Project Manager

Verve | United Playgrounds; Den Haag; On-site; EUR 33,000 - 42,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Salary €3,000–€3,750 per month

8% holiday allowance

€1,200 growth budget annually

Two paid development days

Pension contribution 2.5%

NS travel card or €0.21/km

Noise-cancelling headphones €150

Job summary

Verve | United Playgrounds is hiring a Project Manager to run brand and website projects from kickoff to launch. You’ll work with a creative director, a strategist, and designers, motion, and developers to turn signed proposals into actionable plans and to guard scope, budget, and timing.

This hands-on role puts you in planning, client calls, and the studio, ensuring delivery stays aligned with client expectations and project realities.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of project management at a branding, design or digital agency.
• Experience running projects with multidisciplinary teams of strategists, designers and developers.
• Experience with website projects, from design through development to launch.
• Confidence discussing budget, scope and deadlines with senior clients.
• Accurate planning and financial tracking.
• Fluent English, written and spoken.

Responsibilities

• Run projects: create project plans, translate proposals into plans, lead kick-offs and client check-ins, track hours and budget weekly, manage scope.
• Look after the team: plan capacity, notice overloads, give designers space to work.
• Make projects run better: run post-project evaluations, improve templates and planning, flag follow-on opportunities to commercial team.

Skills

Project management

Budget management

Cross-functional teamwork

Website projects

Tools

Teamleader

Job description

You keep projects on track. You know what was sold, what the team needs and what the client expects, and you make sure those line up before anyone starts designing. You plan carefully, you see overload coming before your colleagues feel it, and you raise the difficult conversation early. Creatives trust you with their time. Clients trust you with their launch date.

About Verve

Verve is a strategic digital branding agency for tech companies. We build brands for companies with international ambition. Around 70% of our clients are based outside the Netherlands.

We are a team of 35+ people with a clear ambition: to become one of the top rebranding agencies in the world. Verve is part of United Playgrounds, a group of independent boutique agencies.

The Role

As our Project Manager, you run brand and website projects from kick-off to launch.

You work in pairs with a creative director and a strategist, and with designers, motion and developers around them. You create and turn a signed proposal into a plan people can work from. You guard scope, budget and timing, and you keep the client close without letting every request into the project.

This is a hands-on role. You are in the planning, in the client calls and in the studio, not managing from a distance.

What You Will Do

Run projects

• Create project plans.
• Translate signed proposals into realistic plans, phases and milestones.
• Lead kick-offs, client check-ins and presentations together with the creative lead.
• Track hours and budget weekly and act before a project goes over.
• Spot scope creep early and turn it into a clear choice for the client: change the plan or change the quote.
• Manage the handover from brand to digital, so design and development start from the same page.

Look after the team

• Plan capacity across projects together with operations.
• Notice when someone is overloaded and fix it before it becomes a problem.
• Give designers room to do their best work by keeping the noise away from them.

Make projects run better

• Run evaluations after each project and bring what you learn into the next one.
• Improve our templates, planning and ways of working between brand and digital.
• Flag follow-on opportunities to the commercial team.

Who You Are

You are calm under pressure and direct with clients and colleagues. You are interested in the creative work without needing to make it yourself. You like a tidy planning, and you know a planning only holds if the people in it believe in it.

What You Bring

• 3+ years of project management at a branding, design or digital agency.
• Experience running projects with multidisciplinary teams of strategists, designers and developers.
• Experience with website projects, from design through development to launch.
• Confidence discussing budget, scope and deadlines with senior clients.
• Accurate planning and financial tracking.
• Fluent English, written and spoken.

Nice to have

• Experience with Teamleader or a similar planning and hours tool.
• Experience with international clients.
• Dutch language skills.

What We Offer

• Salary: €3.000–3.750 per month, depending on experience, plus 8% holiday allowance, with a clear path as you grow.
• We will reward strong performance with salary increases and real recognition.
• We will give you a €1.200 annual growth budget and up to two paid development days a year to use it.
• We will give you access to unlimited books, Lunch and Learn sessions and the annual High Five conference.
• We serve healthy(ish) lunches every day at both studios.
• We cover your travel fully: an NS business card for public transport, or €0.21 per km by car or bike.
• We contribute 2.5% on top of your monthly gross salary toward your pension via BrightPensioen. Your pot stays yours, even if you leave.
• We offer a confidential advisor outside your day-to-day team.
• We give you €150 toward noise-cancelling headphones.

Our culture

We choose depth over noise, clarity over cleverness, and momentum over perfectionism. We say no to the wrong briefs. We push hard on the right ones. Our values are Love, Sense and Challenge.

We work in-person at least four days a week, in Amsterdam or The Hague, with up to six weeks a year from anywhere in the world.

Acquisition as a result of this vacancy is not appreciated.

p.s. We use AI a lot ourselves and we understand the temptation. For this application we want to hear you. A rough, opinionated answer beats a polished one every time.