Associate Director, Project Management

Company Description

For decades, Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness has provided consumer and professional marketing, strategic consulting, and medical education to pharmaceutical and wellness brands. Our mission is to inspire a healthier, happier, well-er world through award-winning work.  

If you google us (which you may have done already), you’ll see that spreading wellness is literally our mission. We don’t just talk about making your well-being the most important thing, we mean it. Having a flexible hybrid-work policy, plentiful time off, and colleagues who want you to do well are all part of the gig. Oh, and of course the opportunity to work on some of the good-vibiest campaigns on the planet with very caring, very resourceful people.    

So, if you’re a rockstar writer, aspiring strategist, jill—or jack—of all trades, or just an all-around nice person, let’s chat.     

Job Description

The Associate Director, Project Manager is the team’s project management lead, ultimately responsible for the delivery of high-quality deliverables that power client satisfaction, meet business requirements, and balance client and agency economics. The Associate Director leads a multi-skill (ie online and offline) team of project managers. This person owns project definition, scope monitoring, budgeting & timing at the brand level. Career-manages a team of direct reports. 

Knowledge  

• Ensures that the project management team utilizes a flexible project management approach that adheres to established processes, yet remains open to novel ways of getting the work done 

• Leads large teams to drive complex programs/campaigns to completion based on scope and budget.  

• Talent Development: Hire and retain highly-capable people while fostering diversity and career development 

• SOWs: Accountable for the development, accuracy and maintenance of all team SOWs  

• Client finances: Collaborates (with Business Manager if available) to provide accurate and realistic cost-to-complete estimates and forecasts for assigned projects and brands 

Strategy 

• Resource allocation: Reviews all projects across account to determine resource and skill requirements; partners with Resource Management to drive resource allocation management; ensures the right resources are cast to the need  

• Process improvement: Proactively identifies opportunities to adjust processes for efficiencies 

• Quality Control: Structures and leads project status reviews; leads cross-team post-completion review 

• Informing: Partners with account team to provide appropriate communication directly to clients in an effort to clearly manage expectations 

• Risk Management: Leads large teams to develop and manage risk mitigation plans 

Tactics and Execution 

• Agency Cost Management: Vigilantly seeks to optimize both agency services and internal resources  

• Management: Responsible for the career development of others 

• Execution: Prioritizes work in progress (WIP) with production and account teams to pull work forward and break bottlenecks 

• Vendors: Point of escalation for vendor management concerns 

• Scope Definition: Scopes and estimates complex, multi-channel engagements   

Relationships 

• Internal Relationships and Team Leadership: Collaborative business partner to team capability leads 

• Client Relationship: Client-facing lead on issues related to production and project management    

Qualifications

• You’re comfortable being client facing  

• You have strong conflict management skills 

• You have knowledge in Microsoft Office including Excel 

• You have advanced knowledge of digital projects 

• If you have knowledge of broadcast/video production it’s a plus! 

• If you have knowledge of digital project routing systems it’s a plus! 

Additional Information

Compensation Range: $91,000 - $154,000 annually. This is the pay range the Company believes it will pay for this position at the time of this posting. Consistent with applicable law, compensation will be determined based on the skills, qualifications, and experience of the applicant along with the requirements of the position, and the Company reserves the right to modify this pay range at any time. For this role, the Company will offer medical coverage, dental, vision, disability, 401k, and paid time off.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.