Senior Manager of Pre-Production Operations

Unrivaled Teamwear is a leading company in the sports and team apparel space, seeking a Senior Manager of Pre-Production Operations. This role is responsible for overseeing the pre-production process for licensed sports apparel, ensuring compliance with quality and licensing standards while managing a team and external relationships.

Responsibilities:

• Oversee the end-to-end workflow for the creation, revision, and release of all production-ready artwork for licensed sports apparel, ensuring process adherence, quality standards, and on-time delivery across the team
• Direct internal and external teams to ensure design concepts are accurately translated into print-ready art for screen print, embroidery, heat transfer, sublimation, and other decoration methods
• Balance creative considerations, process adherence, and output quality standards, exercising sound judgment when these priorities compete
• Manage capacity to ensure seasonal demands and customer commitments are achieved
• Maintain organized digital art libraries and version control systems
• Oversee the internal team’s execution of artwork submission, revision, and licensing approval workflows via company systems and league-specific portals; establish clear process standards, monitor throughput, and identify bottlenecks that impact approval cycle times
• Manage senior-level relationships with licensor counterparts (e.g., the NFL, NBA, MLB, NCAA), ensuring escalations are handled appropriately
• Partner with brand and sales teams to operationalize brand style guide enforcement and usage requirements across all licensed partners; translate compliance requirements into repeatable team-level processes and controls
• Track approval timelines and ensure on-time product release within each league’s compliance framework
• Directly manage approximately 10 individual contributors and provide leadership across a broader team of 50+ personnel; responsibilities include goal setting, performance management, workload planning, and career development
• Serve as a structured cross-functional partner to sales, brand, and manufacturing teams, ensuring pre-production milestones are clearly communicated, tracked, and met to support downstream production timelines
• Manage third-party vendor relationships with a focus on delivery performance, cost control, and quality outcomes; hold vendors accountable to defined SLAs and escalate issues proactively
• Develop and implement efficient workflows for art production and licensing submissions
• Identify opportunities to streamline communication and reduce approval cycle times
• Stay informed of new technology and trends in the sports apparel industry
• Own the reporting lifecycle for art and licensing, ensuring total transparency on project risks and delivery status for internal and external stakeholders

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in relevant field
• 5–10 years of experience in operations, project management, or production management, with demonstrated success leading and developing teams
• Proven track record managing large teams of individual contributors, including setting expectations, measuring performance, and driving accountability across a diverse workforce
• Working familiarity with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop sufficient to review and assess work product; strong proficiency in operational and project management tools such as Microsoft Excel, ERP systems, digital asset management (DAM) platforms, and workflow or project tracking software
• Functional awareness of apparel decoration techniques and print production processes sufficient to manage team output, evaluate quality, and communicate effectively with production partners
• Exceptional attention to detail, organizational rigor, and data-driven mindset; ability to build and maintain reporting frameworks that provide clear visibility into team performance, project status, and risk
• Demonstrated ability to manage competing priorities at scale through structured planning, clear prioritization frameworks, and disciplined follow-through in a high-volume, deadline-driven environment
• Strong people management and communication skills, with a demonstrated ability to motivate, develop, and hold accountable a large team of individual contributors while building effective relationships with external stakeholders
• Familiarity with licensing management platforms and approval systems
• Experience in licensed products, creative operations, or branded consumer goods is a plus but not required
• Experience with sports league licensing (NFL, NBA, MLB, NCAA) a plus but not required