Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, the Senior Director of Studio Operations will lead the largr team responsible for the end-to-end production of our visual and written e-commerce content. The Senior Director will define and implement a strategy to ensure the team achieves excellence in operations and quality and that the team is able to scale to meet the needs of the business. The successful candidate must be a strong, multi-faceted people leader, with the ability to lead and engage a large team of diverse professionals, including the Studio Art Director, Visual Production (Hair & Makeup Artists, Stylist, Photographers, Retouchers), Planning & Producing (Planners, Producers, Merchandise Coordinators, Set Coordinators), and Content & Localization (English, Chinese, French, Japanese). The Senior Director will partner closely with key leaders in Buying, Marketing, and Sales to ensure SSENSE conveys a distinct point of view to customers and by extension, create long term value for the business.

Responsibilities

Strategy – 30%

• Own the Studio strategy from definition to execution, driving initiatives in pursuit of excellence in operations and quality
• Identify new business areas and strategies, driving detailed analyses and business cases to help construct recommendations around competitive differentiation, productivity, and scalability
• Continuously challenge the incumbent business model, particularly as the team considers international expansion and new art direction
• Stay abreast of industry trends, benchmarks, and partner solutions, continuously identifying and executing upon opportunities to improve time, cost and/or quality

Operations – 30%

• Lead studio operations by spearheading continuous improvement to enable cost optimization while maintaining SLAs
• Ensure the overall quality of images and written content produced is consistent with the SSENSE identity and brand, while taking into consideration seasonal direction from Buying and Marketing
• Develop the Studio’s ability to operate as an internal shared service, establishing an intake process, cost tracking, and shared measures of success
• Maintain assets and equipment of the Studio

People Leadership & Organizational Capabilities – 40%

• Provide leadership, mentoring, training, development and performance management for direct and indirect reports
• Design the optimal organization for scale and lead the upcoming international expansion of these teams
• Full budget responsibility to oversee the accurate and optimal forecasting of staffing needs and develop periodic plans

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, or a related field, MBA nice to have
• A minimum of 5 years experience in strategy roll-out for multi-million dollars investments
• A minimum of 8 years proven industry experience working in production or merchandising
• A minimum of 5 years experience in a similar management role
• Experience with fashion and branding
• Hands-on experience in setting and managing budgets
• Deep understanding of the photo production studio best practices
• Experience with Six Sigma
• Travel flexibility (10%)

Skills

• Highly analytical and detail oriented
• Strong operational skills
• Creative thinker with excellent problem solving abilities
• Ability to support creative processes in a fast paced production environment
• Team player with solid leadership and interpersonal skills
• Proven ability to manage high volumes of workflow, and to prioritize, plan, and delegate tasks
• Strong communication skills, with an ability to influence cross-functional teams