Head of Production

What we’re looking for:

The Head of Production will be responsible for the management of the delivery team, consisting of both Project Managers and Producers. Ensuring the whole team is working together to deliver quality work on time and on budget across the business. Knowing their team’s skill sets and using them effectively across all projects.

The Head of Production will be expected to have in-depth knowledge of processes and how to build the right teams for the variety of deliverables. The work ranges from the full range of digital content to intricate 3D animations, 2D motion graphics & content calendar creation along with the occasional web build and mini game development. With our client base predominantly in gaming and entertainment.

They will be able to talk the talk and walk the walk when it comes to the technical and production side of digital project management. Their holistic view of the agency ensures work is prioritised correctly in terms of deadlines but also from a business level.

This senior leadership role will be responsible for defining the Waste ways of working, ensuring they are effective and efficient. They will work on career development of the team, representing and promoting the operational requirements of the delivery team to senior management. They will be the person driving for the collaboration and communication between the teams for seamless delivery of great work.

You must have:

• Proven creative agency experience in a similar role, working with big brands and delivering/producing multiple projects with a strong focus on digital and social content production.
• Experience having worked on a variety of digital social outputs, with a focus on both 2D & 3D animation.
• Experience managing a minimum team of 4-5 people, comprising of PMs and Producers. Showing strong skills in assisting career development and mentorship.
• Show true leadership qualities, enabling the team to work more effectively.
• A passion for best practice, client satisfaction, and consistency of process and service across projects, big or small.
• Have proven experience in implementing and enforcing new processes and ways of working to enable more efficiency across the agency.
• Meticulous communication skills with the ability to bring all teams together to get the job done.
• Excellent content production knowledge and an eye for QC. You’ll understand the creative process, the creative resource needed, and have experienced working closely with internal teams whether that’s animators, strategists, CDs or tech.
• Strong financial acumen, an understanding of margins, scope and pricing.

Role specific requirements:

• Responsible for managing the centralised delivery team.
• One to ones.
• Capacity tracking and allocation of work across the team.
• Ensuring career development of all PM’s and Producers.
• Enabling skill sharing across the team.
• Be the spokesperson for the team.
• Responsible for the quality delivery of all projects across the studio.
• Acting as an escalation point for trouble shooting across delivery, raising any consistent issue arising from within the delivery team to the business directors.
• Paprika management, ensuring all jobs are set up with accurate estimates.
• Working with the senior PM’s to track budget and timelines
• Ensuring and enabling the communication between client services and delivery
• Provide contextualised support for the team on high level business decision
• Be the go-to person in Waste for project process, with a strong knowledge on animation both 2D and 3D, social statics, display build & web development
• Enforcing, managing and adapting the Waste WOW
• Reviewing and sign off of SOW for before work commences
• Be commercially minded and help mold projects to meet client budgets
• Drive project profitability and, along with the CS team, client profitability
• Managing the reconciliation of projects with Finance to determine overburn
• Working with the CS team on monthly billing.

In return you’ll get:

• Competitive salary
• The opportunity to develop your own skills in a fun, supportive environment.
• To work on big game titles in a fast-paced, exciting and ever-growing agency
• To work alongside extremely passionate digital natives, producing world-class work
• Early-finish August Fridays
• Christmas and summer parties you'll want to post about
• Breakfast, fruit, massages and Friday beers!

About Waste

Waste is an independent creative agency founded in 2006. We connect entertainment brands with their fans, to drive creativity, culture and commercial success. A virtuous circle we call ‘Brands powering fans, powering brands’.

Clients include the mobile gaming giant, Supercell (Clash of Clans, Brawl Stars). Our remit is player acquisition and retention, built around community listening and high-speed, high-quality content creation. We also work with the mighty Nintendo, creating TV, OOH and integrated marketing campaigns, for both hardware and software. Other notable clients include Riot Games (League of Legends), Ubisoft, Sega, Verizon Media and most recently Zynga.

In 2020 we were named both “The Drum Content Marketing” and “Digital Industries (DADI)“ Agency of the year. Globally we employ 70+ specialists covering strategy, creative, social, content, experiential, OOH, and TV. We have physical offices in London & LA, and work with brands around the world.

Our approach to everything is shaped by The Waste Way (our company values), and an entrepreneurial spirit. It’s seen us win 100+ awards, including Art Director’s Club, Awwwards, BIMA, D&AD, Clios, Design Week, The Drum, The FWA, Marketing Week Masters, and The Webby Awards. We brew our own craft beer, the Waste Pale Ale, a favourite with clients and partners. And we’ve recently started our own animation production company, This Thing of Ours. We also support the UK based gaming charity, SpecialEffect.

The Waste Way

At Waste, we live by 4 key cultural pillars and expect ALL Waster’s to live up to these principles. This is what Waste was founded on:

Be Brave – We look for fresh ways to solve problems and encourage diversity of thought.

Own Your Shit - We value actions over words and empower Wasters to make things happen.

Make it Better – We’re always looking for ways to improve our work, agency and ourselves.

Be Kind – We’re a team. Win together, lose together, learn together.

How Wasters embrace Diversity & Equal Opportunity

Us Wasters are committed to diversity, equality and inclusion. For us diversity and inclusion are not just a tick-boxing activity, but a chance for us to make long-term meaningful change. A diverse workforce means that we’re able to unlock our ability to innovate, be creative, be better problem solvers and provide an inclusive environment for everyone and we encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply.