Estée Lauder Creative Operations and Production Director

About Estée Lauder

Estée Lauder is a global prestige beauty house with a legacy of innovation, elegance, and entrepreneurial spirit dating back to 1946. As an employer, the company offers the opportunity to contribute to a portfolio of admired luxury and beauty brands while upholding high standards of creativity, consumer insight, and excellence. It cultivates a dynamic, inclusive workplace where talent is encouraged to lead with imagination, collaborate across cultures, and grow through learning and mobility. Guided by its heritage and a forward-looking vision, Estée Lauder appeals to professionals seeking meaningful careers in a refined, international, and purpose-driven environment.

Role & Responsibilities

• Establish workflows for briefing, prioritisation, resource planning, budgeting, approvals and delivery across markets.
• Provide functional leadership to Creative Operations and Production Leads across key markets.
• Make demand, capacity and timelines visible to support clear decisions and effective resource allocation.
• Build consistent ways of working while accommodating local market needs.
• Define whether work should be produced locally, regionally, internally or through external partners.
• Develop and manage relationships with agencies, production companies, creators, freelancers and specialist partners.
• Translate creative concepts into practical production plans while protecting the quality and ambition of the ideas.
• Introduce AI-enabled workflows and emerging technologies to improve productivity and speed.
• Own production budgeting and cost governance, ensuring transparency and accountability for spend.
• Partner with Finance and Procurement on vendor selection, contracts, negotiations and production models.
• Deliver measurable savings through smarter sourcing, consolidation, regional production and stronger use of internal capabilities.
• Establish cost benchmarks and identify opportunities to reinvest efficiencies in creative quality and capabilities.
• Partner with Creative Leadership, Brand, Marketing, Finance and Procurement to align priorities and execution.
• Represent Emerging Markets in global and regional production discussions.
• Support annual and ongoing resource planning, anticipating future production and capability needs.
• Simplify processes and improve speed, predictability and consistency across the creative organisation.
• Build a connected production network with clear priorities, flexible resources and visible budgets and capacity; improve the speed, efficiency and cost of delivery while maintaining high creative standards and local relevance.

Qualifications

• At least 15 years of experience in creative production, integrated production, creative operations or content operations.
• At least 4–5 years in a senior leadership role overseeing complex regional or multi-market creative delivery.
• Experience leading teams or distributed production functions across markets, brands or business units.
• Strong end-to-end production knowledge across film, photography, social content, digital, retail and experiential formats.
• Proven ability to build and implement scalable workflows, production processes and operating models.
• Strong financial and commercial skills, including budgeting, forecasting, negotiation and cost management.
• Demonstrated success delivering production efficiencies and measurable savings.
• Experience working directly with Finance and Procurement on vendor strategy, contracts and commercial governance.
• Experience in luxury, beauty and fashion is a plus.
• Strong understanding of agency, production and freelance partner networks.
• Ability to influence senior stakeholders across global, regional and local teams.
• Practical understanding of how AI and emerging technologies can improve creative production.

Skills

Experience

At least 15 years in creative production, integrated production, creative operations or content operations; at least 4–5 years in a senior leadership role overseeing complex regional or multi-market creative delivery.

Culture

Estée Lauder fosters a high-performance, collaborative culture rooted in prestige beauty, innovation, and a deep understanding of consumers around the world. As an employer, the company values creativity, entrepreneurial thinking, inclusion, and continuous development, offering employees the opportunity to contribute to iconic brands while growing in a dynamic global environment.

About Cerulean

Cerulean is the definitive career portal for the global luxury industry. We match exceptional professionals with exclusive opportunities at the world's most prestigious brands. From haute couture and fine watchmaking to prestige beauty, hospitality, and boutique retail, Cerulean centralises luxury employment to help you find the career for which you were destined.