Strategic Development Manager (Creative Director)

We are a Global Recruitment specialist that provides support to the clients across EMEA, APAC, US and Canada. We have an excellent job opportunity for you.

Job Title: Strategic Development Manager (Creative Director)

Location: Shoreditch, London/Remote

Duration: 11-12 months contract initially

Rate range: £85 to 100k per annum + paid holidays + pension or £ 450 to 570 per day Inside IR35

As a Strategic Development Manager, you will be the creative-production and applied-AI specialist for enterprise customers. You will work with creative directors, design leaders, producers, studio operations teams, marketing organizations, and technology stakeholders to identify high-value opportunities, build prototypes and pilot workflows, and guide customers toward repeatable adoption.

You will bring the judgment of an experienced creative practitioner into the implementation process. You will know when a use case is strategically valuable, when a Custom Model is appropriate, when Creative Production is the right workflow layer, when human review must remain in the process, and when deeper technical or product involvement is required.

What You Will Do

Lead Creative Discovery and Use-Case Strategy

• Partner with enterprise creative, marketing, production, and operations leaders to understand their brand system, production model, content supply chain, and business priorities.
• Map how briefs become concepts, how master assets become variants, and how work moves through review, approval, localization, asset management, and activation.
• Identify high-value opportunities based on content volume, cycle time, cost, rework, brand consistency, quality, and adoption potential.
• Determine whether a use case is best served by Firefly capabilities, Firefly Custom Models, Firefly Creative Production, Firefly Services.
• Make clear fit and no-fit recommendations. Set expectations about quality standards, human review, brand governance, rights, and the limitations of AI-assisted production.

Implement Firefly Custom Models

• Lead customers through Custom Model readiness, including use-case definition, training-asset selection, visual consistency, captioning, governance, and evaluation.
• Help creative teams determine whether training assets are representative, approved, and appropriate for the intended model and output.
• Train, test, evaluate, and iterate on Custom Models within the agreed customer implementation scope.
• Develop prompting and evaluation practices that help creative teams assess output quality, identify failure modes, and improve results.
• Demonstrate how approved models can support campaign, character, style, illustration, photography, product-background, and other relevant enterprise use cases.
• Document model assumptions, evaluation criteria, review requirements, and recommended operating practices for the customer team.
• Partner with technical specialists when model workflows require APIs, enterprise architecture, security review, data integration, or production engineering.

Design and Implement Firefly Creative Production Workflows

• Translate creative production requirements into repeatable workflow designs with defined inputs, transformations, creative controls, approvals, outputs, and system handoffs.
• Configure and demonstrate no-code or low-code workflows for activities such as asset variation, resizing, cropping, background replacement, compositing, adaptation, and localization.
• Build customer-facing prototypes and pilot implementations using real or representative customer assets.
• Evaluate workflow output with creative teams and iterate against agreed quality, brand, and production criteria.
• Demonstrate working solutions directly to creative directors, designers, producers, and production teams rather than relying only on presentation material.
• Partner with Customer Forward Deployed Engineering, Technical Consulting, and customer technology teams to move validated workflows into production-grade integrations.

Drive Adoption and Value Realization

• Facilitate hands-on workshops with designers, producers, editors, marketers, and creative operations teams.
• Train customer teams to use, evaluate, govern, and extend implemented workflows.
• Create enablement materials, operating guidelines, prompt practices, evaluation rubrics, and handoff documentation.
• Help customers define responsibilities for creators, reviewers, approvers, publishers, and workflow owners.
• Establish a practical adoption plan that moves beyond a demonstration and into repeatable use by the target creative organization.
• Track outcomes such as time from brief to approved asset, number of variants produced, cost per asset or campaign, reduction in rework or reshoots, time required for localization, percentage of output accepted as on-brand, active users, and workflow adoption.

Scale What Works

• Convert successful customer patterns into reusable workflow templates, demonstrations, playbooks, evaluation methods, and implementation guidance.
• Share customer insights and product gaps with Product Management, Engineering, Enablement, Customer Success Managers, and other Client partners.
• Contribute to the operating model and intellectual property of the newly formed Customer Success and Strategy group.
• Stay current on Firefly capabilities, creative technology, production practices, and responsible AI considerations.

What You Will Bring

The primary profile is an experienced creative-production leader who has absorbed AI and technology. We are looking for someone who has led creative work in an enterprise, major agency, studio, or large-scale brand environment and can now apply that experience to customer-facing implementation.

Required Qualifications

• Significant experience leading creative production in an enterprise, major agency, studio, or large-scale brand environment.
• Experience in a role such as Creative Director, Design Director, Executive Creative Director, Art Director, Creative Producer, Studio Lead, Head of Content Operations, Post-Production Lead, or equivalent.
• Demonstrated understanding of enterprise creative workflows from brief to final asset, including production, adaptation, localization, review, approval, asset management, and distribution.
• A portfolio showing creative work that shipped at scale. Examples may include campaigns, brand systems, photography, motion, video, 3D, editorial, or content operations. A portfolio is required for application review.
• Hands-on experience using generative AI, creative automation, or emerging creative technology to solve real production problems.
• Ability to build working prototypes, configure practical workflows, evaluate creative output, and communicate requirements clearly to technical specialists.
• Strong facilitation, storytelling, written communication, and executive communication skills.
• Ability to work credibly with creative practitioners and enterprise technology stakeholders.
• Sound judgment regarding brand governance, rights, quality, human review, and responsible AI adoption.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Firefly, Firefly Custom Models, Firefly Creative Production, Firefly Services, GenStudio, Workfront, AEM Assets, Frame.io, or Creative Cloud.
• Experience with APIs, JSON, workflow logic, automation platforms, or no-code and low-code tools.
• Experience with creative technology, design systems, content supply chain transformation, enterprise consulting, or change management.
• Familiarity with tools and production environments such as Figma, Cinema 4D, Nuke, Omniverse, Runway, ComfyUI, or comparable platforms.
• Experience developing creative operations playbooks, enablement programs, or customer centers of excellence.

If you are interested in this position and would like to learn more, please send through your CV and we will get in touch with you as soon as possible. Please note, candidates are often Shortlisted within 48 hours.