Creative Project Manager - Brand

Messy spend management is tricky business. And tedious processes are a lose-lose situation for all involved, not just finance. At Pleo, we're changing that. We build spend solutions that make managing money seamless, empowering, and surprisingly effective for finance teams and employees alike - with a vision to help all businesses ‘go beyond’.

The word ‘Pleo’ actually means ‘more than you’d expect’, and living by that mantra has been the secret to our success over the last 10 years.

Now, we’re at a pivotal moment in our journey; every move we make has a direct impact on our 40,000+ customers, our business, and our collective success. We need people who take pride in uncovering customer needs, who turn complex problems into simple solutions, challenge the way things are done (respectfully), and always aim high. With great ambitions driving us forward, we can’t say we’ve got this whole thing figured out. And frankly, that’s half the fun! What we can say is that we’re a driven, progressive, and, importantly, a kind bunch of 850+ people from over 100 nationalities, all committed to delivering the future of business spending, together.

The Creative Production studio team sits squarely within our Brand function working alongside our Brand Foundations team. You will report directly to the Director of Brand Strategy & Experience and join a tight-knit, highly experienced group of project management leads and producers.

In this role, you will lead our internal Creative Production studio team, the execution engine delivering all branded assets across Pleo, including campaign and performance assets, global adaptation and localization, event branding, content marketing, web, socials and lifecycle design. You will balance hands-on delivery with direct people management for a team of three in-house designers and copywriter, ensuring our creative output remains fast, scalable, and sharp across all touchpoints.

Our Brand department is 13 people across two teams: Brand Foundations and Creative Production. You'll lead the four-person Creative Production studio, a senior copywriter, two senior designers and a motion designer, spread across our European offices. Day to day, you'll work alongside a peer project lead on Brand Foundations, a brand strategist, our producers, and internal partners in Events, Lifecycle, Performance Marketing, HR/People Ops and Legal, plus our media agency. Most of the studio's clients are internal teams across Pleo.

Creative Production & Operations

• Studio Ownership: Lead end-to-end execution across all creative production studio work streams, ensuring projects hit quality benchmarks, deadlines, and brand standards. This is also not just intake of brand requests but also spotting opportunities proactively for brand involvement and governance across the business.
• Project Management: Own intake of BAU requests, filtering and assigning work while acting as the bridge between requestors and the studio team. Define scope upfront and ensure the team has what it needs to execute. Contribute to project plans for integrated campaigns and large events and manage Creative studio kick-offs, status reporting, and timeline and milestone tracking.
• Core Output Focus: Oversee production for high-performing marketing assets, market localization and adaptations, event branding, and content marketing.
• Process & Integration: Partner closely with peer project leads, producers, and the Brand Foundations team to streamline intake briefs, cross-team handoffs, and resource sharing.
• Global Asset Delivery: Manage asset adaptation frameworks to keep our brand consistent across different regions and channels.
• Capacity Planning: Own and manage resourcing across internal teams and freelance support, balancing capacity against demand and prioritizing against business needs when demands compete.
• External agency partnerships: Serve as the lead creative point of contact for asset production with our media agency. Manage sprint-style monthly asset delivery in response to agency and internal performance team briefs, keeping output aligned with the media plan. Review final creative placements across Meta and LinkedIn to ensure assets display correctly on paid channels.

People Management & Leadership

• Direct Management: Line manage, mentor, and foster career growth for a cross-functional team of three in-house designers and one copywriter overseeing their daily priorities and bandwidth.

Stakeholder Alignment & Strategy

• Cross-Functional Partner: Serve as the strategic operational bridge connecting the studio with Marketing, Events, HR/People Ops, and Legal.
• Leadership Alignment: Work closely with the Director of Brand Strategy & Experience and Associate Director of Brand Management to align studio output with broader brand goals and business priorities.

We launched our new brand in September, so this is a moment to build. The studio has the basics in place, but intake, briefing, project tracking and resourcing are still early. You'll set the ways of working that the studio runs on, and we'd love you to bring AI into how we plan, brief and produce.

• Deliver the studio's day-to-day work to our speed and quality standards, in line with the new brand guidelines.
• Set best practice for how the studio takes in, briefs, tracks and resources work.
• Improve how we estimate and plan capacity, using AI where it makes sense.

The location

Please note: We can hire on a remote, hybrid or in-person set-up in any of the locations listed on the advert but you will need to be physically based in the country of your choice with a valid right to work. We are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role in any of the listed locations.

Show me the benefits!

• Your own Pleo card (no more out-of-pocket spending!)
• Lunch is on us for your work days - enjoy catered meals or receive a lunch allowance based on your local office
• Comprehensive private healthcare - depending on your location, coverage options include Vitality, Alan or Médis
• We offer 25 days of holiday + your public holidays
• For our Team, we offer both hybrid and fully remote working options
• Option to purchase 5 additional days of holiday through a salary sacrifice
• We use MyndUp to give our employees access to free mental health and well-being support with great success so far
• Paid parental leave - we want to make sure that we're supportive of families and help you feel that you don't have to compromise your family due to work

The interview process

We want to ensure you are set-up for success and understand what will be expected of you. If your application is successful, our interview process is as follows:

• Intro call: A 30-minute chat with our Talent Partner to discuss the role and your background.
• Hiring manager interview: A conversation with the Director about the projects you've delivered, the teams you've led and the kind of production work you enjoy most.
• Case study: You'll walk us through how you'd approach a creative production task. You'll present to the Director and a peer project lead, and possibly a member of the studio team.
• Final stage: Team-fit chat with one or two people from the studio

Transparency is important to us so we also wanted to share some insights about what we’re looking for in applications to ensure you can set yourself up for success!

Last time we hired this role, we received an incredibly high volume of applications but only so many could be taken forward. Some of the key reasons why previous candidates didn’t make it past the application screening stage include:

• CV writing and content: we receive a lot of CVs, and many of them are AI-generated. We love seeing people leverage AI—it’s a big focus for us internally too—but without human intervention, these CVs can sometimes become generic and fail to show a candidate in the best light. What we're really looking for is the specific details of real impact that only you know from your previous experience. A top tip from us is to use the “Achieved X, as measured by Y, by doing Z” formula (credit: Laszlo Bock, ~2014) to give a really clear picture of what you’ve worked on. A final note: including links to your previous companies' websites is a huge help and allows us to truly understand your background!
• Application care: every single application we receive is reviewed by a human (yes, hundreds of them) because we believe that candidates' efforts should be matched by an equal level of human care. This means that we expect a similar level of attention put into your application. Read and answer the application questions carefully, they make a huge difference in our decision-making process.
• Profile to role fit: highlight most important aspects of the role, points that might get misunderstood, any specific industry requirements etc.

• In-House Brand Experience: Minimum 5-7 years of work experience. Solid background working in-house in a fast-paced brand function (tech, scale-up, or high-growth environment).
• People Leadership: Direct experience line-managing creative talent (designers/artworkers) based remotely in different offices in Europe with an empathetic, growth-oriented approach.
• Production Scope: Broad familiarity managing workflows across digital performance, multi-market localization, physical/virtual events, AI creative production, and employer branding.
• Culture Driver: Thrives in a peer environment working alongside other motivated and constructive senior PMs, producers, creatives, and strategists.
• Operational Skills: Mastery of modern project management tooling and AI-powered workflows (e.g. Asana, Notion, Jira, Slack).
• Project Management Experience: Strong hands-on project management experience in a fast-paced, delivery-focused environment, running multiple projects concurrently. Comfortable not just initiating projects, but staying a consistent presence throughout: managing delivery, and reassessing priorities and capacity as needs shift.

Why is this role a good fit for you

This role is a good fit for you if:

• You love day-to-day production and get a kick out of turning an event brief into finished collateral within a week.
• You want to build how a studio works, from intake to resourcing, as much as you want to ship the work.
• You enjoy leading creatives, giving them clear briefs and keeping the work grounded in what the business needs.

This role is not a good fit for you if:

• You mainly want to work on big brand campaigns. We run around two a year, and they're produced with an external agency. The studio adapts those assets, but most of the work is events, performance creative and BAU requests.
• You prefer a predictable, planned workload. Last-minute requests are part of life on Brand.
• You haven't line-managed people yet. Direct people management of the studio team is a core part of this role.

• English first. Since it's our company language, please submit your application in English. You’ll be using it a lot if you join us.
• A fair look for everyone. Our talent team reads every single application to ensure the process is fair. To keep things running smoothly, we only accept applications through our system—our support team can’t pass on calls or emails.
• Diversity drives us. We can only reach our goals if our team reflects the world around us. That starts with you hitting apply, even if you don't tick every single box. We encourage people from all backgrounds and experiences to join us.
• Interview at your best. We want you to feel comfortable throughout the process. If you have any accessibility requirements or need a specific format, email belonging@pleo.io. We’ll design a process that works for you.
• Your data is safe. When you apply, we process your personal data as a data processor. For more information on how Pleo processes personal data, read our Privacy Policy here.
• Applying for multiple roles? Nothing is stopping you, and we assess every role independently. However, we do look for alignment, so make sure you can explain why your interest and experience are right for each specific role.
• Reapplying. If you’re applying for the same role again, please wait six months from your last decision before hitting submit.