Role: Senior Automation Programme Director

Location: Remote working until further notice

A Little Bit About the Role:

This is a senior role that sits at the intersection of programme leadership and automation expertise. We are not looking for a generalist PM. The right person brings genuine hands-on experience with creative automation tools and production workflows — enough to credibly lead, challenge and quality-check the technical team, understand what the tools can and cannot do, and translate that into clear direction for both the client and the delivery team.

The programme spans multiple regions and time zones, with a team of automation specialists, a technical production lead, and direct client exposure at senior level. The Senior Automation Programme Director is the single point of accountability across all of it: the process, the people, the risks, and the relationship.

What You'll Be Doing:

Programme management and delivery oversight

• End-to-end oversight of all live automation projects and workstreams across multiple regions — from brief to delivery
• Facilitate the daily cross-regional stand-up with the delivery team and PMs; ensure actions are tracked, followed up and never dropped
• Liaise daily with project managers and regional leads to understand progress, surface blockers, and keep delivery on track
• Produce a weekly programme status report for senior leadership — clear, accurate, RAG-rated, with no surprises
• Own and maintain the program's single source of truth: one document, updated daily, accessible to client and team at all times
• Forward plan across all active workstreams — anticipate capacity gaps, workflow changes and timeline risks before they land

Risk, flags and issue management

• Proactively identify risks and escalation points before they become client-facing issues — this is not a reactive role
• When issues arise, own the mitigation plan: document it, communicate it internally first, then manage the client conversation
• Maintain a live action and issue log; ensure nothing is communicated verbally without a written record
• Know when to escalate upwards and when to resolve at programme level — and act accordingly without being prompted
• Manage competing priorities across regions and workstreams, making clear-headed decisions when trade-offs are required

Client relationship and communication

• Primary point of contact for the client at programme level — including a regular senior sync with the client stakeholder
• Build and maintain trust with the client through clear, consistent and proactive communication — they should always know where things stand
• Translate client feedback into precise internal action; close the loop so the client sees the response
• Build and own a client-facing RACI: simple, accurate, updated — the client uses this to understand who does what
• Prepare and present programme documentation, playbooks and status updates for client review; be confident leading those conversations
• Act as the bridge between client expectations and what the team can realistically deliver — manage that gap proactively

Process, ways of working and documentation

• Own the Centralised Automation Playbook — write it, update it with every learning, and enforce it consistently across the team
• Design and implement the ways of working for the programme: communication channels, document storage, meeting cadence, escalation paths
• Ensure all project documentation is accurate, lives in the right place and is accessible to all relevant parties at all times
• Identify process gaps and inefficiencies; propose and implement solutions without waiting to be asked
• Ensure the team is not running multiple parallel processes — one source of truth, one agreed way of working, no exceptions
• Capable of executing basic backend administrative tasks, such as onboarding new users and maintaining simple workflows. Holds a solid understanding of the automation platform, enabling them to review, interpret, and communicate diagnostic insights, though not required to directly troubleshoot or resolve technical issues.

Team leadership and capability

• Lead, mentor, and line-manage Automation Delivery Specialists across regions, providing clear direction, ongoing coaching, and regular feedback to support performance, development, and career growth.
• Onboard new team members effectively: tool knowledge, account context, ways of working — all three, from day one
• Design and deliver training sessions for internal team and, where required, the client — including onboarding to new tools and workflows
• Work closely with the technical automation lead: understand the backend deeply enough to ask the right questions, quality-check outputs and flag what doesn't look right
• Manage upwards clearly and promptly when resource gaps, allocation issues or structural problems need senior attention

WHAT THIS ROLE IS NOT

• A coordinator role — day-to-day file ingestion and timing plan management sits with the delivery specialists
• A purely technical build role — you do not need to write scripts or configure automation tools, but you need to understand them well enough to lead the people who do
• A role where you wait to be told what the problem is — you surface it, you own it, you bring a plan

What Good Looks Like

• Significant experience in programme or project management within a creative production, post-production or marketing agency environment — this is not an entry point
• Demonstrable hands-on experience with creative automation tools and workflows — OMG, Celtra, CHILI Publish, or equivalent platforms
• Proven track record managing complex, multi-region programmes with multiple concurrent workstreams and stakeholders
• Experienced running senior client relationships: comfortable in difficult conversations, clear under pressure, always professional
• Strong commercial awareness — you understand scope, you know when something is out of it, and you act accordingly
• Excellent written and verbal communication — your status updates can be trusted, your escalations are clear, your documentation is complete
• Highly organised and detail-oriented: nothing falls through the gaps because you have a system and you stick to it
• A forward planner — you are already thinking two weeks ahead while managing what is happening today
• A problem-solver who arrives with a proposed solution, not just the problem
• Experienced designing and implementing ways of working from scratch — you know what good PM housekeeping looks like and you do not wait for someone else to set it up
• Comfortable working across time zones, cultures and regions — you adapt your communication style accordingly
• Self-directed and proactive — you do not need to be managed closely to stay on top of a complex, fast-moving programme

Req ID - 17700

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