workforce planning, marketing operations, or similar strategic functions.
• Proven track record of leading resource planning and capacity management within large-scale creative, marketing, production, or agency organizations.
• Demonstrated success in developing sophisticated resource forecasts, utilization models, staffing plans, and capacity allocation strategies.
• A deep understanding of creative development lifecycles, marketing workflows, production processes, and the unique operational needs of creative teams.
• Extensive experience managing complex resource ecosystems, including internal creative teams, external agencies, freelancers, and contractors.
• Experience thriving in fast-paced, highly matrixed retail, consumer, or multi-brand environments.
• Strong analytical prowess with the ability to translate complex resource, workflow, and operational data into clear, actionable business recommendations.
• A proven ability to lead cross-functional initiatives, effectively influence senior stakeholders, and drive alignment across teams without direct authority.
• Hands-on experience in improving operational processes, expertly identifying inefficiencies, and implementing scalable workflow solutions.
• Strong business acumen, exceptional organizational planning skills, and the agility to balance overarching strategic priorities with detailed, hands-on execution.
• Exceptional communication skills and a demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguity within complex organizational structures.

What Will Set You Apart (Nice-to-Haves)

• Experience within the beauty, fashion, luxury, specialty retail, or major consumer brand sectors.
• Experience supporting large, in-house creative studios or enterprise-level marketing organizations.
• Hands-on familiarity with industry-leading resource planning, project management, and workflow platforms such as Adobe Workfront, Monday.com, Asana, Smartsheet, or similar tools.
• Experience leading significant creative operations transformations, organizational redesigns, or the implementation of new operating models.
• A proven ability to optimize the delicate balance between in-house creative talent, external agencies, and freelance resources.
• Familiarity with AI-enabled workflow solutions and emerging technologies designed to enhance creative production efficiency.