Creative Production Manager — AI Product Imagery Program (fractional, contract-to-hire)

We're a creative production studio making product imagery for major furniture retail brands. Our pipeline is AI-assisted end to end: accurate product renders go in, generated lifestyle scenes come out, with automated quality checks in between. The systems work — we need the person who runs them. The engagement: 15–20 hrs/week to start, running quality review and team cadence for a live image-refresh program. This is contract-to-hire by design: if the trial works, it converts to a full-time role leading this workflow — and eventually the same practice for our other clients. What you'll do: Own the quality gate: review generated scenes against product reference renders, call pass/fail, and send makers specific, actionable notes Keep the batch moving: track who's blocked, keep turnaround predictable, escalate only true edge cases Turn recurring quality issues into written standards and reference examples the team learns from Direct fixes on stubborn generations — different conditioning, stronger reference, different tool — so "try again" is never the note Requirements (hard ones): Production experience with AI image workflows: prompt/reference conditioning, seed iteration, upscaling and compositing. You can name failure modes (identity drift, texture mush, invented geometry) and know which lever fixes each You've managed or led creative makers (CGI, retouch, photo/post production) and made specific people measurably better Sharp eye for product fidelity: wood tone, proportions, hardware — you catch what a generation changed Solid Photoshop compositing fluency. Much of this pipeline lives in layered comps — you need to read them, judge them, and demonstrate a fix when you're teaching one Feedback style that coaches rather than takes over. If your instinct is to fix it yourself, this isn't your gig Not required: building pipelines or writing code. We have engineering; you run the creative side. Start: immediately · Trial scope: the current refresh batch, then a conversion conversation. Propose the rate that reflects your experience — we're hiring for caliber, not to a number.