Senior Project Manager

VML•Detroit, MI

17d•$60,000 - $140,000•Hybrid

About The Position

GTB (a VML company) is in search of a Senior Project Manager-Retail Marketing & Incentives. We are seeking an experienced and highly organized Senior Project Manager to drive operational and commercial excellence across our retail marketing portfolio. In this role, your primary function will be to lead project management from initial brief through final delivery, ensuring campaigns are executed on time, within scope, and on budget. You will apply your core project management competencies to a dynamic portfolio of initiatives, acting as the operational hub connecting internal marketing teams, agency partners, compliance officers, production vendors, and corporate stakeholders. The ideal candidate excels at structured project planning, cross functional facilitation, commercial governance, multi channel workflow management, and maintaining rigorous quality control across simultaneous tracks of work.

Requirements

6+ years of project management experience within a marketing agency, corporate marketing department, or retail communications environment.
Demonstrated success in managing complex, multi track marketing portfolios and driving cross functional accountability.
Expertise in enterprise project management tools (e.g., Smartsheet, Asana, Monday.com, Jira).
Familiarity with digital asset management (DAM) platforms, automated proofing tools, and print and fulfillment workflows.
Exceptional organizational, scheduling, and risk mitigation skills.
Proven ability to manage project budgets, track resource burn, and control vendor costs.
Strong interpersonal and communication skills with the ability to manage up, down, and across matrixed teams.
Meticulous attention to detail regarding legal disclaimers, brand standards, and production specifications.

Responsibilities

Develop, maintain, and enforce master project schedules, milestones, and critical paths for complex retail marketing programs.
Manage project scope, track deliverables, identify key dependencies, and proactively mitigate risks or bottlenecks to keep launches on schedule.
Own the project margin by tracking out of scope requests, managing budget burn rates, and enforcing commercial governance.
Establish centralized status dashboards, project documentation, and reporting cadences to keep senior leadership and cross functional teams informed.
Serve as the primary operational point of contact across internal brand teams, creative agency partners, third party vendors, and corporate account leads.
Lead recurring project status meetings, align competing priorities, and foster collaborative communication across all contributing groups.
Balance team bandwidth and resource allocations across parallel initiatives to maintain high output without sacrificing accuracy.
Monitor team utilisation and capacity, ensuring junior execution tasks are delegated appropriately to protect senior strategic time.
Manage multi tiered compliance and legal review processes across all campaign assets, ensuring disclosures, brand guidelines, and partner requirements are fully satisfied.
Establish clear approval workflows to track feedback, route revisions efficiently, and secure final sign offs prior to production.
Oversee timelines for creative execution, digital asset management, and physical print and fulfillment logistics.
Partner closely with print production vendors and distribution centers to monitor proofing, production schedules, inventory allocations, and delivery tracking.
Control vendor costs by reviewing estimates against budgets, tracking actuals, and mitigating production overages.
Enforce strict quality assurance and proofing standards across all printed materials, direct to consumer pieces, and digital deliverables.
Driving project workflows for targeted customer incentive programs across direct mail, email, and digital channels. This includes managing schedules for customer list deployments, creative iterations, and aligning private offer drops with national promotional calendars.
Managing collaborative project timelines and joint marketing initiatives with banking partners. This includes facilitating multi organization approvals, coordinating partner feedback, and keeping cross brand campaigns aligned on schedule.
Directing project management and milestone oversight for seasonal dealer kit rollouts. This role focuses on maintaining visibility into overarching schedules, ensuring standalone creative and production teams remain aware of critical deadlines, tracking key milestones, and managing the commercial impact of production delays to keep delivery on schedule and on budget.