Studio Lead - In House Creative Agency

London

Hybrid working - 3 days in the office, 2 days remote

About the role

The Lead Studio Manager is the operational backbone of BT Group’s in-house creative agency, sitting at the heart of a major consolidation effort to bring three separate creative studios under one unified model. This is not a passive coordination role – it is a gatekeeping, enabling, and intelligence-gathering function that ensures the studio works at its best.

You will own the Front Door into the Studio: the point of entry for every brief coming into the studio. You will decide whether work is ready to proceed, push back when it is not, and protect the team’s capacity, quality, and wellbeing from the inside. You will also be the single source of truth on who is doing what, who is best placed to do it, and whether we have the right people and skills in place for the road ahead.

Reporting directly to the Principal Operations, you will play a critical role in evidencing how the studios work today – and shaping how they should work in the future

What you’ll be doing

Front Door & Brief Management

• Ensure briefs are studio-ready by validating scope, quality, and timelines, working closely with Client Services Managers to maintain efficient workflow planning and delivery.

Resource & Capacity Management

• Maintain a live, accurate picture of team capacity across the studio at all times, using Monday as interim then Screendragon for the future.
• Allocate the right people to the right jobs based on skills, experience, personality fit, and current workload.
• Flag capacity issues proactively to the Principal Operations Manager before they become delivery problems.
• Develop a forward-looking view of upcoming work and pipeline, identifying pressure points in advance

Process Governance & Standards

• Champion consistent use of studio processes and actively call out deviations, regardless of who is responsible
• Drive operational excellence by ensuring projects stay on track, championing process improvements, and maintaining accurate, compliant project documentation.

Essential Skills / Experience

• Considerable experience in a studio management, traffic management, or senior production coordination role within an in-house agency or creative studio environment
• Demonstrable experience gatekeeping work intake and managing brief quality
• Proven ability to manage resource allocation across a multi-disciplinary creative team
• Experience managing freelance and contract resource, including compliance and onboarding administration
• Track record of managing capacity and flagging risks before they become delivery failures
• Strong financial administration skills – tracking costs, raising POs, reconciling spend
• Experience with resourcing and workflow management tools (Float or similar)

Desirable Skills / Experience

• Experience within a large in-house agency or brand-side creative operation
• Background in a telecoms, media, or large B2C organisation
• Familiarity with IR35 status determination processes
• Experience using freelance sourcing platforms (e.g. Yuno Juno)
• Involvement in studio consolidation, transformation, or operational change programmes
• Understanding of agile project management methodologies
• Formal project management training or certification (e.g. Prince2, PMQ)

Our Package

Tailored benefits make a real difference. That’s why we offer a comprehensive range to support your growth, wellbeing, and everyday life. You can design the package to suit you and your lifestyle. Your core benefits include:

• 10% on target annual bonus
• Access to an online private GP 24/7 for you and your immediate family
• Market-leading paid carers leave with up to 2 weeks off
• Equalized maternity, paternity, and adoption leave – 18 weeks’ full pay and 8 weeks’ half pay
• Discounted EE and BT products, including mobile and broadband
• Market leading Pension scheme – 5% from you and 10% from us
• Holiday purchase scheme

You can select additional benefits, including healthcare, dental, gym memberships and more when you’re ready.

BT Group is the UK’s leading communications group and the holding company behind some of the country’s most recognised brands – including BT, EE, Openreach and Plusnet. Our purpose is as simple as it is ambitious: we connect for good. Our customers include consumers, small, medium and large businesses, public sector organisations and other communications providers.

BT Group’s role is about setting direction, unlocking value and creating the conditions for our brands and businesses to thrive.

Having come through the most capital-intensive phase of our fibre investment, our focus now is on what comes next – simplifying how we operate, using technology and AI to work smarter, and organising ourselves to serve customers better and grow sustainably. Group teams shape strategy, policy, brand, capital allocation and transformation, helping the whole organisation perform at its best.

We have a singular culture that unites all our people: we are customer-first challengers, who are committed, clear and connected. These behaviours unite us as one team to deliver for our colleagues, our customers, our stakeholders and the country. Joining BT Group means working at the heart of a business that matters to the UK, with the opportunity to shape decisions, influence outcomes and help set the future course of one of the country’s most important companies.