Artist Operations Manager

ABOUT AVANT ARTE

Avant Arte wants to make art radically more accessible for a new generation. The company began as a cult blog of contemporary artists and grew organically into the world’s largest and most engaged online art community, with more than 2 million of their followers under the age of 35.

The company collaborates with iconic contemporary artists like Jenny Holzer, Cai Guo-Qiang, Claire Tabouret and Hank Willis Thomas, making their work more accessible to younger collectors through sculpture editions, print editions and unique works on paper of exceptional quality. And they have built a highly engaged community of next-generation art collectors, which means Avant Arte’s artist launches are heavily oversubscribed, with many behaving more like fashion drops, selling out in under 30 seconds.

The company’s vision is to inspire a generation of millions of young people who love art like they love music and who collect works like they build their wardrobe.

This is a great opportunity to join a highly successful, profitable, early-stage business at a pivotal moment in our growth, where you will have a big impact from day one.

OUR CULTURE

We’re a small team with really big ambitions, both for what we want to achieve and also the environment we’re building. We want to create a company that remains thoughtful as we scale and tries to be genuinely progressive in how we operate; we want people to really own what they do and be given the autonomy and freedom to make mistakes, learn, and create something meaningful. We all work incredibly hard because we really care about what Avant Arte is here to do – we’re looking for exceptional people who are proactive, hungry to learn, and want to put their pride in our collective achievements.

We know that creating an inclusive environment that promotes and values diversity is critical if we want to build something with impact and meaning. We believe that having diversity in age, background, gender identity, race, sexual orientation, physical or mental ability, ethnicity, and perspective will make us an infinitely better company. And it is particularly vital if we are going to build a roster of artists and a community of collectors that are representative of contemporary art and of the wider world today.

WHAT WE NEED

We’re looking for a highly organised Artist Operations Manager with a passion for contemporary art to join our London team. We really do encourage everyone to proactively step outside of their job description if they see something that could be improved but the core of your role will involve:

• Artist pipeline management: working closely with our team of Artist Liaisons to support across all stages of our end-to-end artist outreach funnel:

  • Overseeing and managing our active artist outreach pipeline - understanding and recording the current status of each active conversation, keeping track of actions and using these to drive conversion to new projects agreed

  • Regular catch ups & check ins with our Liaison team to support their individual pipeline management

  • Developing a strong understanding of Avant Arte’s artist proposition, end-to-end artist life cycle and target artist landscape, and applying these to our outreach strategies and approach.

• 
  Artist research and qualification: helping support the expansion of Avant Arte’s artist universe & the qualification of new artist targets and opportunities

  • Participating in and overseeing internal artist research processes: from preparing for bespoke artist outreach brainstorms to monitoring the quality and efficiency of our artist research sprints and evaluation processes

  • Staying on top of key art world events and moments - actively identifying and contributing new artist suggestions for our programme.

• 
  Team operations: managing and introducing efficient, optimised & continuously improved ways of working for the artist team

• Regularly reviewing and reporting against team performance as part of team and company-wide cadences, and ownership of key team dashboards and tools

• Working to continuously optimise, improve and simplify team processes as the business scales

• Contributing to weekly and quarterly team target setting and key projects

• Working cross functionally with other teams in the business to facilitate smooth handovers and effective ways of working throughout the end-to-end project lifecycle.
  

• Data analysis and reporting: leading on ad-hoc and regular data analyses of our artist outreach pipeline and activity to analyse performance and drive decision making for the team

• Identification of trends, blockers and opportunities to optimise team performance

• Helping us better forecast artist conversion - tracking expected conversion rates of artists in weekly, monthly & quarterly cycles

• Collaborating with our data team to make sure we’re making the most of all data available to us & building a data-driven culture within the artist team

The main skills we’re looking for are:

• Knowledgeable of the contemporary art world, with an added bonus if you have a strong understanding of artists’ markets

• Highly proficient in creating, implementing and managing new systems and processes

• Confident in using data and taking a data led approach

• Strong collaboration skills

• Great organisation skills
  

We think you’ll probably have:

• Experience working in an art business or related industry

• Operational experience or experience managing pipelines, lifecycles or lots of projects concurrently

• A passion for art and artists
  

BENEFITS

• You’ll get to be part of building one of the fastest growing tech companies in culture, backed by early investors in companies like Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and Facebook.

• Generous equity allowance

• Private Healthcare (UK)

• Enhanced pension contributions

• 25 days of holiday plus two extra company wide days on Kings Day (national holiday in the Netherlands which falls in April) and Christmas Eve

• L&D budget of €1000 per year per employee

• Company Laptop (MacBook) + any other equipment for your at-home set up

• Cycle to work scheme (UK)

• Regular socials & team events including end of year events between all offices and staff (incl. remote)

• Generous parental leave policies

• Offices in both London and Amsterdam and supportive of flexible/remote working

• Office perks in our London office include membership discounts for restaurants, wellness services and hotels in the area as well as free fitness classes and drinks on Fridays