Head of Creative Operations

Overview

Working at Atlassian, you can choose where you work – whether in an office, from home, or a combination of the two. This flexibility allows Atlassians to better support their family, personal goals, and other priorities. We are able to hire people in any country where we have a legal entity.

Atlassian is seeking an experienced and strategic Head of Creative Operations to lead the operating engine of our in-house Creative Studio. This diverse and vibrant team is responsible for how our brand shows up globally.

You will own and evolve the systems, structure, financial planning, and operating model that power a global brand creative organization. Your primary role is to ensure our designers, writers, filmmakers, strategists, and producers are equipped to deliver world-class creative work at scale — efficiently, sustainably, and aligned to business priorities.

As a leader, you will be instrumental in redesigning how creative organizations work. You will shape the Studio’s intake and prioritization frameworks, capacity models, forecasting, tooling ecosystem, governance rituals, and global resourcing strategy. Additionally, you will play a critical role in financial planning, org design, and portfolio orchestration, ensuring the Creative Studio operates as a scalable, high-craft and performing function embedded within Atlassian’s marketing organization.

You will partner closely with the Executive Creative Director and Marketing Leadership to translate strategic ambition into executable roadmaps grounded in operational rigor.

Cultivating and maintaining strong relationships is essential, as is a deep passion for enabling creative excellence. You will collaborate with Product Marketing, Product Design, Procurement, Legal, and Events teams, as well as external agencies and production partners. The ideal candidate is amiable, adaptive, strategically minded, solutions-driven, and organized, able to bring clarity to ambiguity in a fast-paced environment. Client-side creative organization experience is required, with a bonus for industry expertise at a recognized creative agency. You must have a proven track record managing creative operations and scaling systems for global teams.

Responsibilities

• Design and evolve the creative operating model: You will design, document, and continuously refine how work flows through the brand creative team—from intake to delivery—along with the playbooks, governance, and engagement models that support it.
• Own intake, prioritization, and what we don’t do: You will own the intake and prioritization framework that determines what the team does and doesn’t take on, balancing strategic initiatives, reactive asks, and capacity in close partnership with Marketing and PMM.
• Lead capacity planning and forecasting: You will build and maintain data-informed capacity and forecasting models that align headcount, allocations, utilization, and WIP limits with current and planned demand.
• Manage Creative Studio budget and financial planning: You will partner with Finance and Marketing to plan, manage, and track the Creative Studio budget—including headcount, travel, vendor, production, and tooling spend—to ensure resources are aligned to strategic priorities.
• Oversee physical content studio operations in San Francisco: You will help manage the day-to-day and long-range operations of the content studio in San Francisco, ensuring the space, equipment, and processes effectively support production needs and team workflows.
• Drive data-informed operations and reporting: You will define, track, and socialize the key metrics, dashboards, and reporting cadences that give leaders visibility into pipeline, team health, and operational performance and use these insights to drive improvements.
• Scale org design and resourcing strategy: You will help shape the global org structure and resourcing strategy—including regional models and hire vs. freelance vs. outsource decisions—to support a scalable, sustainable creative practice.
• Own workflow tools and systems: You will lead the selection, configuration, and adoption of workflow and project management tools and standards so that briefs, roadmaps, and work tracking are consistent and visible across regions and time zones.
• Partner in strategic planning and governance: You will participate in annual and quarterly marketing planning, translate priorities into creative roadmaps and guardrails, and run or contribute to governance rituals that keep strategy, capacity, and execution aligned.
• Lead and develop the operations & production team: You will manage and mentor a team of operations and production specialists, setting clear expectations, coaching their growth, and modeling calm, pragmatic leadership under pressure.
• Enable world-class creative execution: You will ensure that systems, resourcing, and vendor models are tuned to enable best‑in‑class creative work across live action, digital, experiential, and events.
• Champion the voice of both creatives and stakeholders: You will build trust with creatives and stakeholders by setting realistic expectations, explaining tradeoffs clearly, pushing back when needed, and feeding stakeholder feedback into ongoing process and system improvements.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in creative operations, production operations, or program management within an internal brand/marketing organization and a creative agency; experience across both is highly valued.
• 7+ years leading teams, with proven success designing and scaling global creative teams across time zones, including regional pods, follow-the-sun models, and escalation frameworks.
• Demonstrated experience redesigning how a creative team works (intake, prioritization, workflows, governance, tooling) with clear, measurable outcomes.
• Proven ability to: Build and run prioritization frameworks and portfolio management practices. Develop forecasting models for creative capacity, including utilization and WIP management. Use data and metrics (throughput, cycle time, utilization, forecast accuracy, stakeholder satisfaction, cost per asset) to drive operational decisions.
• Strong background in or exposure to creative production (film, digital, experiential, events, or design) with a clear shift toward systems and operations rather than only project execution.
• Experience implementing and scaling workflow or project management tools (e.g., Jira), including change management, adoption, and measurement of impact. A passion for AI and agents within this space is a plus.
• Strong business acumen, with the ability to connect creative capacity and operational realities to marketing and business objectives.
• Experience deciding when to hire, freelance, or outsource, supported by cost modeling, volume analysis, and skill-gap assessments.
• Comfortable managing vendor relationships, procurement, contracts, and legal partnerships in collaboration with Procurement and Legal.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills; adept at building rapport and consensus among diverse partners and senior leaders.
• Comfortable operating as a player/coach—able to zoom between strategy, systems design, and hands-on problem solving as needed.
• Experience and affinity for Atlassian products and brand is a plus.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.

Key skills/competency

• Creative Operations
• Strategic Planning
• Financial Management
• Capacity Planning
• Workflow Optimization
• Global Team Leadership
• Brand Creative
• Project Management Tools
• Stakeholder Management
• Organizational Design