Critical Mass

San Jose

Project Manager (Creative) at Critical Mass

ON-SITE SENIOR
Posted 1 day ago
Critical Mass logo

Company snapshot

Critical Mass

Critical Mass is an award-winning full-service digital experience design agency with a relentless focus on the customer. With over 20 years of experience, 11 global offices, and 950 employees, we provide a range of services from strategy and research t...

Design Enterprise Public Relations Information Technology & Services
HQ
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Team size
1K-5K
Founded
1996

Quick Summary

Role Overview

Critical Mass is seeking a detail-oriented Project Manager to lead the planning and delivery of creative advertising campaigns and branded marketing materials. You will partner with cross-functional teams to ensure projects are executed on time, within scope, and aligned with business objectives.

Key Responsibilities

  • Lead the end-to-end planning and delivery of creative advertising campaigns and promotional materials
  • Manage project schedules, budgets, resource plans, and deliverables to ensure successful execution
  • Coordinate with cross-functional teams including creative, design, strategy, and production
  • Facilitate project kickoffs, status meetings, and creative reviews while documenting key decisions
  • Serve as the primary point of contact for internal teams, clients, and external partners
  • Monitor project health through budget management, timeline adherence, and progress reporting

Requirements Snapshot

  • Three to five plus years of project management experience in a creative or advertising agency
  • Proven experience managing multiple concurrent projects across digital, social, and print channels
  • Strong understanding of creative project management principles and delivery frameworks
  • Experience managing project budgets, timelines, scope, risks, and stakeholder expectations
  • Proficiency with project management tools such as Jira, Confluence, or Smartsheet

Expected Impact

You will drive the successful delivery of high-impact creative campaigns by streamlining workflows and fostering collaboration between diverse teams. Your leadership will ensure project quality and efficiency, ultimately strengthening client relationships and contributing to the agency's reputation for excellence in branded experiences.

A DesignJobs.World summary of the employer's posting, written to highlight scope, requirements, and fit (AI-assisted, human-reviewed). For full details, see the description below.

Job Description

Critical Mass is looking for a motivated and detail-oriented Project Manager (Creative) to join our team. In this role, you will lead the planning, execution, and delivery of creative advertising campaigns, promotional initiatives, and branded marketing materials. You will partner closely with cross-functional teams and clients to ensure projects are delivered on time, within scope, and aligned with creative and business objectives. The ideal candidate is highly organized, proactive, and experienced managing multiple priorities in a fast-paced agency environment. You are a strong communicator who can navigate complexity, build relationships, and successfully drive creative projects from initiation through completion.

You Will

  • Lead the planning, execution, and delivery of creative projects from initiation through completion, with a primary focus on advertising campaigns, creative campaign assets, promotional materials, branded experiences, and promotional kits.
  • Manage project schedules, timelines, budgets, resource plans, and deliverables to ensure successful project execution.
  • Coordinate the end-to-end delivery of creative advertising campaigns, including campaign concepts, creative assets, adaptations, promotional materials, and other campaign deliverables.
  • Partner with Creative, Design, Copy, Strategy, Production, Account Management, and other cross-functional teams to translate creative concepts and campaign objectives into clear project plans and deliverables.
  • Facilitate project kickoffs, status meetings, creative reviews, and production meetings; drive discussions, document decisions, and ensure follow-through on action items.
  • Serve as the primary point of contact for assigned projects, maintaining clear communication with internal teams, clients, and external partners when applicable.
  • Manage project scope and proactively address changes, risks, dependencies, production requirements, and issues throughout the project lifecycle.
  • Coordinate creative review and approval processes, ensuring feedback is clearly communicated, revisions are properly tracked, and final deliverables meet approved specifications.
  • Monitor project health through budget management, timeline adherence, resource allocation, production status, and progress reporting.
  • Coordinate with external vendors, suppliers, printers, manufacturers, or production partners when required to deliver promotional materials and physical campaign assets.
  • Support project intake, briefing, scoping, estimation, budgeting, and resource planning activities.
  • Prepare and communicate project status updates, risks, dependencies, and recommendations to stakeholders.
  • Partner with clients to understand campaign objectives, align expectations, manage feedback, and ensure successful project outcomes.
  • Identify opportunities to improve project delivery processes, creative workflows, production coordination, and team collaboration.
  • Support project reviews, retrospectives, and continuous improvement initiatives.

You Have

  • 3–5+ years of project management experience delivering creative, advertising, marketing, or integrated campaigns within creative, digital, advertising, marketing, or customer experience agencies.
  • Experience managing projects involving multiple creative deliverables and channels, including advertising assets, digital and social content, print materials, promotional collateral, branded materials, and campaign adaptations.
  • Experience managing multiple concurrent projects in a fast-paced, client-facing environment.
  • Strong understanding of creative project management principles, methodologies, and delivery frameworks.
  • Experience managing project budgets, timelines, scope, risks, dependencies, resources, production requirements, and stakeholder expectations.
  • Experience collaborating with cross-functional teams including Creative, Design, Copy, Strategy, Production, Account Management, and external vendors or suppliers.
  • Experience coordinating creative review, feedback, revision, approval, and final production processes.
  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to communicate effectively across creative, business, and non-technical audiences.
  • Strong organizational skills and exceptional attention to detail, particularly when managing multiple deliverables, versions, approvals, and deadlines.
  • Proven ability to build relationships and collaborate with cross-functional teams, clients, and external partners.
  • Experience using project management and collaboration tools such as Jira, Confluence, Smartsheet, Microsoft Teams, or similar platforms.
  • Strong problem-solving, prioritization, and decision-making skills.
  • Advanced English communication skills, both written and verbal.
  • Ability to work independently while managing competing priorities, deadlines, and multiple project workstreams.

What We Offer

  • Maternity and parental leave extra days
  • Competitive benefits packages
  • Vacation, compassionate leave, sick days, and flex days
  • Access to online services for families and new parents
  • Diversity and Inclusion Board with 12 affinity groups
  • Internal learning and development programs
  • Enterprise-wide employee discounts
  • And more…

At Critical Mass, we value our employees and offer competitive compensation and benefits packages. If you’re looking for a challenging and rewarding opportunity to make a significant impact on the lives of our employees, we encourage you to apply for this exciting position today!

The Talent Team at Critical Mass is focused on ensuring we provide the best training, onboarding, and employee experience possible! Our new hires & employees are the future of our organization, and we want to set you up for long-term success. In an effort to do so, we expect our team to work from an office a minimum of 3 days a week.

The Ask Stems From Our Want To

Strengthen opportunity for continuous learning

Improve collaboration and team relationships.

Increase employee engagement

This work model balances the need for individual flexibility while maintaining the relentless customer focus we provide at CM. We understand that not everyone may feel comfortable with this expectation, so we ask that you please let us know immediately if there are any concerns so we can help navigate accordingly.

Critical Mass is an equal opportunity employer. 

Critical Mass uses artificial intelligence in our recruitment process to enhance job postings, filter keywords during the review of prospective candidates, and, in some cases, transcribe interviews with our recruiters. Human review remains central to the process, and all hiring decisions are ultimately made by our team.

The Critical Mass Talent Acquisition team will only communicate from email addresses that use the URLs criticalmass.com, omc.com and us.greenhouse-mail.io. We will not use apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Google Hangouts for communicating with you. We will never ask you to send us money, technology, or anything else to work for our company. If you believe you are the victim of a scam, please review your local government consumer protections guidance and reach out to them directly.

If U.S. based: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/job-scams#avoid
If Canada based: https://www.canada.ca/en/services/finance/consumer-affairs.html
If U.K. based: https://www.gov.uk/consumer-protection-rights
If Costa Rica based: https://www.consumo.go.cr/educacion_consumidor/consejos_practicos.aspx 

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