Creative Services Manager

At Clarity Innovations, we imagine, design, and build the future of education.

For more than 25 years, we’ve helped clients improve the process and practice of teaching and learning by creating solutions that match promising technologies with the needs of education. Demand for our services continues to grow and we are excited to bring a new Creative Service Manager to our Leadership Team.

As a leader, you will bring a demonstrated ability to inspire, motivate, mentor, and coach a team of professionals to excel at the Clarity Competencies, help us achieve our mission, and multiply our effectiveness as an organization. Do you possess a high-level of leadership acumen and have skill and passion for leading a distributed team of highly-skilled individuals? If so, we invite you to apply to join Clarity Innovations as our next Creative Services Manager.

Who is Clarity Innovations?

We are a mission-driven, K-12 education-focused professional services and consulting firm that provides education strategy, content creation, engineering, and design solutions.

The Clarity team is dedicated, experienced, and trusted by clients large and small to make the impossible happen, every day. We offer expertise, context, and domain knowledge at the intersection of education and technology.

What’s it like working here?

We’re headquartered in Portland, Oregon with a modern, light-filled office right in the heart of the Central Eastside. Additionally, we have remote team members across the United States. Whether we’re working on-site or remotely, we find meaning in our work and are empowered to make a difference for our clients, and the educators and students they serve.

Curious about what we look for in members of our team? Browse our Core Values and Competencies, take a look at the biographies of our team, and read more about working at Clarity Innovations.

Work Location

While we prefer candidates living in the Portland metro area, this position is open to fully remote candidates living elsewhere in the United States. If you are interested in relocating, please indicate this in your cover letter as we can offer some assistance on relocation expenses.

This position requires travel: quarterly to our Portland headquarters, elsewhere domestically for clients on occasion, and more frequently during your initial onboarding period.

Application Process

Only complete applicant submissions will be reviewed. Please review our careers page for the full details about our application process.

Job Overview

As our Creative Services Manager, you will be accountable for the day-to-day supervision of the Creative Services team. You will support and develop your team as they work, identify the best people for each project, coach others on how to develop their skills, and monitor results to multiply the effectiveness of your team and the company as a whole. As a manager, you will help us look ahead, prepare for future growth and development, improve our processes, and help decide strategic goals for the company.

Specifically, you will be expected to contribute to our success performing the following major job duties:

• Supervise and direct the activities of the Creative Services team to manage workload, clarify priorities, and resolve obstacles to ensure high quality deliverables are produced on budget and on schedule according to a defined process.
• Assist Client Lead Producers with estimating the scope, deliverables, schedule, assumptions, dependencies, and presentation approaches (e.g., content, styles, format, layout, and design) of new projects to avoid schedule constraints or other conflicts with existing commitments.
• Identify, allocate, and adjust, as needed, the staff resources assigned to each client project managed by the Client Lead Producers.
• Monitor and document the performance and growth of team members, discussing any job performance concerns with them to identify causes and issues and to facilitate resolving problems with coaching and guidance.
• Help develop team members’ strengths, identify areas of growth, and work on a plan to pursue their professional development.
• Determine long-term staffing requirements, identifying future need of additional resources either for long-term hire or temporary contract. Define positions, requirements and qualifications, and interview and train new hires.
• Perform management activities such as establishing and implementing policies, procedures, and service quality standards, conferring with management about staffing decisions or procedural changes.
• Participate in Clarity’s strategic planning, growth, and process improvement initiatives.
• Review, revise, and provide feedback on drafts of client deliverables and confer with Client Lead Producers and content authors regarding changes in content, style, or organization.

Demonstrated Work Experience

The candidate we hire for this position is expected to have a proven track-record of managing, supporting, and growing the success of a diverse team of talented contributors.

Candidates are expected to have at a minimum of six (6) consecutive years work experience managing a team of five or more individuals and have a work history demonstrating their capabilities to perform the duties above with increasing responsibility.

Candidates will have advanced knowledge of:

• quality assurance methods for ensuring high-quality deliverables, such as setting up peer review and client feedback processes, using style guides, and tracking open issues and revision control processes; and,
• management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, scope management and estimation, human resources modeling, recruitment, selection and training, leadership techniques, production methods, and coordination of people and resources.

Candidates should have familiarity with, and ability to quickly get up to speed on:

• the practice and process of K-12 education, e.g., instructional strategies for individuals and groups online and face-to-face, classroom management methods, curriculum and training design and the measurement of learning outcomes; and,
• product development life cycles, process development, and workflow mapping for multimedia production and dissemination.

Preference is given to candidates with experience working at (in order of decreasing preference):

• An educational publisher, software company, or service provider;
• A content or design and production agency; and/or,
• A K-12 educational institution.

Educational Background

A bachelor’s degree from an accredited four-year college or university with emphasis in education, business, management, or a closely related field is highly preferred. Likewise, membership in a professional organization of a related field is strongly desirable.

Benefits

We are proud of our benefits! Clarity Innovations invests in our team and providing a robust and comprehensive benefit package is just one of the ways we ensure our team is taken care of:

• Flexible work schedule: Flex your time for appointments and ‘life’ when needed without using your PTO!
• Health Insurance: 100% employer paid, low deductible medical, dental, vision, Rx, life, and STD/LTD (insurance begins your 2nd month of employment)
• 401k: 100% vested, annual employer contribution of 6% of your annual salary (no match required)
• Generous Holiday Package: Ten paid holidays! (Eleven, counting your birthday, which is always a paid day off)
• PTO: Annual grant of paid time off (PTO) each January, increases annually by tenure at Clarity. PLUS additional ten hours of PTO granted each month.
• Flexible spending account: (FSA) for medical and dependent care with maximum carryover allowance
• EAP: Employee Assistance Program to support total wellness and extended to your household members
• Cool urban office space for locals (learning library, stocked kitchen, bike and runner friendly, onsite showers, regular happy hours)
• Remote centric approach (remote equipment and tech set-up, highly inclusive meetings and communication using SLACK and ZOOM, fun cyber-festivities, and cool recognition packages delivered to your door)
• Membership dues in a professional association of your choice in a field related to our work
• Regular company sponsored learning events including employee led DEI/ABAR community sessions
• Semi-annual team activities and paid community volunteering time
• Dedicated time set aside for professional learning, development, and growth

Compensation

This position is paid no less than $ 121,000 annually, and is adjusted upwards based on your experience and qualifications, and internal pay equity. Please note that our commitment to pay equity means our salary offer will be our best possible offer, and not negotiable so that we may maintain internal pay equity for all employees. Once hired, we evaluate everyone’s compensation no less than annually and may make adjustments based on your job performance and professional growth, market data, while maintaining internal pay equity (as per Oregon law).

Diversity & Inclusion Statement

We cultivate a culture of inclusion and pursue strategies that increase the representation of women and people of color in our company. We are working to achieve this through informal discussions and learning experiences about implicit/unconscious biases, clarifying and advancing inclusive norms, investing in everyone's professional development, dedicating attention to leadership training, and offering opportunities for broader engagement by everyone to help refine and expand the company's policies and practices.