Senior Manager, Creative Operations & Project Management – Stores

About the Team

Marketing brings our brand to life through deep expertise and an authentic love for pets. The team is dedicated to delivering personalized experiences for our consumers, supported by best-in-class, data-driven marketing capabilities.

 

The work spans key areas including Loyalty, Customer Analytics & Research, Brand Experience & Creative, and Omni-Channel Marketing. Each team member brings a unique perspective, working together to create meaningful and engaging experiences for both pets and pet parents.

About the Location

Collaborative Work Environment:At PetSmart, teamwork and connection are core to how we thrive. This role is based at our Phoenix Home Office, with an expectation of working a minimum of four days in the office each week. In a standard work week, associates may work up to one remote “flex day” (with leader approval). Our hybrid approach is designed to foster strong collaboration while also supporting flexibility and individual success.

About the Job

PetSmart is seeking an exceptional leader to head Creative Operations & Project Management for Stores—a critical leadership role overseeing the operational engine behind one of our most visible, complex, and business-critical creative channels.

 

This leader will drive how work gets done across the Stores creative organization: leading a team of project managers, strengthening cross-functional planning and execution, elevating reporting and resource visibility, improving processes, managing budgets and vendor relationships, and ensuring high-quality work is delivered on time, on strategy, and on budget.

 

This is not a traditional project management role. It is a leadership role for someone who has successfully built and led teams, improved creative operating models, brought clarity to complexity, and earned trust across creative, marketing, merchandising, production, and executive stakeholders.

 

The right person is equal parts people leader, operator, strategist, and change agent. They know how to create order in fast-moving environments, improve how teams work at scale, and raise the level of accountability, visibility, and execution across a high-profile channel. They are comfortable managing ambiguity, making decisions, driving alignment, and leading through influence.

This role is essential to the success of the business. The leader in this seat must bring the experience, judgment, rigor, and presence to make a meaningful impact from day one.

 

Reports to: Director, Creative Operations & Project Management

What You’ll Do

• Lead the Creative Operations & Project Management function for the Stores creative team, owning the systems, workflows, planning, and team performance required to deliver high-quality work at scale.
• Manage, coach, and develop a team of project managers, setting a high bar for accountability, communication, prioritization, and cross-functional partnership.
• Own the full project lifecycle across major and minor initiatives simultaneously—from intake and scoping through production and final delivery—in a fast-paced, high-volume environment.
• Develop, optimize, and scale creative operational processes, including intake, prioritization, scoping, scheduling, resource planning, documentation, workflow management, and delivery standards.
• Build stronger operational visibility through clear reporting on project milestones, capacity, timelines, dependencies, budget, risks, and business impact.
• Ensure work is delivered on time, on budget, on brief, and in alignment with marketing objectives and project scope.
• Lead proactive risk identification, issue resolution, contingency planning, and escalation management across complex programs and campaigns.
• Establish and continually manage expectations with internal clients, creative partners, merchants, marketers, production partners, and external vendors.
• Translate business and marketing objectives into actionable plans for the creative team, while clearly communicating creative needs, tradeoffs, and constraints back to partners.
• Serve as a trusted strategic partner to Marketing, Merchandising, Creative, Production, Finance, and Store-related stakeholders to improve planning, alignment, and execution across highly visible work.
• Provide strategic point of view and operational leadership in presentations, reviews, planning sessions, and cross-functional meetings.
• Own budget stewardship across projects and operations, including quote approval, invoice management, cost tracking, forecasting, and vendor accountability.
• Manage external vendor relationships with a sharp focus on quality, cost, timelines, and execution.