Description
We are looking for a Senior Business Director to join Translation!
The Senior Business Director is a senior client and business leader responsible for the success, growth, and health of a significant, complex account.
Responsibilities
- Own the overall health, performance, growth, and senior client relationships for a flagship national account.
- Serve as a trusted strategic advisor to Director-level stakeholders, shaping agendas, influencing decisions, and constructively challenging clients with a clear point of view.
- Translate complex business, consumer, category, and cultural dynamics into clear strategic direction and stronger creative work.
- Lead integrated teams across Business Leadership, Strategy, Context, Creative, Program Management, Production, Analytics, and Partner Agencies, creating clarity around objectives, priorities, roles, and decisions.
- Ensure work meets Translation’s standards for strategic rigor, creative ambition, cultural excellence, and client readiness before presentation.
- Develop and drive the organic growth strategy, identifying and converting opportunities across stakeholders, business units, audiences, and workstreams.
- Co-own account financial health with Program Management, including revenue, profitability, staffing, forecasting, scope performance, and investment recommendations.
- Anticipate relationship, delivery, and commercial risks, intervening before they affect the client partnership, the quality of the work, team health, or profitability.
- Lead, coach, and develop Business Supervisors through clear expectations, ongoing feedback, performance reviews, and meaningful development opportunities.
- Contribute to agency leadership through new business, recruiting, shaping departmental standards, cross-functional improvements, and the development of future Business Leadership talent.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
- Exceptional business judgment and the ability to connect marketing decisions to broader client goals, organisational dynamics, and commercial outcomes.
- Executive presence and communication skills, including the ability to read complex rooms, tailor counsel to different stakeholders, and navigate sensitive issues with discretion.
- Strong strategic fluency and the ability to turn ambiguity into clear, actionable direction without prescribing the creative solution.
- Commercial acumen across scopes, staffing models, forecasting, profitability, and investment decisions.
- Ability to lead and inspire multidisciplinary teams, resolve tension constructively, and create accountability without relying solely on hierarchy.
- A growth mindset, with the curiosity and proactivity to identify unmet client needs and translate them into meaningful opportunities.
- Cultural fluency and a strong understanding of how contemporary culture, audiences, and communities influence brands and business.
- Sound prioritisation and decision-making skills in a high-volume, fast-moving, and highly visible client environment.
- A coaching orientation and the ability to raise the performance, confidence, and judgment of other leaders.
- Ability to balance client needs, creative ambition, executional feasibility, team sustainability, and financial health.
Minimum Qualifications
- 10+ years of experience leading integrated client relationships within a creative, marketing, or communications agency, including demonstrated success operating at the Business Director or equivalent level.
- Proven experience owning senior client relationships, complex integrated campaigns, organic growth, account economics, and cross-functional team leadership for a major consumer brand.
- Demonstrated experience coaching and developing account leadership talent while independently navigating high-stakes client and business decisions.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience leading a large, complex, or matrixed national account across multiple stakeholders and workstreams.
- Experience in QSR, retail, CPG, telecom, financial services, sports, entertainment, or another high-velocity consumer category.
- Experience working within/leading an integrated agency team or multi-agency ecosystem.
- Experience leading culturally specific or multicultural marketing while connecting the work to a broader brand and business strategy.
- Track record of identifying and converting organic growth opportunities.
- Experience leading scope development, staffing recommendations, forecasting, and profitability management.
- Experience supporting new business pitches, agency initiatives, recruiting, or talent development.
The salary hiring range for this position is $150,000 - 180,000.