Associate Head of Creative Operations

POSITION SUMMARY

BOT VFX, a visual effects services company with global clients, is looking for an Associate Head of Creative Operations as a full-time permanent role. The position is based out of Chennai, India.  
The Associate Head of Creative Operations oversees all aspects of the creative operations involved in the delivery of VFX services to our clients.  This includes processes, tools, communication flows, conventions, and metrics concerned with the delivery of creative work by the creative team.  The role is concerned with the effectiveness, efficiency, and reliability with which creative tasks are performed but is not directly accountable to individual show objectives (in contrast, the Creative Head is accountable for the quality of all show deliveries and meeting the client’s creative vision).  The scope of creative operations spans all creative activities between ingest and egresss, and touches all operational aspects ranging from artist tools to central storage to IO and artist training.

At a broad level, this role directly supports the objectives of the whole creative team.  More specifically, the individual will work closely with the Creative Head and the HOP to help meet their delivery objectives.  The individual will also work closely with the CIO to help spec the floor hardware and software needs, and to ensure pipeline development efforts are in line with the creative team’s needs.  A team of TDs, runners, and VFX editors will also report into the Creative Operations Head role. 

The most important goal of the Creative Operations Head role is to ensure that there are efficient processes & tools and sufficient training & resources within the creative team to deliver great VFX work.

POSITION RESPONSIBILITIES

• Identify weak operational areas that are inefficient, broken, inconsistent, under-resourced or highly manual, and help define processes, tools, resource and conventions that address these deficiencies
• Ensure the creative team is appropriately resourced for the creative goals of the company; resources include workstation hardware, central storage space, render farm needs, DCC licenses, plugins, and other off-the-shelf tools
• Ensure close coordination with the IT department in developing pipeline tools that meet the needs of the various creative departments
• Ensure that the pool of TDs are sufficiently addressing the ad hoc needs of the creative teams; similarly for runners and VFX editors 
• Define gaps in artist training that affect efficiency or productivity and develop and implement training modules to address this (note, this is different from task-specific creative skill building)

REQUIRED SKILLS

• The individual should have at least 10 years experience in VFX arena, with at least 5 years in a leadership role of some form
• The individual should possess a strong process discipline and orientation, with an engineering background preferred (though not required); s/he should be methodical and analytical in approaching problems and developing solutions 
• The individual should possess strong judgement to discern high-impact changes from low-value or irrelevant changes
• The individual should have strong ability to get work done collaboratively, but decisively; s/he should be able to handle work calmly and productively under pressure
• The individual should be well organized & planned