Senior Program Manager (Contractor)

About the role

Role Title: Senior Program Manager (Contractor)

Role Summary

The Senior Program Manager leads the planning and delivery of complex, integrated communication and event marketing programs from inception through completion. As the central execution lead, this role aligns cross-functional teams and stakeholders, drives accountability, anticipates risks, and ensures high-quality delivery on time, within scope and budget.

This role brings the experience and judgment needed to lead with a proactive approach to navigating ambiguity, anticipating challenges, and keeping teams and clients aligned.

Responsibilities Include

Leadership

• Lead cross-functional teams and client stakeholders, manage expectations, and provide strategic guidance throughout the engagement.
• Define program objectives and success metrics; align stakeholders on scope, budgets, timelines, and deliverables.
• Anticipate risks, manage scope changes, and advise clients and internal teams on recommended solutions.
• Delegate responsibilities, establish clear ownership, and drive accountability across teams.
• Provide thoughtful management and practical structure so teams can work efficiently, collaborate effectively, and focus on producing exceptional work.

Planning and Organization

• Structure projects with evolving requirements, incomplete information, or shifting priorities, translating available information into a clear path forward.
• Consult with agency leads on resourcing of vendors and partners as well as internal resources.
• Build and maintain project plans covering workback schedules, milestones, dependencies, budgets, ownership, and deliverables.
• Align teams at kickoff on objectives, scope, timing, budget, decision-making, workflows, communications, and success metrics.
• Document decisions, action items, and project records; adjust plans as risks, resources, scope, or priorities change.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with the Account Director to align client expectations, priorities, budgets, resourcing, contractual commitments, and deadlines with the broader project team.
• Coordinate across Strategy, Creative, Production, specialty teams, and external partners on dependencies, handoffs, and realistic timelines for development, review, and approval.
• Translate client context and feedback into actionable direction, ensuring teams understand how strategy, creative, production requirements, and client objectives connect.
• Optimize cross-functional workflows, handoffs, and tools to strengthen accountability and support team efficiency and scalability.

Timeline, Scope, and Delivery

• Drive project execution against approved scope, milestones, budgets, and deliverables; reprioritize work to maintain progress.
• Manage scope changes and change orders; partner with the Account Director to communicate impacts on budgets, timing, resources, and deliverables.
• Manage project financial health, monitoring budgets and up-to-date tracking of time utilization to provide regular accounting updates to the internal teams and clients and proactively escalating risks or variances to the appropriate stakeholders.
• Coordinate review and approval cycles, ensuring feedback is consolidated, actionable, and delivered in time to protect the schedule.
• Ensure quality and delivery standards across all deliverables, maintaining brand integrity and technical accuracy.

Closeout and Optimization

• Facilitate program debriefs and post-program reporting, evaluating outcomes, metrics, insights, and recommendations.
• Apply learnings to improve future program strategy, planning, budgets, workflows, and client opportunities.
• Oversee financial reconciliation, final documentation, and asset archiving.

What Success Looks Like

• Projects run smoothly and are delivered on time, within approved scope and budget, and at a consistently high level of quality.
• Teams, clients and partners/vendors have clear visibility into upcoming work, priorities, ownership, deadlines, and expectations.
• Risks are identified early and addressed proactively before they materially impact delivery, budget, or client expectations.
• Clients and Account leadership have confidence in execution, financial health, and recommendations.

Skills, Knowledge and Abilities

• Experience managing complex, integrated programs across experiential, campaign, live event, strategy, creative, and digital work.
• Fluency in strategy and creative development workflows, including work planning, resourcing and managing client expectations.
• Strong project and financial management skills in scope, budgets, forecasting, resource planning, and financial tracking.
• Excellent organizational, analytical, and problem-solving skills to synthesize complex information, navigate ambiguity, anticipate risks, and recommend solutions.
• Ability to lead cross-functional teams and drive accountability without direct authority.
• Exceptional client and executive communication skills, with demonstrated ability to build trust, manage expectations, and guide decisions.

Other Requirements

Must be available during Eastern Standard working hours. Contract runs through May 2027. There is no travel associated with this temporary position. The contractor should have 7 to 10 years of experience in marketing communications, campaign development, and production experience; experiential agency experience required.