Director, Project Management

Underscore Marketing is a woman-owned, independent agency specializing in life sciences. The Director of Project Management is responsible for the successful rollout of internal structure and processes, developing training materials, and leading change management initiatives across the organization.

Responsibilities:

• Own Underscore’s Project Management strategy and delivery standards, ensuring portfolio level alignment with business priorities, measurable benchmarks and its success
• Provide executive oversight across brands within their portfolio that includes monitoring and balancing scopes, budgets, timelines, MLR requirement, while developing high-performing teams and driving a culture of accountability, collaboration, continuous improvement and success
• Set clear standards for delivery excellence, including governance, risk management, escalation paths, and decision-making frameworks
• Define, standardize, and continuously improve Project Management frameworks, tools, and workflows across the organization
• Establish governance models, reporting standards, and status cadences for internal and client stakeholders
• Partner with Finance and Client Service leadership on estimating/scoping, SOW development, forecasting, reconciliation and resource planning
• Own end-to-end delivery across multiple pharmaceutical accounts, maintaining alignment to defined scopes, schedules, budgets, and quality
• Direct complex, multi‑workstream programs from planning through launch, ensuring compliance with regulatory, legal, and internal requirements and adherence to Underscore processes
• Proactively identify delivery risks and lead mitigation strategies to maintain momentum and quality
• Proven experience managing end-to-end media activation projects, with strong working knowledge of Paid Search, Programmatic Display and Social ecosystems that includes campaign structure and workflows, as well as understanding of campaign trafficking processes (e.g., ad servers, DSPs, platform setup, naming conventions, and QA procedures)
• Experience managing analytics and reporting projects that support media performance and business insights, with practical knowledge of Google Analytics (GA4) and Google Tag Manager (GTM), including tracking implementation, validation, and troubleshooting
• Experience managing data-centric projects, including data pipelines, integrations, or data platform implementations
• Lead internal system and process rollouts, including development of training materials and execution of full plan rollout
• Partner with Business Unit leaders on change management and communication strategies to ensure organizational readiness and adoption
• Drive consistent ways of working that support scale, efficiency, and quality across teams
• Act as a senior operational partner to Account, Creative, Media, Strategy, Data, and Production leadership
• Lead client facing discussions related to timelines, resourcing, production feasibility, and delivery risk
• Balance client expectations with internal capabilities and regulatory realities, serving as a trusted advisor
• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of Project and Program Managers
• Set clear expectations around performance, career progression, and development
• Foster a culture of accountability, ownership, and continuous improvement across the PM discipline
• Ensure accurate budget management, forecasting, and burn tracking across programs
• Partner with leadership to optimize resource utilization and capacity planning

Requirements:

• Minimum of 10+ years in a project management role, 5+ years' experience with pharma clients
• Bachelor's degree
• PMP Certification and/or SCRUM Master Certification is a plus
• Pioneers Operations Best Practices across agencies and ensures consistency in process across portfolios
• Leads complex brands or portfolios of brands of $10mm+ revenue
• 6-8 years of supervisory experience managing and mentoring junior, mid-level and senior talent
• Develops and owns annual SOWs and master staffing documents and partners with Account to ensure accurate annual forecasting
• Deep knowledge of digital media best practices, including Paid Search, Organic Search, Programmatic, Social and Display
• Ability to plan and complete product launch
• Extensive knowledge of Microsoft Office suite, SharePoint, Tableau, and Adobe Acrobat
• Extensive knowledge of project management software examples includes Jira, Wrike, Asana