Production Operations Coordinator Jobs in California

Production Operations Coordinator 

WHO WE ARE 

SharkNinja makes Shark and Ninja. SN Studios in Irvine is where we shoot the demo content that proves our products outperform everything else on the shelf. The Proof Demo Lab is the room we built to break things on purpose. High speed rigs, water, fire, dust, mess, and the gear to catch all of it at 1000 frames a second. 

That kind of work only runs fast if the operation underneath it is airtight. Payroll clears. Vendors are onboarded. Contracts are signed. Budgets are current. The crew walks in and the day works. 

That is this role. We are standing up one of the fastest in-house creative production operations in the world, and this is the seat that keeps it upright. 

THE ROLE 

You are the connective tissue between production and every function that supports it. Finance, Legal, HR, IT, and Procurement all come through you, and so does the crew that needs an answer in the next ten minutes. 

You own the money, the paperwork, the vendors, and the building. You process payroll, you reconcile budgets, you chase the signature, you order the thing nobody realized we were out of, and you get a new hire set up before their first day. 

Then tomorrow it is a different list. This job rewards range over routine. 

A DIFFERENT JOB ON DIFFERENT DAYS 

A real week here looks something like this. 

• Monday. Payroll runs in Wrapbook, start to finish, and you verify every payment before you close it out. 

• Tuesday. Three vendors need onboarding, two SOWs need routing to Legal, and one insurance certificate has to land before Thursday. 

• Wednesday. You reconcile AMEX and invoice activity against project budgets, and you find the variance before Finance does. 

• Thursday. A new hire starts. IT access, fob, workstation, orientation. Handled before they park. 

• Friday. A shoot moves up two weeks. You rebuild the vendor timeline, flag the budget impact, and nobody loses a day. 

• Somewhere in there the studio runs out of supplies, a PO stalls, and a producer asks you a question nobody has ever asked before. You solve all three. 

WHAT THE WORK LOOKS LIKE 

Money and budgets 

• Own project budget tracking and reconcile AMEX, check, and invoice activity against it with full accuracy. 

• Flag variances early and bring the number to leadership before it becomes a surprise. 

• Process expense reports for studio leadership, and manage petty cash and check authorization. 

• Build budget visibility producers can actually read. If they cannot see the spend, they cannot control it. 

Payroll and invoices 

• Process payroll end to end in Wrapbook, from job creation through payment verification. 

• Manage the full invoice lifecycle in Coupa. PO creation, approvals routing, and vendor follow up. 

• Keep crew and vendors paid on time, every time. This is the fastest way to build a reputation with the people we want back. 

Vendors and contracts 

• Own vendor onboarding and offboarding, from documentation through communication. 

• Track contract approvals and signatures across every active SOW. No gaps, no delays. 

• Maintain contract records in Agiloft and the HR master spreadsheet with current accuracy. 

• Route contracts to Legal, Procurement, and Finance without bottlenecks. 

• Request and track production insurance certificates for active productions. 

The building 

• Own physical studio operations. Supplies, inventory, key fob access, and building coordination. 

• Run new employee and vendor onboarding. IT access, system provisioning, and orientation support. 

• Handle offboarding logistics so access removal and system deactivation are clean. 

• Be the go to for day to day operational needs. Resolve fast, escalate when it is right to escalate. 

Systems and playbooks 

• Build and maintain operational playbooks, reference guides, and training materials for production staff. 

• Train new UPMs and PAs on contract procedures, vendor onboarding, and compliance workflows. 

• Use AI to take the repetitive work off the team. If you have built workflows or automations that saved real hours, we want to hear about it. 

• Find the friction and fix it before it becomes a problem. Then write it down so it stays fixed. 

Cross functional coordination 

• Serve as the studio primary liaison with Finance, Legal, HR, IT, and Procurement. 

• Translate complex multi department requirements into simple actionable steps a producer can follow. 

• Communicate up and down, from production coordinators to studio leadership, without changing the message. 

• Take on ad hoc strategic and operational projects from studio leadership. 

WHAT YOU BRING 

• 3 to 5 plus years in production operations, financial coordination, or a similar operations and finance role. 

• Hands on payroll processing experience in Wrapbook or equivalent, and invoicing in Coupa or equivalent. 

• Real fluency with contract tracking and vendor management workflows. 

• Genuine comfort with financial data, reconciliation, and multi vendor coordination. You like the numbers, you do not tolerate them. 

• Organization and communication strong enough to run many priorities at once without dropping any of them. 

• Experience setting up systems and workflows with AI technology. 

• The instinct to own a problem the moment you see it, rather than route it and wait. 

• Calm. Things move fast here and something always changes. You bring structure to it. 

Bonus points 

• Agiloft, Coupa, Showbiz budgeting, and Dropbox. 

• Cross functional experience with Finance, Legal, HR, IT, and Operations teams. 

• Prior time in a fast paced in house studio or creative production environment. 

• Familiarity with production insurance certificates and compliance documentation. 

• You have built playbooks or operational training materials that people actually used. 

WHY THIS ONE IS DIFFERENT 

• You are building the operation, not inheriting one. The systems you put in place are the ones this studio runs on for years. 

• Real budget, real gear, and a brand new state of the art facility in Irvine. 

• You sit twenty feet from the people shooting, so a question takes ten seconds instead of an email chain. 

• No six week approval chain. We move fast, and your job is to make fast possible. 

• The content made here runs across more than 30 markets, on retailer sites, in paid media, and on our own channels. 

• Leadership that treats operations as a competitive advantage, because it is.