About Us:

Have you ever had the opportunity to impact the lives of millions of people in a meaningful way and help them enjoy time away with their friends and families building memories? 

That is what we do here at HomeAway.com, an Expedia Inc. company. We are the leading vacation rental website in the world with more than one million online bookable vacation rentals. Our mission is to make every vacation rental in the world available to every traveler in the world through our online marketplace and we're committed to helping families and friends find the perfect vacation rental to create unforgettable travel experiences together. 

About Global Creative Studio:

The Global Creative Studio (GCS) is an international, multi-disciplinary group of creatives with a deep curiosity about the world and an undeniable passion for travel. As part of the Global Brand and Integrated Marketing team, we’re responsible for imagining, developing, and delivering high-caliber, multimedia marketing programs to engage and inform our travelers (B2C) and property owners/managers (B2B). We’re the dreamers and doers behind global and regional marketing campaigns, always-on editorial channels, and technical initiatives that include content automation and scalability. We seek the industry’s best storytellers, visual artists, and technical experts to grow and thrive with us as we tell the HomeAway story around the world.

Director – Creative Operations

As a member of our Creative Leadership Team, you will be responsible for helping us transform our internal production org into a high-performing, full-service creative agency of the future. Reporting to the Sr. Director of Global Creative and Content, your primary focus will be to maximize the talent and efforts of the GCS team through intelligent workflow design, the automating and/or templatizing of repetitive creative tasks, the streamlining of departmental technologies, the professional development of our technical team, and the embedding of a test-and-learn methodology in every corner of our production processes. 

Like the solutions you create, you are flexible and adaptable, which enables you to customize yourself and your work style to a diverse crew of both highly-technical and non-technical creative talent. You maintain transparency and accountability, as well as create velocity, across our organization of geographically-dispersed creatives working globally across 13 brands.

Responsibilities:

• Develop technical strategies, workflow designs and operational processes that create a step change in our team’s ability to deliver data-driven creative at scale across marketing programs and editorial channels. In particular, you’ll help the team become more programmatic and utilize machine learning. 
• Show iterative, demonstrable progress on the path to ambitious operational improvements, while managing the expectations of executives and internal stakeholders along the way. 
• Infect the team with your passion for transparency, accountability, measurement and velocity. 
• Serve as senior technical advisor on all matters affecting the department. 
• Own the ongoing selection, tooling, administration and optimization of creative and workflow technologies including: DAM/VAM, CMS, Workflow and Project Management, Analytics and Reporting systems. Ensure these systems maximize the velocity and efficiency of our internal team, as well as integrate well with other enterprise technologies being developed and used throughout the company. 
• Define the proper flow of data from disparate analytics systems and organizational stakeholders into the creative team such that it is meaningful, digestible, and actionable. 
• Serve as the GCS representative on all interdepartmental initiatives in which our work product is needed to support content automation and scalability objectives, or in which technology development and/or vendor selection impacts our team. 
• Manage and develop the careers of up to 6 direct reports (a mix of engineers and operations managers). 
• Coach the internal team on best practices with regards to technical development, agile workflow design and operations management, and embed those best practices within the team.

Requirements:

• 10+ years of operational experience in a highly-technical environment. Bonus points for creative agency experience combined with a technical mindset. 
• 5+ years experience in a people/department management role.
• Strong process orientation with a demonstrated ability to design workflows that help teams work smarter and move faster. 
• Agile-certified. Black Belt, Scrum or PMI certifications a plus. 
• Familiarity with enterprise marketing technologies (CRM, CMS, DAM/VAM, MAP etc) and their relationship to creative workflows. 
• A willingness to “go deep” to understand how engineering best practices can be appropriately grafted onto a creative org and where they simply don’t fit. 
• Experience using Gira and Jahia a must. 
• Bachelor’s degree in engineering or equivalent work experience. 
• This role is based on HomeAway’s Austin HQ.

Critical Success Factors:

• Impeccable communication and presentation skills, written, oral and visual; Able to define clear ways of working that others can easily follow. 
• Technology savant. You have usually tried every new release lightyears before everyone else.
• Mobile-first in all that you do.
• Tightly regimented but not rigid.
• Comfort with ambiguity; able to build structure around oneself and one’s team where structure is currently lacking.
• High-performance orientation with an appreciation for working smarter not harder.
• Ambitious. Doesn’t cave to constraints, but rather takes them in stride while continuing to pursue the optimal state.
• Dedicated to the group. You seek team wins over personal glory and give credit where credit is due.
• Optimistic. Maintains a positive energy that inspires those around you.

Benefits:

• Competitive health and insurance benefits
• Competitive salary
• Annual target bonus or commission
• Paid vacation and sick time
• Vacation rental on a yearly basis (taxable benefit)
• Employee Stock Purchase Program
• Free snacks and beverages
• Frequent company update talks with our leadership team
• Free listing on HomeAway.com
• Electronic, adjustable stand-up desk
• Discounted Metro & Rail pass