Lead Resource Manager

The role

We are a global socially-led creative agency, with unrivalled social media and influencer marketing expertise. With over 1,200 people in four continents, we deliver a global perspective to our clients in a time when social media is shaping culture.

We’re proud to be a multi award-winning agency, with Cannes Lions, One Show, Webby and Shorty Awards, to name but a few. Our most recent work has seen us help Amazon Music, Activision and Adidas deliver some of their biggest and most innovative campaigns to date.

As well as creating for clients, we help educate the wider industry. Our Instagram publication The Feed tracks culture at the speed of social. 6,500 people registered or tuned into our events last year, and our reports garnered more than 20 million views.

Our departments create award-winning, socially led, shareable ideas that affect culture  and our Resourcing team is at the heart of making that happen. We’re now looking for a Lead Resource Manager to run the Resourcing function day-to-day: executing the strategy set with our senior team, and owning it’s delivery across the agency.

You’ll line manage our Resource Manager, act as the senior operational point of contact for Department Heads and Client Leads on live resouring decisions, and work with the senior team on capacity planning, commercial efficiency, freelance strategy and operational change. 

The nature of social means we are fast-moving with many moving parts, so we’re looking for someone with serious agency resourcing experience, sharp operational instincts, and the calm confidence to make fast, well-informed calls when the pressure’s on.

Requirements

What You’ll Have Delivered Elsewhere

• Successfully operationalised the resourcing strategy for the agency, ensuring consistent and effective delivery of the function across all departments.
• Pioneered the adoption and integration of AI tools within the resourcing workflow, delivering measurable efficiencies aligned with wider operational strategy.
• Co-led and delivered multiple high-impact, cross-agency initiatives (including new tools, dashboards, and processes) that measurably improved creative operations efficiency.
• Been the Resource representative in senior forums and consistently provided accurate, detailed operational reporting that underpinned new business scoping and major budgeting decisions.
• Significantly improved commercial efficiency by consistently managing utilisation within target ranges and optimising billability and freelance budgets to provide key data for executive decision-making.
• Developed and maintained a robust, agency-wide capacity view, proactively identifying potential bottlenecks and utilisation gaps to inform leadership forecasting and strategic planning.
• Served as the primary senior operational point of contact, making rapid, well-informed staffing, casting, and scoping decisions that maintained project timelines and client satisfaction.
• Built and managed a high-performing resourcing team, consistently developing direct reports and achieving high satisfaction ratings through clear goal-setting and mentorship.
• Established and role-modelled a solutions-driven, proactive, and positive culture across the Resourcing and Creative Services functions, elevating team engagement and performance.
• Ensured workflow continuity by actively stepping in to manage day-to-day bookings during periods of high demand, volume, or complexity.
• Successfully managed the full operational cycle of the freelance strategy, including maintaining the talent pool, negotiating competitive rates through regular benchmarking, and ensuring rigorous, on-process contracting.
• Cultivated strong cross-market partnerships, successfully implementing resource-sharing initiatives that reduced reliance on costly external resources in line with agency goals.
• Provided data-backed support to leadership in constructing successful business cases for new hires and collaborated effectively with People & Talent to execute strategic permanent vs. freelance workforce planning decisions.
• Chaired high-level WiP and capacity meetings, successfully mediating conflicting priorities, implementing necessary pushback, and efficiently escalating critical decisions to executive leadership.
• Led the successful configuration, adoption, and continuous optimisation of resource management tools across the agency, driving process change and providing clear recommendations for tool fit and function.

What Else Are We Looking For?

• Extensive and proven experience of resourcing within a creative, social or advertising agency, including meaningful time at a senior or lead level.
• Previous line management experience; you know how to set direction, give honest feedback and help people grow.
• A sharp operational thinker who can translate strategy into day-to-day execution, spot patterns across the agency and make quick, well-informed calls
• Strong commercial literacy; fluent in utilisation targets (e.g. 80-90%), billability, freelance budgets and ROI, and credible talking to Finance and senior leadership
• A confident, calm decision maker who can hold the line when priorities conflict and bring people with you
• Experience managing freelance pools and supplier relationships at scale, including rate negotiation and contracting
• Deep experience working across multiple creative, strategic and production disciplines at the same time
• Fluent in resource management tools (Float, Runn, Kantata, Smartsheet or similar) — and comfortable leading tool and process change
• Curious about AI and how it can create efficiencies in our workflow — ideally with hands-on examples of adoption in a resourcing or operations context

Benefits

Our Culture and the Nice Stuff

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion runs in the water here at We Are Social. We are transparent about the changes that are needed, we are focused on making real strides, both internally and within the industry and we strive to truly be a workplace that represents, supports and advocates for ALL. Our Charter for Change in the UK  can be found here which details our focus areas across People, Work and Culture in 2026.

Inclusion at every level is crucial to creative innovation and success, and we want to create a workplace where everyone feels a sense of belonging. We welcome and encourage talent from ALL backgrounds and are committed to creating a representative team that can deliver creative excellence. If you require any support, adjustments or accommodations for any reason whatsoever during the recruitment process, please let us know via [email protected]

So let’s get to the good stuff,  we offer all those things you would naturally expect; 25 days holiday, pension scheme & life assurance. But what we love most is connection, so we have our WAS Passport and Work From Anywhere schemes which allow you to truly connect to colleagues all over the world! 

But what’s life around here really like day-to-day? Well, we ask our people regularly what they think about us/their role and here are some of the most common things they say:

• I value my manager we have a good relationship
• We love to ‘get social’ with the people I work with
• Trusted to get on with the job, without ‘micro-management’!

If this all sounds like the place you have been waiting to find then apply now! What are you waiting for?