Senior Project Manager

The AKQA Business Team serves as a trusted and respected partner to our clients, sitting at the epicentre of every project we deliver. Combining client services, project management, and production expertise, the team demonstrates industry-leading professionalism at every touch, meeting, call, and message, whilst ensuring all projects are delivered to the highest quality and on time.

As a Senior Project Manager, you will lead the delivery of complex projects across multidisciplinary teams. You will establish clear project processes and maintain control from scope definition to execution. You will manage senior stakeholders, optimise team workflows, and address risks while upholding creative and operational integrity. You will help shape ways of working, mentor junior talent, and align projects with AKQA’s creative standards, commercial goals, and client requirements.

ROLE REQUIREMENTS

• Translate client needs and creative vision into executable plans, including timelines, budgets, and resource models.
• Write, define, and agree scopes of work with clients, ensuring projects align with client priorities and budgets.
• Tailor and communicate project structure by methodology or project phase.
• Own the end-to-end delivery of large-scale or multi-workstream projects, ensuring projects are delivered within scope and budget. Avg. project durations 6 months + and budgets of c. £750k+
• Manage multiple suppliers, partners, and clients to ensure best outcome for both client and AKQA. Keep stakeholders informed of project progress at all times and manage expectations proactively.
• Identify risks, issues, and dependencies. Resolve challenges and close the loop on all open issues, balancing client demands with project realities.
• Own budgets, EACs, and profitability across projects.
• Collaborate with senior Client Services team and account leads on forecasting, budget planning, revenue planning, and commercial performance.
• Lead client meetings and delivery conversations, providing updates on scope, timing, progress, timelines, risks, and delivery plans.
• Author Project Status Reports, ensuring they are submitted on time.
• Drive improvements in delivery process, tooling, and operational best practices.
• Champion delivery standards. Contribute to delivery team operations, tooling refinement, and process innovation.
• Set up and facilitate internal and client post-project reviews, and distribute insights from reviews.
• Mentor and coach team members as required.

QUALITIES AND CHARACTERISTICS

• Proven experience managing a multi-disciplined service delivery function in an agency environment, implementing innovative, interactive, and consumer-focused solutions.
• Strong experience managing either UX-led projects, UI, and technical web builds, coordinating both creative teams and developers, or, marketing communication campaigns delivering concept development, production and post-production activities and launches with experience running shoots working with production partners. 
• Deep knowledge of adapting delivery processes to client requirements, with hands-on experience using Agile/Scrum and Kanban methodologies (managing sprints, writing stories, leading stand-ups).
• Familiarity with hybrid or waterfall approaches (e.g. SCRUM, Prince2, DSDM, or PMI) and the ability to tailor approaches accordingly.
• Highly commercially aware, capable of making sound financial decisions and navigating complex customer situations with objective-focused solutions.
• Collaborative Leadership & Mentorship: Passionate about guiding and mentoring junior team members, acting as a role model, and actively championing a diverse set of perspectives within the team fostering a collaborative and respectful work environment.
• Strategic Client Partnership: Highly skilled at building deep, trusted rapport with stakeholders. Able to look beyond the immediate brief to understand the project's context within the client's broader business.
• Commercial Acumen & Accountability: Demonstrates absolute financial responsibility and proactively identifies process improvements to drive efficiency, team success, and profitability.
• Inventive & Brave Problem Solving: Approaches challenges with an entrepreneurial and objective-focused mindset. Willing to take intelligent risks, manage ambiguity, and innovate beyond standard conventions to secure better outcomes.
• Commitment to Craft & Elevation: Obsesses over the details. Holds themselves and their teams accountable to the highest standards of quality, ensuring deliverables are not just useful, but intuitive and culturally resonant.
• Generous & Influential Communicator: An accomplished communicator who fosters human connection and actively shares knowledge across teams. Readily connects teams to further the work and represents the agency with integrity and inspiration.