Senior Project Manager

About the role

Fort West is hiring a Senior Project Manager to own how our work gets scoped, staffed, and shipped. At the core, your job is to make sure every project has a clear plan, a realistic budget, and the right team to deliver it.

We're looking for someone with deep marketing agency experience who leads with structure and judgment, and still wants to be hands-on in the details. You know how brand identity systems, website builds, multi-channel campaigns, and video production come together, and you can lead those projects on your own. You'll build the budgets, timelines, and resource plans yourself, then refine them with the team.

Today, too much of that work falls on our account and creative teams, who stop what they're doing to explain how projects run, estimate hours, and shape timelines. You'll take that on, working closely with our EVP of Client Strategy and alongside our creative, CX, and technology leads. You'll bring a strong point of view on how projects should be budgeted, sequenced, and resourced, so the team can stay focused on producing great work for our clients.

What you'll do

Scope and budget every project

• Build accurate budgets grounded in realistic estimates of the hours each phase and discipline will take, including copywriting, design, UX/UI, and motion. You'll make the estimates yourself and refine them with the team.
• Track burn against budget weekly and profitability across active projects. Flag financial risk early and bring a plan to manage it.
• Partner with team leads to spot out-of-scope requests and run change orders when needed to protect margins.

Plan and resource the work

• Build and maintain project plans and timelines, owning the sequence of work from kickoff through delivery and adjusting quickly when something slips.
• Own how our internal team is assigned across concurrent projects, and get the right people on the right work at the right time.
• Catch capacity conflicts early, before they become problems.
• Track budgets for contract and freelance talent, and onboard and manage freelancers and production partners so their costs, timelines, and deliverables line up with the plan.

Run delivery and sharpen the process

• Run project status, dependencies, scope changes, risk, and communication across client work and internal Fort West initiatives.
• Work as an embedded member of our cross-capability team, and shape how work moves rather than reacting to it.
• Improve how we plan and run projects so accuracy and efficiency compound as the team grows.

What you bring

• At least 5 years of relevant agency experience.
• Deep, practical understanding of brand and digital projects, including brand and visual identity, website builds and redesigns, integrated campaigns and content, and video and photography production.
• A proven ability to estimate hours and timing from a project's type and scope, well enough to stand up a close-to-accurate budget and timeline on your own.
• Experience managing resources and capacity across multiple projects and people at once.
• Strong command of agency project management platforms. Experience with Productive, the platform we use, is a significant plus.

How you think and work

• A leader, not an administrator. You bring answers and a plan rather than needing input at every step.
• Proactive. You'd rather raise a budget or timeline risk early than explain it late.
• Present. You're collaborative on in-office days, and self-directed and responsive when you're remote.

What success looks like

• In your first two weeks, you're independently scoping budgets and timelines and mapping team capacity in Productive.
• By 90 days, resourcing is accurate and proactive. People know what they're working on and when, and conflicts get caught early.
• By the end of your first year, internal teams spend noticeably less time directing operations, estimates are sharper, and delivery is more efficient as a result.

Benefits

• 100% paid medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Access to additional voluntary benefits, including term life insurance, accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, FSA, and HSA (depending on elected plan).
• Six weeks of paid time off annually, including three weeks of discretionary PTO, up to ten paid holidays, and the week between December 25 and January 1.
• 401(k) plan with employer matching.

how to apply

Send your resume and a short note about your relevant agency experience to [email protected]. Include your compensation expectations, which are required for consideration. Let us know which project management platforms you've worked in, and include any examples that show how you've owned budgets, timelines, or resourcing. We review applications on a rolling basis and will follow up with candidates whose experience fits what this role needs.