Senior Project Manager, Exhibition

Department: Event Operations (Exhibition)

Location: Barcelona/London - Hybrid

Position type: Short term contract until March 2025

What the hiring manager says

“We have an exciting opportunity for a Senior Project Manager to join the fast-paced Exhibitions team. At the GSMA we continually strive to provide an engaging experience for our attendees by thinking innovatively and working with leading industry experts.

The successful candidate has experience in event project management and onsite operations and should be service oriented, detailed and motivated to work with our high-profile clients. The candidate should be a strong team player with a “can do” attitude but will also need to be able to work well independently. 

Anita Cheung, Head of Exhibition Operations

About the Team

The GSMA Operations department is responsible for the operational delivery of all event and exhibition components of the three MWC events plus the Mobile 360 event series. Our events range from 500 attendees at our m360 event in Brussels to the 88,500 attendees at our flagship MWC event in Barcelona.  

We work – and partner - with leading industry vendors around the globe to deliver innovative and creative solutions that make a real difference to our attendees. We provide platforms that enable our members (telecom operators) and other players in the mobile ecosystem to meet face to face and conduct business.  

With a team spread across our offices, the Exhibitions team has responsibility to manage and deliver the exhibition and exhibition related components of GSMA’s events, as well as many other projects. We are a close-knit team who thrive on the challenges we face to continue to innovate and deliver best in class products and services. Anyone who has ever attended our flagship event in Barcelona will know what we mean by quality!

About the Role

As our events develop, innovate and gather even more momentum within the industry, you will play a key role in enabling us to hit our ambitious targets. You will be responsible for achieving event KPIs that will be given by the PMO. You will be responsible for owning and leading operational and logistical delivery elements across the exhibition and related projects, working closely with internal and external stakeholders, ensuring your projects always achieve the highest standards, as well as opportunities for cost and process efficiencies. 

The role will entail the pre-planning and onsite execution of our exhibitions and related projects. The candidate will need to establish processes for working with internal and external stakeholders, create project timelines and ensure deadlines are adhered to, manage budgets of varying scales and present project updates to senior management as necessary.  

The candidate will need to engage with various departments and suppliers to manage logistical aspects of the project such as logistics, build, safety, security, catering, staffing, marketing, AV and production. Maintaining risk assessments and ensuring compliance with the relevant health & safety procedures are other essential elements of this role. 

We are focused on working collaboratively and sharing knowledge, the Senior Project Manager is expected to organise information in a structured way and have an open and positive approach.  

This is a very exciting role for the right candidate who has vision and experience and can translate that into cost effective event delivery, without impacting quality or customer experience.   

About You

You will have substantial experience in an operations role within a commercial environment, be able to demonstrate strong project management skills with the ability to plan ahead to work on a number of activities simultaneously, monitoring timescales and deadlines, consistently prioritising your time, minimising distractions so that you can focus on high-impact tasks. Certifications in project management and occupational safety are a benefit. Second languages are also a benefit.

You will have solid financial negotiation skills, having previous sole responsibility of budgets for >£500k and be able to confidently liaise between suppliers and finance monitoring current contracts/budgets together with SLA compliance.  There is an opportunity to work closely on the RFP process for subsequent years.

You will be highly self-motiva