Description
Agency:
The company Production
Job Function:
Projects and Performance Improvement
Job Subfunction:
Project and Program Management
Role Summary
The Senior Project Manager leads complex, high-visibility, and cross-functional projects from planning through delivery. This role operates between the day-to-day project ownership of the Project Manager and the team, process, and capacity leadership of the PM Lead.
The Senior Project Manager is accountable for project health, quality of delivery, risk management, and cross-functional alignment across assigned workstreams. The role provides senior-level guidance to Project Managers and project teams, escalates issues appropriately, and helps apply and improve PM processes within the automotive client team environments.
Core Responsibilities
Lead Complex and Cross-Functional Projects
Manage multiple workstreams or high-complexity projects from intake through final delivery.
Own project timelines, milestones, dependencies, deliverables, and handoffs.
Coordinate projects involving multiple departments, agency partners, markets, or stakeholder groups.
Establish project structure, governance, meeting cadence, communication plans, and escalation paths.
Ensure project requirements, scope, deliverables, and approvals are clearly documented.
Maintain visibility into project health and communicate status, risks, and decisions to appropriate stakeholders.
Serve as a senior project-based point of contact for the LA-based team and broader project stakeholders.
Own Project Planning and Workflow
Build and maintain detailed Smartsheet schedules, project plans, and milestone trackers.
Create and maintain Asset Trackers, Proplan tracking, producer assignments, and estimate-related documentation.
Create, monitor, and refine JIRA task assignments and project workflows.
Ensure project information is accurate, current, and accessible in the required systems.
Identify opportunities to improve project workflows without independently changing department-wide standards.
Support consistent use of server, JIRA, SmartSheets, WorkFront, Vantage, and related tools.
Manage Scope, Budget, and Resource Risks
Manage pre-set budgets and monitor project financial health in partnership with producers, account teams, and finance.
Identify scope changes, resource constraints, timeline impacts, and budget risks early.
Support estimates, project planning, resource assignments, and production forecasting.
Partner with the PM Lead on capacity or allocation concerns that affect multiple projects or teams.
Recommend trade-offs and solutions when project scope, timing, budget, or resourcing are at risk.
Escalate material risks and decisions to the PM Lead or appropriate leadership.
Manage Risks, Issues, and Dependencies
Maintain project risk, issue, action, and decision tracking.
Anticipate delivery challenges and develop mitigation plans.
Resolve project-level blockers independently when possible.
Coordinate resolution of cross-functional dependencies and competing priorities.
Escalate issues that require changes to process, staffing, capacity, budget, or leadership direction.
Monitor cumulative risks across related projects and communicate trends to the PM Lead.
Lead Status, Communication, and Escalation
Facilitate project status meetings, working sessions, kickoffs, and milestone reviews.
Prepare clear status updates, action items, decision logs, and risk summaries.
Maintain follow-up across project communications, contact reports, emails, and team commitments.
Ensure team members understand their responsibilities, deadlines, dependencies, and next actions.
Report cross-project and team blockers to the PM Lead with recommended solutions.
Translate complex project information into concise updates for leadership and stakeholders.
Drive accountability while maintaining effective cross-department communication.
Reporting Structure
Reports to the PM Lead
Partners closely with the PM Lead, producers, account leadership, creative, strategy, technology, finance, and other cross-functional stakeholders
May provide day-to-day guidance and mentoring to Project Managers, but does not own formal people management or performance reviews unless specifically assigned
Skill Focus
Asset Production
Understand fundamentals of CG asset creation, data prep and CAD based asset production
Knowledge of AI production workflow, navigating in-process technology discovery during live production
Experience with asset management and organization around traditional retouching and practical photography
Knowledge of scaled, regional specific, localization and translations processes
Experience with complex, large-scale asset management, organizing, tracking and archiving preferred
Project Ownership & Leadership
Complex project and workstream management
End-to-end delivery ownership
Cross-functional coordination
Dependency and milestone management
Risk, issue, and escalation management
Planning and Project Management Tools
Microsoft suite, specifically Excel experience required
Atlassian JIRA and Confluence
SmartSheets for schedule and timeline creation and management needed
Adobe WorkFront knowledge for task and resource allocation management
Creative Cloud proficiency; Figma, PhotoShop, InDesign, Adobe Acrobat
Asset technical proficiency with file formats, resolution, specs, aspect ratios, variation, localization and regionalization
Communication and Stakeholder Management
Executive-ready status reporting
Cross-department communication
Meeting facilitation and decision management
Stakeholder alignment and expectation management
Conflict resolution at the project level
Clear written follow-up and accountability
Success Measures
Success in this role is demonstrated by:
Complex projects delivered on time and with clear stakeholder alignment.
Accurate schedules, trackers, assignments, status reporting, and project documentation.
Risks, issues, and dependencies identified and addressed early.
Effective management of scope, budget, and delivery expectations.
Fewer unresolved cross-functional blockers and escalations.
Consistent use of team processes and project management tools.
&xa;&xa;
$85,000 - $90,000
The company’s policy requires employees to work in the office for a minimum of three days a week, unless additional in-office days are directed by their agency or manager. Our objective is to increase this requirement over time, and many of our agencies as well as the company’s corporate group already require five days of in-office attendance.
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