What are the responsibilities and job description for the Freelance Project Manager position at Formative?
Formative is seeking an experienced Project Manager to lead cross-discipline engagements from initiation to project completion and ensure project plans align with strategic goals. This role provides project controls and program direction, manages timelines, budgets, deliverables, and stakeholder communications across a variety of marketing strategy, business consulting, creative, and web development projects. The role is estimated at /- 30 hours per week, and projects are mainly in the life science or global health area of focus.
The ideal candidate possesses strong critical thinking and effective problem-solving skills, is inherently driven to achieve successful outcomes, and can draw logical conclusions in an ambiguous environment. The ability to proactively manage change, mitigate risks, and nurture strong relationships while working closely with marketing and strategy related disciplines is critical. Experience working effectively in ad agency, digital marketing, consulting, or similarly fast-paced environments is required.
Who We Are
Relentless seekers. Problem solvers. Thoughtful collaborators. Sector experts. Formative is a Seattle-based agency passionate about helping address society’s most pressing challenges. We are focused on working with social impact and purpose-driven organizations to design and launch campaigns, programs, and platforms for clients that include World Bank, Gates Ventures, Bayer, Vulcan, Malaria No More, Microsoft, and more.
Formative is inspired by doing work that matters. We’re drawn together by a common desire to spend our time on the things that have the biggest impact. We are passionate about delivering powerful solutions that solve our clients’ biggest priorities. Our team brings passion and deep expertise to deliver powerful solutions that solve our clients’ biggest priorities. From strategy to operations, design to development, we seek to produce amazing results in all that we do.
Responsibilities
- Develop stage-gate SOWs, project budgets, staffing plans, and detailed workback timelines
- Create and maintain evergreen documents including roles and responsibilities matrices, bills of materials, change logs, and progress reports
- Manage project lifecycles from planning, concepting, production, and delivery to lessons learned, analytics reporting, and ongoing client engagement
- Lead internal and client meetings including status check-ins, reviews, and working sessions
- Maintain accurate resourcing and hours forecasts
- Support recruiting and onboarding of freelance and outside vendors as needed
- Proactively monitor and report on project health, status, milestone progress, and financials
- Conduct risk and mitigation exercises and facilitate issue resolution as needed
- Work closely with strategy leads on internal and client-facing work streams across multiple projects
- Maintain excellent communications to drive deadlines and ensure stakeholder visibility
- Document and follow up on outcomes and action items for internal and client meetings
- Manage day-to-day project workflows and dependencies
- Ensure quality of deliverables by proofreading and vetting against requirements, internal feedback, and client input
- Monitor and proactively manage fluctuations in project budgets including hours and external hard costs
- Request and review monthly service fees and expense invoices
- Diligently oversee scope, calibrate expectations, and proactively manage change as needed
- Provide project management best practices guidance and support to Formative team members
- Lead project management training internally as needed, support training on project management tasks for new hires
Requirements
- 3 - 5 years of experience managing cross-functional marketing strategy, business consulting, creative, and web development projects
- Bachelor’s degree, PMP or Project Management Certification
- Excellent verbal, written communication, and critical thinking skills
- Able to prioritize, navigate complexity, make decisions, and drive results in a fast-paced environment
- Highly organized, detail oriented, and flexible with the ability to re-evaluate priorities on the fly
- Comfortable moving between projects, reconciling stakeholder inputs, and managing senior-level -communications
- Fluent with project management tools including Smartsheet and Resource Management
- Skilled with Office 365 including but not limited to Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and Planner
Benefits
This role is a contract feelance position, 20 - 30 hours weekly and does not offer medical, dental, vision, disability, or 401k beneftis.
Formative operates in the arenas of social good and purpose-driven brands, working to design and launch campaigns, programs, and platforms that maximize impact for our clients and the people they serve.
We are committed to creating an inclusive work environment with a diverse workforce. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.