Location: Barcelona

Start Date: ASAP

Reports to: Chief of Staff

About us

We’re Dragons, a global creative agency working with bold brands to build relevance, cultural connection, and long-term impact through strategy-led creativity.

We specialize in bridging the Digital and Creative worlds through innovative creative solutions, working extensively in sectors like skincare, healthcare, fashion, lifestyle, and FMCG, amongst others.

We have international teams working from the US and Barcelona, and we pride ourselves on our ability to drive results for our clients through strategic thinking, creative excellence, and meticulous execution.

About the role

We’re looking for a senior Senior Creative Operations Manager to lead and structure the operational backbone of our Creative team. This is a strategic leadership role at the helm of the team’s people and operations, for someone who understands the creative process deeply enough to lead the people who deliver it, and who is trusted to make judgment calls that shape how the team performs.

As the agency scales, this role owns the operational infrastructure behind creative and strategic delivery, the systems, tooling, capacity planning, and reporting that keep output efficient, predictable, and commercially sound.

The role requires someone who maintains a clear, end-to-end view of the team’s workflows, workload, capacity, and performance at all times; who can identify where scoping needs recalibration, where additional expertise, capability-building, and where quality standards need further scrutiny; and who has the seniority and credibility to design, implement, and uphold the strategic creative processes that enable the team to operate at a higher level. A key strategic partner to the Chief of Staff and the heads and leads of different disciplines, with real ownership over how the team is resourced, supported, and set up to do its best work.

Key Responsibilities

Scoping, delivery & quality oversight

• Define, challenge, and validate creative scopes upfront to ensure they are strategically sound, appropriately resourced, and fully aligned with project ambition, delivery requirements, and business priorities.
• Oversee delivery standards across the creative teams, ensuring work is completed on time, meets the expected level of creative excellence, and reflects the quality, rigor, and consistency required by senior stakeholders and clients.
• Anticipate and escalate delivery risks early (including capacity gaps, scope creep, quality concerns, and operational bottlenecks= and partner with Account Management and Project Management to drive timely, practical resolution.
• Act as a senior operational partner to the Head of Creative among other head and lead profiles, ensuring the team’s creative ambition, resourcing model, delivery realities, and quality standards remain consistently aligned.
• Ensure scopes are resourced in a way that protects delivery margin and commercial viability, balancing with operational and budget realities.

Process & Operations

• Define and uphold clear operational standards for how work moves through the creative teams, ensuring alignment with agency-wide Project Management practices while protecting the specific needs of the creative and strategic process.
• Continuously assess and evolve the creative and strategic teams’ operating model, including workflows, tools, governance, and ways of working, to improve efficiency, clarity, and creative/strategic output.
• Identify recurring operational friction points - including briefing quality, handoffs, review cycles, and approvals - and design scalable solutions that improve accountability, speed, and quality across the team.
• Bring a structured, consistent, and commercially aware approach to team planning, reporting, decision-making, and problem-solving.
• Build the operational infrastructure and standards required for the creative function to scale, ensuring ways of working hold up as team size, client volume, and complexity grow.

Systems, tooling & reporting

• Own the creative teams' work management and resourcing tools as the central operating system - intake, workflows, approvals, and cross-project dashboards.
• Build and maintain reporting on capacity, utilization, and delivery health, giving real-time visibility to inform decisions.
• Lead capacity planning and resource forecasting, anticipating demand and rebalancing across the team before constraints impact delivery.
• Lead the adoption of new tools and ways of working, including AI-enabled workflows, that raise the team’s efficiency, speed, and output.

Team management & performance

• Act as the direct people manager for the creative and strategic teams, owning performance conversations, feedback cycles, development plans, and the day-to-day leadership required to support high standards of individual and collective performance.
• Proactively identify team-level needs - including workload balance, capability gaps, morale, training priorities, and growth opportunities - and translate them into actionable recommendations and solutions.
• Partner with the Chief of Staff, heads and leads, and HR on hiring, onboarding, team structure, and resource planning, including identifying, sourcing, and coordinating freelance support when additional capacity or specialist expertise is required.

Stakeholder engagement

• Serve as a trusted senior operational voice for the creative and strategic teams within the wider agency, representing its priorities, needs, constraints, and delivery realities in cross-functional conversations.
• Work closely with the head and lead of different creative and strategic departments on team direction, capability needs, prioritization, and resourcing, while reporting directly to the Chief of Staff with clear visibility on capacity, priorities, performance, delivery health, and operational risks.

What we’re looking for

• 7+ years' experience managing creative teams or creative operations, ideally within an agency environment.
• Strong people-management skills: experience running performance reviews, feedback, and development plans.
• Solid understanding of the creative process (art direction, copywriting, design, strategy).
• Experience with scoping, resourcing, and project management practices; comfortable working alongside PM and Account teams.
• Operationally minded and proactive: someone who spots inefficiencies and builds practical solutions rather than waiting for direction.
• Clear, confident communicator, able to work closely with senior creative and leadership stakeholders.
• Comfortable balancing team advocacy with operational discipline and accountability.
• Hands-on experience owning work management and resourcing platforms (e.g., Wrike, Asana, Jira, etc.) as a central operating hub - workflows, intake, approvals, dashboards.
• Data-literate and commercially aware: comfortable building and using capacity, utilization, and delivery reporting to drive decisions, and mindful of resourcing economics and margin.
• Proven experience scaling creative operations within a growing agency or fast-moving environment.
• Curiosity for emerging tools and AI, and a track record of adopting them to improve how creative work gets done.
• Languages: Proficient English (mandatory), Spanish (mandatory); any other languages are a plus.

Benefits

• Remote flex Fridays from 9:00 AM to 2.30 PM.
• Three weeks of remote work per year.
• Summer working hours across July and August (9:00 AM to 4.00 PM).
• Free English & Spanish classes to boost your global communication skills.
• Access to Wellhub, a wellness platform offering a wide range of fitness and wellbeing options.
• Flexible retribution plan for meals, transport and childcare.
• Holidays: 22 working days + 3 days established by the collective agreement + national and local public holidays.
• Bright, spacious offices in the heart of Barcelona, with unlimited premium coffee.
• Competitive pay & room to grow.
• Global playground, cutting-edge tools and trend-driven culture.

At Dragons Group, we are dedicated to creating a workplace that values diversity, equity, and inclusion. We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and strive to build an environment where every individual feels empowered and respected.