What are the responsibilities and job description for the Associate Director, Project Management position at Doner?
The Associate Director of Project Management is one of the most capable individual contributors on the PM team. They lead the agency’s highest-complexity accounts and engagements while also shaping how project management is practiced across the department.
This role is for someone who thinks like a director but thrives in the work itself: a trusted partner to creative, account, and production leadership, an informal anchor for the PM team, and a stabilizing force when engagements get hard. No direct reports, but real authority and influence.
What You’ll Do:
- Own delivery of the agency’s most complex, high-stakes engagements, including multi-brand, multi-market, and multi-vendor work that demands both strategic thinking and hands-on execution
- Act as a joint decision-maker with Account, Creative, and Production leadership when scope, resourcing, or workflow calls need to be made
- Serve as the go-to recovery resource when projects get into trouble, diagnosing the issue, stabilizing the team, and establishing a clear path forward
- Manage senior client relationships independently, presenting project POVs, navigating scope conversations, and earning trust beyond the account team
- Provide project-level coaching and guidance to Senior and Mid-level PMs on active work, offering real-time craft mentorship without formal management responsibility
- Own at least one PM practice area for the department, such as Workfront standards, onboarding frameworks, or production playbooks
- Communicate risk with authority, empowered to act rather than just escalate, while keeping leadership informed and timelines protected
- Create and maintain project schedules, budgets, and documentation with a high degree of accuracy in Workfront
What You Need to Succeed:
- 8–10 years in project management in a creative/marketing agency setting
- A track record of owning complex, high-visibility work from kickoff to completion, independently and with confidence
- Deep fluency in creative and production workflows across channels: digital, video, social, print, and experiential
- Strong executive presence and the credibility to lead senior client and internal conversations without relying on a director as a backstop
- High comfort with ambiguity and the ability to establish structure where none exists
- Natural tendency to mentor and elevate the people around you, even without formal authority
- Workfront expertise required; power-user knowledge and ability to advise others on best practices