Director of Project Management

Director of Project Management

thelab is looking for a Director of Project Management to lead the PM function across our Performance Marketing discipline — including the largest, most complex account at the agency. This is a role for someone who sees opportunity in established systems — and has the vision and experience to optimize them for what's next.

About thelab

We're an agency of makers with deep expertise in solving creative, production, and technology challenges. Our focus is on making better work to help brands work better — and our production roots ensure that every great idea gets delivered right. From branding and design, photoshoots and video production, to ecommerce builds and everything in between, thelab mixes inspiration and hard work to produce results that mean business.

The Role

You will serve as program lead across a portfolio of accounts, managing a team of Project Managers. Your first and most important mandate will be to assess and evolve the project management approach on our flagship account — an established, long-standing client relationship that is scaling rapidly in volume and complexity. That means building alignment across a creative team, driving process improvements, and ensuring the way work gets scoped, staffed, and delivered matches the ambition of where the account is headed.

From there, you'll own the PM function across the Performance Marketing capability: setting standards, developing your team, and ensuring that financial performance, creative quality, and client satisfaction move in the same direction.

What You'll Do

Process Leadership

• Identify opportunities for efficiency in established workflows and implement scalable project management systems across a high-volume, high-complexity accounts
• Drive change management across creative and PM teams — building alignment and bringing people along to elevated ways of working
• Make staffing decisions where needed to ensure the team is set up for where the account is going

Program & Account Management

• Own delivery across accounts, setting the vision for how work gets defined, scoped, managed, and executed
• Serve as the senior client point of contact, managing relationships with executive stakeholders across marketing, media, and interagency teams.
• Oversee all account financials — budgets, burn rates, creative allocations, and profitability at both the project and portfolio level

Creative Production

• Partner closely with creative leadership to manage shoot production and high-volume asset delivery in a performance marketing context
• Lead the evaluation and integration of AI production tools to increase throughput and creative efficiency without sacrificing quality (e.g. automated reporting, AI-assisted asset versioning to streamline the creative lifecycle)

Team Development

• Manage and mentor a team of Project Managers, providing clear direction, performance feedback, and development support

Who You Are

• 8+ years of project or program management experience in an agency environment, with demonstrated experience managing teams
• A track record of stepping into established accounts and elevating — not just maintaining — PM systems and team performance
• Deep experience in performance marketing, including creative production across social, digital, display, and video
• Hands-on experience with shoot production
• Strong financial acumen: you've owned account P&Ls, managed burn rates, and protected agency margins
• Experienced with AI-driven production tools and genuinely excited about using them to scale creative output
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity — you bring structure to complexity rather than waiting for it to arrive
• Confident delivering difficult feedback and navigating tough internal conversations with empathy and directness

Job Details

• Location: Hybrid — Tues–Thurs in our Madison Square office; remote Monday and Friday
• Salary: $150,000–$160,000, commensurate with experience
• Benefits: Medical (Anthem BCBS), dental/vision, 401k match, unlimited PTO