The Rise of the Creative Engineer: A New Role for a New Era of Creative Operations
Authored by: Adam Driggs, Director of Adobe Solutions
You’ve likely felt the shift in how creative and marketing work gets done.
Deadlines are shorter. Channels are multiplying. Personalization is the new standard. And now AI is adding fuel to the fire, offering new ways to create but also introducing new risks and complexities.
Traditional creative workflows such as manual reviews, fixed timelines, and rigid roles are collapsing under the pressure of increased content demand and hyper-personalization. Research from McKinsey shows that 71 percent of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions.
How can your creative organizations adapt to a rapidly changing landscape without overloading teams or losing what makes your brand distinct?
The answer isn’t just another tool. It’s a new way of working, built around a connected ecosystem of people, process, and technology. At the center of that ecosystem sits a Creative Operations or Content Supply Chain Center of Excellence (CoE)—and within it, a pivotal role we call the Creative Engineer.
Why Start With a CoE
When organizations first start experimenting with AI in marketing and creative workflows, they often run into the same problems: fragmented adoption, inconsistent results, and missed opportunities to reuse or scale work.
A CoE solves this by becoming the hub where innovation meets governance. It’s a place to test new approaches, capture what works, and standardize it across the organization. It’s also where different functions like creative, marketing, IT, compliance, and operations come together to shape the future of how creative work gets done.
But a CoE is only as strong as the people inside it. That’s where the Creative Engineer comes in.
Meet the Creative Engineer
The Creative Engineer isn’t a new hire, but a reimagined role—often from creative operations, studio management, or production—ready to bridge creative vision with AI-powered production.
Core traits:
- Thinks in systems, not silos
- Understands brand standards, creative workflows, and stakeholder needs
- Feels comfortable experimenting with GenAI and operationalizing its use
- Knows how to partner across teams (IT, Legal, Marketing, Creative) to scale effectively
They don’t just “use the tools.” They design the playbook for how tools like Adobe GenStudio and other creative and marketing platforms fit into a repeatable, human-centered system.
In the context of a CoE, the Creative Engineer becomes the bridge between vision and execution. They work with creative leaders to explore what’s possible, with operations leaders to design scalable workflows, and with IT and compliance to ensure new methods are secure and responsible.
What This Looks Like in Practice
You may already have someone on your team stepping into this role, whether formally or not.
They’re the person who’s not afraid to try something new, who’s testing out AI tools on their own time, and who sees potential where others see disruption. They ask: “What if we could do this faster?” or “How could this be automated without losing quality?”
Imagine a marketing organization launching campaigns across dozens of channels, each with different creative needs. Without coordination, AI tools might be used in isolation—generating content that’s quick, but off-brand or inconsistent.
In a CoE-led model, the Creative Engineer would:
- Partner with creative teams to design AI-assisted workflows that keep outputs aligned to brand standards.
- Capture effective prompts, templates, and workflows, then roll them out across teams.
- Identify bottlenecks in the content supply chain and pilot AI-based solutions to remove them.
- Build connections between creative, marketing, and technical teams so new ideas can scale.
The result? Less duplication, faster speed to market, and creative teams that can focus on what they do best: concepting and storytelling all while the AI and automation workflows handle the repeatable tasks.
How to Repurpose (and Empower) Existing Team Members
The good news is you don’t need to hire a new team to get started. Many organizations already have people with the skills and instincts to step into a Creative Engineer role, They just need a clear charter, dedicated time, and support from leadership.
By embedding this role into a CoE, you avoid putting the burden of AI adoption on one individual while still ensuring there is clear accountability for exploring, testing, and scaling new approaches. The CoE becomes the environment where Creative Engineers (and the teams they support) can experiment, learn, and grow together.
Here’s how you can identify and grow Creative Engineers from within your existing team:
- Spot the Systems Thinkers: Look for team members who see patterns, suggest improvements, and naturally bridge creative and technical conversations.
- Empower the Self-Disruptors: Embrace and encourage the “natural self-disruptors.” These are the people who are not only doing the work well, but are also looking outside of the organization to keep a pulse on how things are developing across the industry. They understand the need to keep business moving as usual, but also want to experiment on making their work more impactful and relevant.
- Create a Clear Charter: Define the role in terms of business value: speeding up time to market, improving consistency, reducing burnout, and scaling creative experimentation.
- Provide the Right Tools and Training: Give them time and space to explore GenAI platforms. Pair them with platform leads or vendors to co-develop use cases.
- Make Them the Connective Tissue: Let them sit in on meetings across teams—from creative to operations to legal—so they can help design holistic, scalable solutions.
- Measure What Matters: Track outcomes like reduction in manual touchpoints, reuse rates of modular assets, or improved on-time delivery of campaign creative.
How LeapPoint Can Help
At LeapPoint, an Omnicom Precision Marketing company, we help organizations establish Creative and Content Operations CoEs. Not only do we help our clients create the structure, but we also work with you to define the critical roles that bring it to life.
From Creative Engineers shaping the vision, to operations leads driving structure and measurement, to enablement specialists ensuring adoption, we make every CoE role clear, aligned, and ready to deliver impact.
We partner with your teams to:
- Identify the right candidates (often from within your current org)
- Formalize responsibilities, workflows, and collaboration models
- Design training and onboarding plans tailored to your creative and operational maturity
- Integrate the role into a larger, cross-functional governance model
- Build playbooks and change management strategies to sustain adoption
Whether you’re just starting to experiment with AI or already running multiple pilots, we can help you turn scattered innovation into a cohesive, scalable system powered by the people who can lead the change from within.
Let’s build your next-generation creative operations together.
About this article: This article was co-created with GenAI tools. From shaping the big idea to tightening up the final edits, I use GenAI as a creative partner to think more clearly, write more efficiently, and to enjoy the process a whole lot more.
