Creative Operations AI Transformation Strategist

Location: NYC (hybrid - 3x onsite)

Job Type: 8-month W2 hourly contract (extension/conversion based on performance)

Compensation Range: $60-67/hr

Benefits: health/vision/dental, 401k, and more (https://shorturl.at/GMPcb)

Brand is advancing a multi-year transformation to build an AI-enabled, integrated, and agency-light content operating model. This involves Adobe-enabled transformation, creative workflow redesign, selective in-housing of production/post-production, marketer self-service, digital asset management (DAM), agency optimization, and value realization.

We are seeking a strategic, hands-on transformation leader to turn emerging AI capabilities into practical, governed, and scalable ways of working. Partnering across Brand Creative, Creative Operations, Brand AI Transformation, Finance, Sourcing, Marketing Transformation, Product, Tech, Legal, Risk, and agencies, this role determines which work moves in-house, stays with agencies, operates hybrid, or becomes marketer self-service.

This is not a traditional finance, project coordinator, or tech-product role. The ideal candidate combines transformation strategy, creative ops, AI fluency, operating-model design, and commercial discipline to assess ambiguous workflows, establish facts, recommend future-state models, mobilize stakeholders, and execute roadmaps with measurable business cases.

Primary Outcomes

• Define the future-state creative and content operating model.
• Identify and prioritize viable in-housing opportunities (creative, production, post-production, high-volume adaptation).
• Translate creative and business needs into clear Adobe and enterprise-tech requirements.
• Design and execute pilots validating quality, speed, capacity, controls, and economics before scaling.
• Establish an agency-light model preserving external partners for high-value strategy, original creative, specialist craft, and variable capacity.
• Build credible value cases connecting workflow changes to agency-scope and budget decisions.
• Create operating mechanisms to sustain capabilities post-transformation.

Responsibilities:

Transformation strategy and operating-model design

• Lead current-state assessments of creative, production, post-production, and asset-management workflows to resolve fragmentation, handoffs, rework, and capacity constraints.
• Design future-state workflows, roles, decision rights, governance forums, service tiers, and handoffs across internal teams and agencies.
• Recommend work allocation across four delivery models: in-house, agency, hybrid, and marketer self-service based on value, complexity, volume, risk, craft, automation potential, and capacity.
• Translate strategy into sequenced roadmaps, implementation requirements, decision points, and measurable outcomes.
• Ensure pilots have a clear path to operationalization, ownership, training, support, and steady-state delivery.

Creative operations and in-housing strategy

• Assess creative workflows from brief/intake through concept, production, review, approval, delivery, trafficking, and archiving.
• Evaluate opportunities across photography, video, motion graphics, retouching, versioning, resizing, templates, and social content.
• Develop make-versus-buy assessments evaluating quality, speed, cost, capacity, risk, expertise, and demand variability.
• Define the talent, skills, capacity, workflow, and technology needed to internalize selected work.
• Establish pilot criteria and scale gates (quality, utilization, turnaround, rework, stakeholder acceptance, unit economics).
• Support the transition of approved work from agencies to internal teams, including scope definition, knowledge transfer, documentation, and readiness.
• Partner with Sourcing and Finance to align in-housing plans with agency contracts, retainers, and SOWs.

AI and Adobe capability strategy

• Translate creative jobs-to-be-done into structured business, workflow, data, governance, and tech requirements.
• Assess where AI can automate or augment work versus where human judgment and specialist craft must remain primary controls.
• Partner with Adobe, Product, and Tech teams to evaluate relevant tools (Creative Cloud, Firefly, Firefly Services, Adobe Express, GenStudio, Frame.io, AEM Assets, Workfront), distinguishing out-of-the-box, configuration, integration, and new-build needs.
• Design use cases and pilots with explicit inputs, outputs, success criter…