Associate Director, Project Management

Associate Director, Project Management

At BBDO Chicago, the Associate Director, Project Management is a senior project management leader who drives complex, integrated programs and creative production from briefing through final delivery.

This role sits at the center of highly collaborative, cross-functional teams and brings structure, clarity, and momentum to complex work. The Associate Director partners closely with Account, Creative, Strategy, Production, and discipline leads, as well as integrated agency team (IAT) partners, to define scope, process, timelines, budgets, staffing, dependencies, and delivery strategies across multiple concurrent workstreams.

The Associate Director provides oversight across projects and programs, anticipates and mitigates risk, and ensures teams have the structure, resources, and information needed to deliver high-quality creative work. This person must understand the realities of creative production and know how to navigate complex agency structures, shifting priorities, interconnected workstreams, and multiple stakeholders while keeping the work moving forward.

Things you'll do:

• Lead complex, integrated projects and programs from briefing and discovery through creative development, production, and final delivery.
• Provide strategic oversight across multiple concurrent projects and workstreams, ensuring alignment across scope, timing, budget, resources, dependencies, and deliverables.
• Define project and program approaches, SOWs, schedules, estimates, staffing plans, milestones, and delivery assumptions in partnership with Account and discipline leads.
• Drive the operational management of creative production, ensuring teams understand key milestones, dependencies, approvals, production requirements, and delivery expectations.
• Partner closely with Creative and Production teams to build realistic project plans that support the creative process while maintaining accountability to scope, budget, timing, and quality.
• Navigate complex integrated agency team (IAT) structures, coordinating across multiple agencies, disciplines, production partners, and stakeholders to establish clear ownership, dependencies, decision points, and ways of working.
• Serve as a central point of connectivity across internal teams and agency partners, ensuring information flows effectively and teams remain aligned throughout the project lifecycle.
• Identify cross-agency and cross-functional dependencies early and proactively resolve issues that could affect creative development, production, timing, or delivery.
• Maintain visibility into the overall health of assigned programs and accounts, including scope, budget, staffing, timelines, dependencies, deliverables, and delivery risk.
• Organize teams and establish clear expectations around roles, responsibilities, priorities, milestones, deliverables, approvals, and deadlines.
• Proactively identify project and program-level risks and lead teams in developing solutions before those risks affect delivery.
• Oversee project financials, including estimates, burn, budget reconciliation, forecasting, scope management, and actual versus planned hours.
• Partner with Account and Finance leadership on SOWs, estimates, change requests, annual planning, and other financial and scope considerations.
• Work closely with Resource Management and discipline leads to forecast staffing needs, identify resource constraints, and optimize utilization across projects and programs.
• Ensure clear, accurate, and timely project communication and documentation, including project plans, status reports, meeting notes, change requests, resource requests, and financial reporting.
• Communicate project and program health to senior stakeholders, providing clear analysis, recommendations, and solutions when priorities, requirements, timelines, or budgets change.
• Serve as a senior escalation point for complex project, production, scope, budget, resource, and delivery challenges.
• Provide oversight, guidance, and mentorship to Project Managers and Senior Project Managers, helping strengthen project leadership, creative production knowledge, financial management, communication, and problem-solving skills.
• Identify opportunities to improve project management processes, tools, workflows, and ways of working across the account and agency.

Things we are looking for:

• 7+ years of project management experience within an advertising, creative, or integrated agency environment.
• Significant hands-on experience managing creative production is required. You understand the creative development and production lifecycle and have successfully managed complex work from briefing through production and final delivery.
• Demonstrated experience leading large-scale, integrated projects or programs involving multiple concurrent workstreams, deliverables, and stakeholders.
• Experience working within complex integrated agency team (IAT) structures and successfully coordinating across multiple agencies, disciplines, and partners.
• Strong understanding of integrated campaign development and production across channels, with the ability to manage interdependencies across creative and production workstreams.
• CPG experience is a plus, particularly experience supporting high-volume, integrated consumer brands.
• Strong financial acumen with experience managing scopes, estimates, SOWs, budgets, forecasts, burn, change requests, and resource utilization.
• Proven ability to anticipate risk, identify solutions, manage competing priorities, and keep complex programs moving forward in a fast-paced environment.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to confidently partner with senior clients, agency leadership, creative teams, production teams, and cross-agency stakeholders.
• Strong leadership skills with experience guiding, mentoring, or overseeing Project Managers and other project management talent.
• Experience with project management platforms such as Workfront or Smartsheet
• Bachelor's degree and/or equivalent relevant professional experience.

In-Office Policy:

At BBDO Chicago, we believe being together in person enhances our ability to collaborate, communicate, and innovate. Currently, BBDO Chicago's in-office policy requires employees to work in the office on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with the flexibility to work from home on Monday and Friday.

Benefits:

BBDO Chicago offers a competitive compensation package, with benefits including:

• Comprehensive Health & Wellness benefits
• Paid Time Off
• 401K Retirement Savings Plan
• Paid Parental Leave

The salary range for this position is $90,000 to $120,000 annually. Actual salaries will vary based on factors including, but not limited to, budgetary and market considerations, as well as an applicant's experience, pertinent/specialty experience, qualifications, and tenure in the role/similar role.

This job description is not an exhaustive list of all functions that an employee may be required to perform, and the employee may be required to perform additional functions, reserving the right to revise the job description at any time.

It is the policy of BBDO Chicago and any of its affiliates to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, religion, color, ethnic origin, gender, gender identity, age, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, disability, or any other basis prohibited by applicable federal, state, or local law.