Creative Studio Project Manager Jobs in Chicago, IL

Company description
Arc is the lead shopper and retail agency within Publicis Groupe. In an era of unprecedented disruption, where the customers you seek actively resist brands like never before, everything we do is in service of making your brand irresistible. We call it Irresistible Commerce. And it starts by employing insights and data to uncover what's standing in the way of growth. Then we deploy irresistible creative solutions to build connected shopping experiences that are personal, valuable and delightful for your customers. The results simultaneously drive brand sales and love. Helping us become WARC's #1 Specialty Retail Agency with groundbreaking work recognized by Adweek, ANA Reggie Awards and Effies.
Overview
The Studio Director is an energetic, collaborative, forward-looking senior leader that provides day-to-day oversight, operational discipline, creative production oversight, innovation, and change leadership for a multidisciplinary studio team delivering high-quality design adaptation, production art, presentation, digital, web, and print assets. The Studio Director will help unify ways of working across teams while preserving the strengths, craft standards, and client knowledge each team brings. This leader will partner closely with Studio leadership, peer Studio Director, Creative, Account, Strategy, Operations, and Production teams to build a consistent, scalable studio model that delivers work accurately, efficiently, on brand, on budget, and on schedule.
This position is ideal for an adaptive, production-minded creative leader who can lead through organizational change and industry transformation, align teams around common standards, mentor managers and individual contributors, and translate business priorities into practical studio processes. The successful candidate will bring strong design judgment, deep production expertise, executive communication skills, and a proven ability to build trust across teams during periods of growth, integration, and transformation.
Responsibilities
• Lead the studio design team to ensure consistent standards, equitable resourcing, and aligned ways of working across both teams.
• Provide steady leadership by building trust, clarifying roles and responsibilities, supporting change adoption, and creating a shared operating rhythm.
• Translate the Head of Studio's vision into actionable team goals, staffing plans, workflow improvements, quality expectations, and measurable operating practices.
• Establish and reinforce studio governance, including intake expectations, prioritization, escalation paths, approval procedures, version control, file release standards, and communication protocols.
• Lead workforce planning and resource allocation for assigned accounts, workstreams, or capability areas, balancing capacity, skill mix, deadlines, business priorities, and team development needs. Monitor industry trends, innovation (AI and automation), production technologies, design tools, and workflow innovations to strengthen studio capability. Proactively explore, test, and pilot emerging tools to Manage, coach, and develop studio managers, designers, production artists, and other studio team members through clear expectations, feedback, performance conversations, career development, and succession planning.
• Create an inclusive, collaborative studio culture that values flexibility, accountability, craft excellence, operational consistency, transparency, and respectful partnership across teams.
• Oversee project timelines, budgets, priorities, risks, dependencies, and quality control to ensure studio deliverables are completed accurately, efficiently, and on schedule.
• Partner with Creative, Account, Strategy, Operations, and Production leadership to align scope, staffing, milestones, client expectations, production requirements, and final delivery standards.
• Guide the extension and translation of approved creative concepts into production-ready digital, web, presentation, and print content while ensuring work remains aligned to brand standards and project direction.
• Represent the studio in senior-level meetings by providing operational insight, staffing recommendations, risk assessments, delivery updates, and solutions that support business and client objectives.
• Identify opportunities to harmonize tools, templates, file structures, documentation, automation, reporting, and process standards across the integrated studio organization.
Leadership Expectations
• Operate as a visible, trusted leader who can balance empathy with accountability during team integration and organizational change.
• Build alignment across teams with different histories, client relationships, tools, workflows, and production habits.
• Make timely decisions, surface risks early, resolve conflicts constructively, and escalate issues with clear recommendations.
• Model collaborative leadership, sound judgment, ownership, and calm execution in a fast-paced agency environment.
Qualifications
• 15+ years of experience in studio leadership, creative production, production design, design operations, graphic design, or a similar agency or creative services environment.
• Proven experience leading multidisciplinary creative production teams, including managers and individual contributors, in a high-volume, deadline-driven environment.
• Demonstrated ability to lead teams through change, integration, process transformation, or organizational growth while maintaining morale, clarity, and delivery quality.
• Strong understanding of studio operations, including intake, resourcing, prioritization, quality control, approvals, asset management, prepress, mechanical builds, file preparation, and final release.
• Portfolio or work samples that demonstrate strong design judgment, production excellence, brand consistency, and execution across digital, presentation, web, and print channels.
• Expertise in design principles, including layout, typography, color, composition, brand systems, accessibility considerations, and current design trends. Adept at moving fluidly across a broad range of creative execution - including digital, print, motion, video, 3D, and emerging tech platforms.
• Advanced proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite and strong working knowledge of presentation tools such as Keynote and PowerPoint; experience with Figma, Sketch, XD, email/web workflows, motion, or video tools is a plus.
• Excellent written, verbal, and executive communication skills, with the ability to synthesize milestones, risks, recommendations, and decisions for senior leaders and cross-functional partners.
• Strong analytical, organizational, problem-solving, prioritization, and decision-making skills, with the ability to manage competing priorities under tight deadlines.
• Associate's, Bachelor's, or BFA degree preferred in art, graphic design, production art, advertising, communications, or a related field; equivalent experience will be considered.
Additional information
The Power of One starts with our people! To do powerful things, we offer powerful resources. Our best-in-class wellness and benefits offerings include:
Paid Family Care for parents and caregivers for 12 weeks or more
Monetary assistance and support for Adoption, Surrogacy and Fertility
Monetary assistance and support for pet adoption
Employee Assistance Programs and Health/Wellness/Comfort reimbursements to help you invest in your future and work/life balance
Tuition Assistance
Paid time off that includes Flexible Time off Vacation, Annual Sick Days, Volunteer Days, Holiday and Identity days, and more
Matching Gifts programs
Flexible working arrangements
'Work Your World' Program encouraging employees to work from anywhere Publicis Groupe has an office for up to 6 weeks a year (based upon eligibility)
Business Resource Groups that support multiple affinities and alliances
The benefits offerings listed are available to eligible U.S. Based employees, are reviewed on an annual basis, and are governed by the terms of the applicable plan documents.
We also offer medical and voluntary benefits to our freelancers and temporary employees. Voluntary benefit options include supplemental medical insurance, transportation, and parking benefits, legal benefits, pet insurance, and auto and home insurance. You must be actively employed for 90 consecutive calendar days in order to be eligible for Publicis medical and voluntary benefits.
Arc is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Our employment decisions are made without regard to actual or perceived race, color, ethnicity, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, disability, medical condition as defined by applicable state law, genetic information, marital status, military service and veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state or local laws and ordinances.
If you require accommodation or assistance with the application or onboarding process specifically, please contact USMTTACompliance@publicis.com.
All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.
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Compensation Range: USD $129,485.00 - USD $186,060.00/Annually. This is the pay range the Company believes it will pay for this position at the time of this posting. Consistent with applicable law, compensation will be determined based on the skills, qualifications, and experience of the applicant along with the requirements of the position, and the Company reserves the right to modify this pay range at any time. Temporary roles may be eligible to participate in our freelancer/temporary employee medical plan through a third-party benefits administration system once certain criteria have been met. For regular roles, the Company will offer medical coverage, dental, vision, disability, 401k, and paid time off. The Company anticipates the application deadline for this job posting will be 10/5/2026.