📍 South Africa (Remote) | Operations Manager
Are you an organised, commercially-minded operator who loves creating structure, improving processes, and making sure teams have everything they need to deliver great work?
We're hiring on behalf of a fast-growing specialist digital marketing agency that works with ambitious hospitality, food, drink and lifestyle brands. The agency delivers strategy, social media, creative content, paid advertising, influencer marketing and PR to help its clients grow.
As the agency continues to expand, they're looking for an Operations Manager to help ensure the business delivers exceptional work efficiently, profitably and consistently.
You'll play a central role in making sure the right people are working on the right things at the right time, client deliverables stay on track, team capacity is used effectively, and the agency continues to improve how it operates.
If you're highly organised, commercially aware and enjoy solving problems before they become problems, this could be a great opportunity to take real ownership within a growing agency.
🎯 The Opportunity
As a growing specialist agency, strong operations are critical to delivering great client work without unnecessary pressure, inefficiency or last-minute firefighting.
In this role, you'll sit at the centre of the agency's operations, providing visibility across resource, capacity, client delivery, utilisation and team performance.
You'll work closely with leadership and Account Managers to understand upcoming workloads, allocate resource effectively, identify delivery risks and ensure the agency has the right people and processes in place to deliver against its commitments.
You'll also have the opportunity to improve the systems and processes that underpin the business, from timesheets and resource planning to QA, SOPs and workflow automation.
This is a hands-on role for someone who enjoys taking ownership, spotting opportunities for improvement and turning operational data into practical decisions.
🛠️ What You'll Be Doing
You'll help oversee the day-to-day operations of the agency, ensuring teams are well organised, client work stays on track and resources are being used effectively.
Resource & Capacity Management
- Own and maintain the agency's resource planner to ensure resource is allocated effectively.
- Maintain a simple operational scorecard providing leadership with clear visibility across the business.
- Identify upcoming resource gaps and periods of over-capacity before they impact delivery.
- Forecast future resource requirements based on workload and the new business pipeline.
- Help leadership understand when additional freelance or permanent resource may be required.
- Ensure the agency is making the best possible use of its existing team.
- Source, book and coordinate freelancers where additional resource is required.
- Provide clear visibility of freelance spend within the weekly management meeting.
Client Delivery
- Maintain oversight of client deliverables across the agency.
- Ensure work is progressing against agreed timelines and deadlines.
- Identify delivery risks early and coordinate action to resolve them.
- Ensure priorities remain clear when multiple deadlines compete for resource.
- Work closely with Account Managers to ensure client commitments can be delivered.
- Help reduce last-minute issues through better planning, communication and visibility.
Quality Assurance
- Conduct QA checks on key deliverables before they reach clients.
- Ensure work meets client brand guidelines and internal quality standards.
- Help develop and maintain QA processes and checklists across different services.
- Identify recurring quality issues and work with the team to prevent them.
- Reduce unnecessary revisions, mistakes and rework.
Utilisation & Timesheets
- Own the agency's timesheet process and ensure timesheets are completed accurately and on time.
- Analyse timesheet data to understand how team capacity is being used.
- Monitor utilisation across individual employees, clients and services.
- Identify under-utilisation, over-utilisation and over-servicing.
- Turn timesheet data into clear recommendations rather than simply reporting the numbers.
- Provide relevant utilisation and capacity insights for weekly management meetings.
Operational Efficiency
- Continuously look for ways to make the agency operate more efficiently.
- Identify unnecessary administration, duplicated work and inefficient processes.
- Identify opportunities for automation and better use of technology.
- Develop and maintain operational processes and SOPs.
- Ensure agreed processes are consistently followed across the team.
- Improve planning and communication to reduce last-minute firefighting.
- Take ownership of operational improvements from identifying the problem through to implementation.
🧠 What We're Looking For
The ideal candidate will:
- Have 3–5+ years' experience in operations, resource management, agency delivery or a similar role.
- Have experience working within a marketing, creative, social media or similar agency environment.
- Have strong experience managing multiple projects, deadlines and competing priorities.
- Have hands-on experience with resource and capacity planning.
- Be confident working with timesheet, utilisation and operational data.
- Have excellent organisational skills and exceptional attention to detail.
- Have strong commercial awareness and an understanding of how operational decisions impact profitability.
- Have experience coordinating internal teams and freelancers.
- Be highly proactive and solutions-focused.
- Be comfortable working independently and taking ownership without needing constant direction.
- Be able to remain calm, organised and decisive when priorities change quickly.
- Be confident communicating with both leadership and delivery teams.
⭐ Bonus Points If You Have
- Previous experience working within a fast-growing marketing or creative agency.
- Experience managing freelance networks or external suppliers.
- Experience implementing operational systems, processes or SOPs.
- Experience with project management, resource planning or workflow management software.
- Experience identifying opportunities for automation.
- A strong understanding of agency utilisation, profitability and client servicing.
Most importantly, you're someone who enjoys bringing order to complexity, spotting problems before they become issues, and finding better ways for teams to work.
💎 Why Join?
- Fully remote working from South Africa.
- Play a central role in the next stage of a growing specialist agency.
- Genuine ownership over how the agency operates.
- High level of autonomy and responsibility.
- Opportunity to implement systems and processes rather than simply inherit them.
- Work with an ambitious agency focused on hospitality, food, drink and lifestyle brands.
- Help shape the operational foundations of a growing business.
- Work alongside a collaborative and creative team.
📅 What is the Process?
- Apply. Submit your application through the Scaled platform.
- Video Profile. If your CV is shortlisted, you'll be invited to complete a short video interview. (Please check your spam folder.)
- Meet the Scaled Team. A quick introductory call with one of our team.
- Interview. Meet directly with the hiring company.
Ready to help build the operational foundations of a growing agency?
📩 Apply today—we'd love to hear from you!