I’m afraid I know the answer to this but I’ll ask on the longshot chance that I’m wrong:
I’ve been doing some freelance work creating an iPhone application for a company. They’ve created their own developer account and added me as an team member with “admin” rights. That seems to be the highest assignable rights (with the only higher level being “agent” and belonging only to whoever signed up for the account). Yet, I don’t have an option under the provisioning portal to create a distribution certificate or profile.
Is there any way to create these myself without having to ask my client for their primary login? They’re not particulary tech savy so it would be difficult to walk them through the process to create the necessary certificates (and would require me giving them a certificate request from my computer, etc. etc.). But it seems like there should be some way to create a distribution build without “agent” rights, right? Could Apple seriously expect only one person from a company to do all the building and uploading of apps to the store?
You are right. Only the agent can create a distribution profile and a distribution certificate. There is no way around that. The easiest thing to do is work with him/her to create the key and certificate for distribution and install a copy of both on your machine as well. They are also the only one who can submit the binary on iTunes Connect.