Freelance- Senior, Project Manager

About the role

VSA's purpose is to design for a better human experience. As a strategy and design agency, we blend consumer insights and data with human-centered design to activate meaningful, motivating and measurable experiences in an increasingly noisy world. With offices in Chicago, New York and San Francisco, VSA offers a full range of fully integrated capabilities-branding, advertising, data science and technology-all under one roof.

VSA is also a proud member of Meet The People, an international family of unified and independent agencies. For more than 40 years, we have delivered solutions for business and creative leaders at some of the world's most respected brands and forward-thinking organizations, including Google, Nike and IBM.

Summary

The Senior Project Manager is responsible for managing multiple projects and/or supporting senior-level project managers on a given client, potentially across multiple clients. They are charged with the overall health of the projects, including day-to-day project communications, financial management, resources, risk mitigation, and both internal and external relationships.

The Senior Project Manager is expected to: Project Management

• Oversee and direct multiple projects at a time or support senior-level project managers on a given client/program, or across multiple clients/programs.
• Ensure projects meet or exceed internal team and client expectations, including being on time and on budget.
• Interface heavily with senior marketing, technical, and executive management at the client to ensure the solution is understood and addresses the customer's business requirements.
• Contribute content and presentation of key client deliverables as needed to ensure relevancy, strategy, quality, timeliness, and adherence to SOWs.
• Manage and control project scope and the change control process to ensure that projects are executed according to agreed-upon scope, schedule, and budget.
• Supervise and raise awareness of all project issues and risks, working with appropriate team members to develop solutions.
• Communicate relevant project information to the client, such as status, risk, issues, or deliverables.
• Contribute to, review, and manage creation of client SOWs, ensuring accuracy and legal and financial compliance.
• Collaborate with the project team to drive the approach, deliverables, schedule, and tools to deliver the project within established constraints; ensure accurate financial management of projects.
• Coordinate activities of the project team and ensure project tasks, including scheduling and facilitating project-related team meetings (i.e., kickoffs, status, internal/client reviews), conveying action steps to the team, and delivering weekly status reports to project team, the client, and management.
• Work with Accounting to manage project billing schedules, including reviewing invoices and tracking fees and expenses.
• Develop, maintain, review, and/or disseminate project documentation, including status reports, invoices, change orders, project timelines, budgets, and sunset reviews.
• Ensure project documentation is produced in the standard format, follows internal documentation processes, and is reviewed and approved.
• Work with Resource Management to ensure projects are appropriately staffed, including both employee and contract resources.
• Partner with, manage communications, and execute project scope requirements with sister agencies within contract parameters.
• Additional responsibilities as assigned.

The Senior Project Manager has the following education, experience, and licenses:

• 5-7 years of demonstrated ability coordinating brand, marketing, campaign and digital projects, preferably in a consulting or agency environment.
• Bachelor's degree in business administration with a concentration in project management, advertising/marketing, or related field.
• Experience using project management methodology, including the ability to develop and track scopes of work, identify and resolve issues, mitigate risk, develop detailed task-based project plans and specifications, perform resource allocations, and lead team meetings.
• Experience with project life cycles, print and digital production processes, and the delivery of solutions with creative and engineering components, advertising projects, brand strategy, and research projects.
• Experience managing deliverables against a media plan is a plus.

To succeed, they must have the following skills, abilities, and knowledge:

• Ability to develop and demonstrate an understanding of the client's business, needs, expectations, and requirements.
• Strong knowledge of one or more of the following: web development processes and the delivery of solutions with creative and technology components, advertising, digital marketing, print, strategy, and research.
• Strong digital literacy in MS Office/Google Suite (particularly Excel/Sheets), email, project, and team communication software (e.g., Smartsheet, Jira, Slack, DoneDone).
• Strong organizational and time management skills.
• Strong team player; ability to assist with facilitating teams and clients.
• Ability to interact at all levels of the company and with external parties in a professional manner, maintaining effective communication-both written and spoken.
• Ability to be highly organized, accurate, and timely; able to prioritize.
• Adaptability, flexibility, persistence, versatility, and ability to handle multiple projects and changing priorities.
• Ability to organize information, pay attention to detail, accurately follow procedures, maintain confidential information, and remember important pieces of information.
• Ability to maintain self-motivation and to work independently and in collaborative environments.

Additional information

Some evenings and weekend work may occasionally be required to meet deadlines.

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