Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Blue State is a purpose-driven agency that partners with leading causes, brands, and campaigns to create real change. The Contract Program Manager will lead website development and technical consulting projects, manage client and stakeholder relationships, and coordinate with Tech, Strategy, Design, and Analytics teams. The role includes overseeing requirements, budgets, timelines, sprint plans, testing, project risks, and multiple digital projects.
Responsibilities
- Manage budgets and timelines for website redesigns and other digital projects, including defining scopes and gathering estimates across disciplines
- Distill clients’ goals and priorities through interviews, workshops, analytics, platform audits, and other forms of research
- Write and maintain requirements, ensuring that all functionality, user flows, and edge cases are understood by stakeholders. Documentation could range from lofi sketches to detailed acceptance criteria
- Minimize exposure to risk on a project by identifying potential scope creep and working with internal teams and client stakeholders to mitigate this risk
- Help create sprint plans and release schedules
- Develop testing and measurement plans in coordination with strategists and analysts
- Manage multiple website build projects simultaneously and understand project priorities in the context of agency and client expectations
- Manage stakeholder feedback, evaluating all proposed features against the product scope and ensuring that bugs are reported and prioritized correctly. Provide creative recommendations based on your technical expertise when features don’t fit in the budget. Make the tough calls when scope needs to be cut
- Support the greater Business Development team with the scoping of new client product engagements. Estimate effort, ensure that team members are aligned on what’s being proposed, and guard against proposals that aren’t feasible
- Manage operational aspects of projects, including communication of client needs to team and vice versa as well as resourcing and financial health tracking
- Lead project status meetings and updates with internal teams and clients
- Use AI to accelerate your work such as writing requirements or organizing inputs
Skills
- 3+ years of experience in program management or similar roles such as product management or technical project management
- Experience with CMS-driven websites, such as those built on WordPress. You will not architect a WordPress site yourself, but you help steer designers and engineers in directions that are feasible and align with client goals
- Familiarity with and interest in marketing platforms, including CRMs, and data and personalization technology used by organizations to engage and mobilize their supporters
- Willingness to wear multiple hats and get into the weeds in order to reach a milestone, whether that means logging into the CMS to fix content, sketching a quick feature to clarify a proposal, or having a difficult conversation with a vendor
- Ability to use wireframes to communicate recommendations to design teams
- Cognizance of the overall AI landscape and the ability to evaluate AI outputs critically
- Excellent communication skills
- Ability to interact with engineers, designers, and business stakeholders alike
- Strong collaborator and relationship builder
- Colleagues know they can come to you for help working through delicate issues or opportunities
- Empathy, positivity, respect, and the ability to be a role model at Blue State
Benefits
- Hybrid working model
- On-site presence is welcome for US staff who are within commuting distance of the NY or DC office
- Collaborate very closely remotely and, optionally, from our offices in New York, DC, and London
Company Overview