Chief Operating Officer (COO)

Chief Operating Officer (COO) (must come from a creative agency / fast moving project environment)

Operational right hand to the CEO | AI-fluent | Data-driven | Systems-focused

LOCATION Sandton, Johannesburg

EMPLOYMENT Full-time

REPORTS TO CEO

INDUSTRY Film, TV, Video, live events, post-production & AI

Salary:  Very much dependent on experience but looking between R45K – R65K CTC Per Month

 

ABOUT THE COMPANY

The company is a Johannesburg-based film, television, content and events production business working across commercials, corporate content, branded entertainment, live and hybrid events, broadcast, animation and emerging AI-driven production.

As the company grows, it is seeking a senior operational leader to take ownership of the day-to-day business, strengthen accountability and build the systems required to scale.

THE ROLE

This is a hands-on Chief Operating Officer role, not a traditional administrative Operations Manager position. The company requires someone who can become the operational right hand to the CEO: a commercially minded, highly structured leader who connects people, projects, systems and departments, resolves bottlenecks early and makes sure agreed priorities actually happen.

The role spans production operations, resource planning, people management, recruitment, sales accountability, SOPs, data analytics, management reporting, financial and commercial insight, workflow design and continuous business improvement.

The successful candidate must be equally comfortable thinking strategically and getting into the detail.

AI FLUENCY IS A CORE REQUIREMENT

AI is central to how the company is expected to operate and scale. This person must be genuinely fluent and curious about AI tools, agents, no-code automation, workflow integration and AI-assisted business systems. They should instinctively ask: “Can this be automated, simplified, measured or made smarter?”

 

 

They must also be meticulous about the detail behind those systems: clean data, naming conventions, task ownership, testing, documentation, version control, edge cases and consistent follow-through. The company requires someone who uses AI to

create real operational leverage rather than simply experimenting with new tools.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

1. Company Operations & Accountability

• Own the smooth day-to-day running of the business and keep company priorities visible.

• Ensure teams know what they own, what is due and what is at risk.

• Identify bottlenecks early, drive follow-through and resolve issues before they escalate.

• Create a culture of ownership, pace and accountability without unnecessary bureaucracy.

2. Production Traffic & Resource Management

• Maintain oversight across multiple simultaneous productions, post-production jobs and deadlines.

• Review capacity, schedules and resource requirements; identify clashes before they become problems.

• Ensure clean handovers between Sales, Pre-production, Production, Post and Delivery.

• Work with producers, coordinators and editors to improve utilisation, visibility and delivery discipline.

3. People, Performance & HR

• Drive clear roles, responsibilities, KPIs, one-on-ones and performance management.

• Address underperformance and manage formal performance and disciplinary processes, including PIPs, written warnings, probation issues and HR/labour escalation where required.

• Support workforce planning, team structure and management accountability.

• Help build a high-performing culture where people take ownership rather than wait to be chased.

 

 

4. Recruitment & Onboarding

• Identify hiring needs with the CEO, refine role specifications and help assess candidates.

• Coordinate recruitment processes and participate in interviews for key hires.

• Create structured onboarding, role clarity and 30/60/90-day expectations where appropriate.

• Continuously assess whether the team structure matches workload and growth.

5. Systems, SOPs, AI & Automation

• Review and redesign workflows across Monday.com and other operational systems.

• Build and update practical SOPs that are current, usable and actually followed.

• Identify repetitive manual work and replace it with sensible automations, integrations or AI-assisted workflows.

• Use AI where appropriate for reporting, meeting follow-up, workflow routing, knowledge management, recruitment support, sales administration and operational QA.

• Maintain excellent system discipline: clean data, consistent naming, clear ownership, documentation, testing and quality control.

• Evaluate new AI tools critically and adopt those that create measurable leverage.

6. Data, Analytics, Excel & Commercial Intelligence

• Make the company increasingly data-driven by consolidating information from multiple systems into reliable management intelligence.

• Build and maintain sophisticated spreadsheet models, dashboards and management reports from scratch.

• Work confidently with advanced formulas and functions, pivot tables, lookups, filtering, data cleaning, reconciliation and large datasets.

• Translate raw data into a clear management story: what happened, why it happened, what it means and what action is required.

• Bring a strong financial and commercial mindset to operational decisions, including budgets versus actuals, labour utilisation, cost trends, resourcing and the commercial impact of delays or inefficiency.

 

 

7. Sales Oversight

• Provide operational oversight of the sales function without becoming the primary salesperson.

• Monitor pipeline activity, follow-ups, KPIs, quote/proposal progression and lead accountability.

• Ensure opportunities do not fall through the cracks and improve visibility between Sales and Production.

• Give the CEO concise reporting on performance and issues requiring intervention.

8. Cross-Department Coordination

• Connect Sales → Pre-production → Production → Post-production → Delivery → Finance/Admin.

• Ensure scope, client expectations, assets, changes and responsibilities are handed over correctly.

• Reduce siloed working, duplicated effort, missed information and preventable rework.

• Ensure projects are properly closed out and learnings feed back into the system.

9. Management Reporting & Business Improvement

• Build concise weekly and monthly management reporting across projects, workload, people, sales, financial indicators, risks and operational priorities.

• Interrogate the numbers, identify patterns and root causes, and separate genuinely important issues from day-to-day noise.

• Identify opportunities to improve profitability, turnaround time, resource utilisation and client delivery.

• Help build the operational infrastructure required for continued growth.

IDEAL BACKGROUND

Strong preference will be given to candidates who understand project-based creative, entertainment, media, marketing or experiential businesses - environments where multiple clients, deadlines, teams, suppliers and deliverables need to be

managed simultaneously.

 

 

Relevant backgrounds include: film and television production; commercial and branded-content production; advertising and creative agencies; marketing and integrated agencies; events and experiential agencies; live-event production; broadcast and media; content studios and social-content agencies; post-production, animation and VFX; PR and communications; design and branding; music, live performance and talent businesses; and other entertainment or creative-service companies.

The key requirement is not necessarily deep technical production experience. It is an understanding of how creative, project-led businesses operate: shifting priorities, tight deadlines, client demands, changing scopes, multiple stakeholders, resource constraints and the need to balance creative quality with commercial realities.

Candidates from outside these industries may still be considered if they have exceptional operational leadership experience, strong commercial and analytical capability, and can demonstrate that they can adapt quickly to a dynamic, entrepreneurial and highly deadline-sensitive environment.

• At least 7 years of management experience, including 3+ years in a senior management or operational leadership role.

• A relevant tertiary qualification in Business, Management, Finance, Operations or a related field is advantageous; an MBA or advanced qualification is an additional advantage. Proven senior operational leadership experience is more important

than qualification alone.

• Senior experience in operations, general management, production management, executive production, agency operations or a comparable leadership role.

• Strong people-management, project-management, numerical reasoning and commercial judgment.

• Experience improving systems, processes, KPIs, reporting and accountability structures.

• Advanced Excel / spreadsheet modelling capability, including complex formulas, data reconciliation, dashboards and management reporting.

• Strong data-analysis, numerical-reasoning and financial / commercial capability; able to combine multiple sources and turn them into actionable insights.

• Hands-on fluency with modern workflow tools, automation platforms and AI-enabled ways of working.

 

 

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

Proactive: Sees what needs attention before being asked and closes loops.

Meticulous: Pedantic in the best sense: details, deadlines, data, naming, documentation and follow-through matter.

Analytical: Loves data, spots trends and anomalies quickly, and can turn messy information into clear structure and insight.

Financially minded: Understands the numbers behind performance and asks what work, people and inefficiencies are costing

the business.

AI-forward: Actively uses AI and automation to create leverage and expects systems to get smarter over time.

Accountable: Owns outcomes, not just tasks, and expects the same from others.

Direct but constructive: Comfortable having difficult conversations and holding people to agreed standards.

Structured, not bureaucratic: Creates clarity and discipline without slowing down a creative company.

Commercial: Understands that operational decisions need to improve margin, capacity, service or growth.

Calm under pressure: Can reprioritise quickly when productions change and keep the team focused.

Entrepreneurial: Thinks about the whole business rather than staying inside a narrow job description.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

Within the first 6–12 months, the company would expect to see:

• Fewer operational issues escalating unnecessarily to the CEO.

• Clearer accountability, stronger deadline management and better visibility across active work.

• More disciplined recruitment, onboarding, performance management and SOP adoption.

• Better coordination between Sales, Production, Post and Admin.

• Meaningful AI and automation embedded into everyday operational workflows.

• Reliable management dashboards and reports that consolidate multiple sources and make performance measurable.

• Operational and resourcing decisions increasingly supported by data and commercial analysis rather than anecdote alone.

• Cleaner systems, more reliable reporting and fewer dropped tasks, missed follow-ups and preventable errors.

• A stronger operating structure capable of supporting continued growth.

POTENTIAL KPIs

• On-time project delivery and overdue-task reduction.

• Resource utilisation and capacity visibility.

• Staff KPI / performance-review completion.

• Recruitment and onboarding turnaround.

• SOP adoption and workflow compliance.

• Sales follow-up and pipeline hygiene.

• Reduction in preventable rework and CEO escalations.

• Accuracy, timeliness and usefulness of management reporting.

• Improvement in measurable cost, capacity, utilisation and performance visibility.

• Number and measurable impact of successful AI / automation improvements.

WHO THIS ROLE IS NOT FOR

This role will not suit someone who needs constant direction, avoids difficult conversations, treats systems or data casually, is weak with numbers or spreadsheets, or resists AI and automation. We need a builder, analyst and operator - not a coordinator.

THE OPPORTUNITY

This is a key leadership role. The COO will be the operational counterpart to the CEO - taking ownership of how the business runs, building a smarter, more scalable organisation while protecting its speed and creative agility.