Senior Business Affairs Lead

The Community You Will Join:

Airbnb is seeking an exceptional, business-oriented and strategic Senior Business Affairs Lead to join Airbnb Creative, our internal, multi-disciplinary team of creatives. Across design, photography, video, experiential, interactive, and social, this team stewards the visual brand and focuses on creating meaningful engagements between our brand and rapidly-growing extended community. 

The Difference You Will Make:

As a Senior Business Affairs Lead, you will be hands-on in the operations of the cross-functional Business Affairs Team. You combine production and advertising knowledge, strong business acumen, creativity and growing understanding of Airbnb’s platform and products to contribute to an efficient and innovative Business Affairs Team, setting the bar for the entire industry. 

The Business Affairs discipline at Airbnb, in many ways, is still in its infancy so we’re looking for someone who is keen to make an impact, help us continue to grow our best in class offering, and innovate on our processes and tools. You are entrepreneurial in spirit and dig into the complexities of any business and strategy challenge.

A Typical Day:

• Act as a leader within the Business Affairs discipline, as well as across the production org, influencing strategy for program execution and operational processes.
• Apply critical thinking to compliance, clearance, or general BA related considerations during the creation and production of a campaign, and suggest creative alternatives that still let the magic and meaning of the original idea shine through while navigating risk management. 
• Apply an expert-level of understanding and strategic management of third party negotiations and deal drafting - including, but not limited to, talent, music, celeb, production, photography, etc; as well as supplier SOWs.
• Effectively partner with primary cross-functional stakeholders on BA matters, specifically, Legal, Finance, Procurement, Policy, Trust, and Privacy; and cross-functional collaboration with Creative, Production, and Marketing.
• Manage multiple complex work streams at a time, while keeping a keen attention to detail. 
• Effectively communicates context around complex BA related matters, helping drive positive outcomes and solution creation.
• Provide any and all production and talent paperwork for productions including, production agreements, casting notices, talent contracts, releases, etc, and support on finance related processes i.e. PO creation, invoice processing, job reconciliation, budget management, etc, as needed.
• Provide talent and residual estimates when required, including analysis of strategic development of terms and costing approaches.
• Manage network clearance for broadcast materials and disseminate information to Marketing and Production teams, disputing and negotiating when needed.
• Maintain accurate and organized digital files of every production, including data tracking in Airtable, and ownership of third party rights clearances and rights management tracking.
• Maintain relationships with key rights holders, agencies, managers and attorneys in the entertainment community.
• Manages team members, as needed based on project by project resourcing strategy.

Your Expertise:

• 15+ years of marketing/advertising/production counseling with a successful track record of negotiating, drafting and closing deals (with a preference for a combination of experience at both a top, creative-driven agency and in-house with a leading global technology company, content production team, and/or entertainment/brand licensing). 
• Experienced with union and non-union productions, branded partnerships, interactive and/or social landscapes is required.
• Deep working expertise around music licensing, including relationships with rights holders, is preferred.
• Working knowledge of Airtable and an interest in relational data management, operations, and rights tracking and management is a plus.
• Expert-level ability to manage urgent deadlines and a variety of tasks while remaining solution oriented, and have a keen attention to detail. 
• Collaborative, momentum creator who’s always learning and is keen to drive positive outcomes via strategic problem solving. 
• Strong working knowledge of the Airbnb platform, evolving product lines, marketing content and competitive landscape.
• Experience and comfort working in a highly creative, flexible and nimble environment.
• Demonstrated ability to deliver timely, effective and strategic business affairs advice that is current with the evolving legal and regulatory expectations.
• Established ability to independently manage medium to high complexity matters, including issues of first impression.
• Experience with content and media production, rights clearance and evolving content distribution and consumption landscape.
• High level of integrity, professionalism, intellectual curiosity and willingness to grow.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills.
• Strategic and innovative thinker.