Senior Project Manager , Mekanism

Cossette Media; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Mekanism is seeking a Senior Project Manager to drive complex brand projects from concept to delivery. You will partner with creative and finance, managing timelines, budgets, and resources to ensure high‑quality output.

The role emphasizes proactive problem solving, process optimization, and effective cross‑team communication. Ideal candidates bring 4+ years in PM within advertising, strong organizational skills, and comfort using AI tools to enhance efficiency and accuracy in creative

Qualifications

• 4+ years of Project Management experience in advertising or a related field.
• Strong leadership and ability to manage multiple brands.
• Excellent written and verbal communication.
• Organizational skills and multitasking ability.
• Comfort with autonomous work and reporting to PM leadership.
• Curious and proactive in improving processes.
• Experience with AI tools is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Be the hub of information for creative development across the brand.
• Coordinate with departments to route information and feedback.
• Own PM system entry and maintenance.
• Lead internal status meetings and update notes.
• Identify efficiencies, conflicts, and process improvements.
• Ensure production timelines and resource allocation.
• Track budgets, hours, and flag red flags.
• Schedule and attend internal creative development meetings.
• Create and maintain project folders and assets.
• Lead creation of project timelines and alignment.

Skills

Project management

Cross-functional collaboration

Excellent communication

Organizational skills

Budget management

AI tools experience

Tools

Smartsheets

Job description

Senior Project Manager

Who We Are

Mekanism is a full-service modern agency making unexpected ideas unstoppable through the power of Soul & Science. We partner with brands to unleash breakthrough creativity and drive impact across the entire customer journey, delivering brand building at full volume.

With eight offices spanning markets throughout the US and Canada, we serve as collaborative business partners to some of the world’s best North American brands, including Alaska Airlines, Jose Cuervo, Quaker, Ben & Jerry's, and Amtrak in the US, and CAMH, Koodo Mobile and Public Mobile in Canada.

Named a Top 10 Most Effective Independent Agency in the US by the Effie Index, Mekanism has been profiled by The New York Times, Fast Company, and ABC’s Nightline. Our campaign methodologies are studied by Harvard Business School. For more information, visit Mekanism.com.

About The Role

The Senior Project Manager is a curious and inquisitive learner; someone with a project-management brain, a knowledge of integrated advertising tactics and a desire to facilitate great creative work.

We are looking for a strategic thinker who masters the \"big picture\" to drive momentum. You should possess the critical thinking skills to anticipate roadblocks before they appear and the decisiveness to prioritize tasks based on high-level business goals, ensuring every project moves forward with purpose rather than just process.

They have 5+ years of experience as a project manager in an advertising agency or similar industry. They are strong leaders and creative problem solvers whose project management expertise allows them to manage all aspects of the project life cycle from concept to delivery moving projects through creative teams and internal reviewers. They will identify the need or opportunity to involve other internal agency departments at the optimal time including finance, creative management, business management, strategy, media, social, data analytics, and production.

They are the internal hub of communication, the creatives’ rock and the business manager’s best friend: ensure everyone is clear on assignments, workload is manageable, calendars make sense, hours are being billed to the correct job, a general solver-of-problems.

They maintain an understanding of a project’s ever‑evolving needs, while keeping it on time and of the highest quality. They are a strong financial supporter who is committed to tracking projects, hours, and raising red flags as needed.

They should be interested in process, operations, system tools and have a desire to continue finding and developing improvement and efficiencies in the system.

Key Areas of Responsibility:

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• The hub of information for all things related to creative development for the brand/project; they should be in the know on everything
• Partner with BM to liaise between depts, ensuring information, feedback, and documents are routed to the appropriate people
• Own PM system entry and maintenance
• Own daily or weekly hotlist and internal status meetings (as needed)
• Proactively identify potential efficiencies and/or issues i.e. efficient use of creative time, bandwidth issues, scheduling conflicts, brief clarity, oos deliverables, etc.
• Secure and assign creative resources/allocation for all projects on their assigned brand(s)
• Production supporter: ensure production is brought into creative dev at the right time, create/manage holistic project schedules that allow for proper production time, initiate and schedule production kickoff meetings, ensure creatives are able to meet prod. schedule requirements from a resource standpoint
• Financial supporter: Proactively manages to creative development budgets / scopes
• Coordinate freelance needs for creative development (i.e. creative freelancers / storyboard artists / presentation needs)
• Be the creatives’ rock: ensure they are clear on assignments, workload is manageable, calendars make sense, a general solver of creatives’ problems
• Create project folder & maintain up-to-date server organization/ asset management during creative development
• Own creation of project timelines - work with all depts to get alignment and signoff prior to project start
• Schedule and attend internal meetings related to creative development (creative briefing, creative reviews, full team reviews, etc.)
• Own notes and identify feedback and next steps for all internal team meetings in creative development

Embody the Mekanism Values

• Believe in bold
• Bring your weird
• Practice optimism
• Have each other’s backs
• Pursue what’s next
• Give a sh*t

Qualifications:

• At least 4 years of Project Management (or similar) experience
• Be a team player, ability to effectively play nice with others
• Ability to lead multiple brands; solid communication and decision-making skills
• Exceptional organizational skills; able to juggle multiple projects as well as disparate information
• Comfort in working autonomously, while also keeping Head of Project Management and PM team abreast of all project’s status
• Curious and inquisitive: someone that wants to roll up their sleeves and build something new
• Able to work under tight deadlines and handle multiple tasks in parallel
• Open & curious about using AI tools to ensure team’s work is effective and output is flawless.
• Experience with Smartsheets is a plus.

Pay Range: $100,000 - $105,000

We may use AI tools to support aspects of our recruitment process, but we do not use them to make any hiring decisions or disqualify candidates. All applications are reviewed by our hiring team.