Creative Project Manager

Spark Brighter Thinking•New York, NY

About The Position

We are looking for a highly organised, client-focused Creative Project Manager to join our New York team as the on-the-ground operational lead for one of Spark's retail experience accounts. This is a senior, embedded role at the centre of a complex, high-visibility programme spanning campaign resets, product launches, event activations, and digital content production. You will be the primary point of contact for our client's US-based team during their working hours — the person who ensures every brief is captured cleanly, every handoff to our global studios is seamless, and every deadline is met before anyone has to ask. You will sit at the intersection of a global, multi-hub creative delivery model, connecting our teams across three time zones and holding the account together day to day. We are looking for a process-driven self-starter with 5-7 years of project or account management experience in a creative agency or production environment. You are energised by complexity, calm under pressure, and the kind of person who builds trust with clients by consistently delivering exactly what you said you would — and then a little more.

Requirements

5-7 years of project management or account management experience in a creative agency, production company, or in-house brand team.
Demonstrated ability to manage multiple concurrent, complex projects in a fast-paced environment with competing priorities and tight deadlines.
Technical understanding of creative asset production across large-format print, digital content, motion, and environmental design.
Experience working as the local coordination point for a distributed, cross-time-zone team.
Strong written and verbal communication skills — able to write a precise brief, a clear status update, and a sharp client email in the same hour.
Familiarity with project management and collaboration platforms such as Airtable, SharePoint, or equivalent tools.
Genuine interest in AI-enabled creative production tools and a willingness to adopt new technology as part of daily workflow.
Excellent interpersonal, organisational, and communication skills — able to build trust quickly with a senior client team.
Systems thinker who tracks the whole picture, spots risks before they surface, and solves problems before they become visible.
Resilient and calm under pressure — able to absorb last-minute changes and deliver solutions without escalating stress to the team.
Proactive and self-directed — comfortable making independent judgement calls and knowing when to escalate.
Precise and detail-oriented — notices what is wrong before it becomes a problem.
Confident communicator — able to present clearly to senior clients and influence outcomes with credibility.
Collaborative and generous — makes global teams feel connected, shares context freely, and consistently closes loops.
Punctual, reliable, and consistent - the client's operational anchor on this account.

Nice To Haves

Background in retail, experiential, or environmental design production is a strong advantage.
Experience working on a major global brand account is highly desirable.

Responsibilities

Project Ownership: Serve as the primary client-side point of contact for day-to-day account activity during US business hours. Own all incoming briefs from first receipt through to confirmed delivery, ensuring every request is clearly scoped and properly briefed before it reaches the studio.
Critical Path Management: Build and maintain project timelines across concurrent campaigns, launches, and activations. Track key dates, update stakeholders proactively, flag risks early, and resolve issues before they affect delivery.
Brief Quality: Translate raw client inputs — often informal requests or bullet points — into structured, production-ready briefs that give global creative teams everything they need to produce exceptional work first time.
Status Reporting: Maintain live project tracking as the single source of truth for all active jobs. Keep statuses current in real time and provide clear, accurate updates to the client team and internal stakeholders.
Administrative Excellence: Maintain time tracking, status reports, and account documentation with precision. Support preparation of regular budget reviews and strategic account reporting.
Brief Interpretation: Bring structure and creative intelligence to the briefing process — asking the right questions, filling the right gaps, and ensuring creative teams have the context and clarity to do their best work.
Creative Quality Assurance: Review work in progress against brief requirements before client presentation. Understand what good looks like across large-format print, digital content, environmental design, and motion, and raise quality concerns before they reach the client.
Production Literacy: Maintain working knowledge of print specifications, substrate types, digital formats, and installation requirements relevant to the account. Ensure creative output is always technically feasible and production-ready.
Cross-Hub Coordination: Act as the operational connector between the client's US team and Spark's creative and production hubs across multiple time zones. Ensure handoffs are clean, well-documented, and never dependent on a single communication channel.
Client Partnership: Build a trusted, day-to-day working relationship with the client team. Be consistently responsive, reliable, and proactive — the person they reach for when they have a request, a question, or a problem.
Vendor Coordination: Coordinate with production partners, fabrication vendors, and installation teams to ensure physical production, logistics, and on-site execution are planned and delivered to schedule.
Knowledge Sharing: Share project insights, briefing best practices, and process improvements with the broader Spark account team to continuously raise the quality and efficiency of the programme.
Technology Adoption: Engage actively with AI-enabled briefing and workflow tools as Spark continues to develop its technology platform. Provide feedback on performance and contribute to ongoing improvement of the systems you use daily.
Data-Informed Thinking: Develop familiarity with performance data and creative analytics available on the account. Use insights to inform briefing recommendations and identify opportunities to improve creative effectiveness.
Process Improvement: Continuously look for ways to optimise the brief-to-delivery cycle, reduce manual steps, and improve the quality of handoffs. Propose and implement improvements within the account workflow.
Industry Awareness: Stay informed on trends in retail experience design, in-store marketing, and creative production technology. Bring relevant observations back to the account team.
Driving Efficiency: Identify and implement improvements to account workflows, briefing processes, and communication cadences that save time for both the Spark team and the client.
Inspiring Standards: Set the bar for responsiveness, clarity, and precision across the account. Model the behaviour you want to see from the teams around you, across every time zone.
Change Champion: Embrace and support the adoption of new tools, processes, and ways of working as Spark evolves its delivery model. Help colleagues and clients adapt with confidence.
Attention to Detail: Ensure accuracy across all briefs, project documentation, status updates, and client communications. On a programme of this scale and visibility, the detail matters — own it.
Client Trust: Think ahead on behalf of the client team. Anticipate needs, flag what they have not yet thought to ask, and deliver consistently against your commitments. Be their operational anchor.
Supportive Culture: Support colleagues proactively, share knowledge generously, and contribute to a working environment built on mutual respect, reliability, and shared pride in the quality of the work.