Acting Managing Director (leave coverage) (Remote)

Invisible Hand is looking for an experienced Acting Managing Director to support our rapidly growing agency during a five-month parental leave period. This is an opportunity to lead a strategic agency, bringing forward your leadership experience, agency operational excellence, and proven business development skills.  

This is for you if you are a self-starter, motivated by learning, able to work quickly, and a creative problem solver with incredibly strong communication skills and a “passion for polish.” Candidates should be comfortable working in a startup environment. This is a high-touch, senior leadership role.

Responsibilities include:

• Run the agency holistically, managing all 6 core functions:

• Account Management:

  • Provide seamless leadership both with clients and internal teams during the term, maintaining agency momentum and high quality of deliverables

  • First gate for any problem solving, quality control, and leadership escalation

  • Oversee timeline and project plan development, ensuring project delivery on time and in budget

  • Oversee and manage hours burn, resource allocation and staff plans for projects

  • Act as client advocate by anticipating their needs and reactions to ensure agency work product aligns to their expectations; developing a deep understanding of their work and making their objectives paramount in all we do 

• Strategy

  • Lead the team in how we get the work done - do we need research? What’s the right timeline, what resources are we missing

  • Main quality check - as first point of review on all materials, you’re assessing whether they fit the IH standard, hold strategic water, and uphold the Invisible Hand standard

• Billing / Budgeting / Accounting

  • Develop project budgets and staffing plans

  • Manage financial reporting (ie project profitability)

  • Liaise with accounting team for anticipated contractor costs, new project budgets, project close process, and first round of approval for contractor invoices

• Business Development

  • Lead organic growth opportunities for existing clients.  You will be responsible for growing existing client scopes (i.e. from project basis to retainer, selling in new products, etc.).

  • Support team, and allocate resources to, new proposal development

  • Identify potential strategic growth opportunities with new and existing clients

  • Contribute to agency marketing - i.e. materials development and updating, etc.

• People Ops

  • Oversee hiring and staffing

  • Manage freelancer contracting and negotiation

  • Own onboarding to agency and projects

• Agency Operations

  • Build scopes and internal budgets for new projects and assemble the teams needed to get the work done through a combination of FTEs and freelancers so projects may kick off quickly

  • Allocate resources across the agency to maximize efficiency and quality

  • Identify opportunities for process improvement and operational excellence

Here's what we're looking for:

• At least 10+ years of client-facing account management and/or operations in an agency or production house, with at least 5 years in senior leadership roles

• Proven track record leading and managing agency teams and operations

• Knowledge in building budgets and scopes for a variety of projects in an agency setting

• Experience building trus