Head of Project Management

Company Description

The Story Shack is a modern, low-overhead creative studio built to scale a brand’s story. We give brands the power of an in-house creative team—without the headaches and high costs that plague the industry. We address the broken creative model by offering flexible, budget-friendly, scalable, and specialized solutions for brands.

Role Description

We’re on the hunt for a ferocious self-starter and experienced project management leader to join our scrappy, fast-growing creative studio and work directly with our founders, other department heads in a leadership position, and our talented creative team.

As our full-time Head of Project Management, you’ll be the player-coach leading the PM function at The Story Shack, managing and mentoring a team of Project Managers while continuing to roll up your sleeves and lead key projects yourself.

You’ll oversee how work moves across the studio, helping manage resourcing, timelines, budgets, and communication while ensuring our teams and clients always know what’s happening and what comes next. You’ll also help bring to life projects like commercials, documentaries, campaigns, websites, and social content for leading brands.

Beyond the day-to-day work, you’ll partner closely with our founders to improve how we operate and scale—building smarter systems, strengthening processes, and helping our team do its best work without adding unnecessary layers or bureaucracy.

If you love leading people, thrive in creative chaos, and still enjoy being in the trenches, this role was made for you.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and manage a team of Project Managers, helping them grow while maintaining a high bar across the studio.
• Act as a player-coach, personally managing key projects and accounts alongside overseeing the broader PM function.
• Oversee the full lifecycle of creative projects, from kickoff and scoping through production and final asset delivery.
• Own studio-wide resourcing, balancing team capacity, project needs, budgets, and timelines across multiple accounts.
• Partner with founders and team leads on forecasting, staffing, project profitability, and operational planning.
• Ensure projects stay on scope, on schedule, and on budget—identifying risks early and solving problems before they become problems.
• Serve as a senior client partner, helping navigate timelines, budgets, feedback, shifting priorities, and complex deliverables.
• Build and continuously improve the systems, workflows, and processes that help the studio operate and scale efficiently.
• Support scoping and estimating for new and existing client opportunities.
• Maintain visibility across the studio, ensuring leadership and teams have a clear understanding of priorities, capacity, and what’s coming next.

Qualifications

• 7–10 years of project management experience, ideally within a creative agency, production studio, or similarly fast-paced creative environment.
• 3–4+ years of experience managing and mentoring Project Managers or creative operations teams.
• Proven ability to be a true player-coach—leading a team while continuing to directly manage complex projects and client relationships.
• Deep understanding of creative workflows across campaigns, social content, video production, design, digital, and/or web.
• Proven ability to manage multiple complex projects, teams, budgets, and timelines simultaneously.
• Strong understanding of scopes, budgets, resourcing, forecasting, and project profitability.
• Outstanding communication, organizational, leadership, and client-service skills.
• A calm, solutions-oriented approach when priorities shift, timelines tighten, or things inevitably get weird.
• Comfortable creating structure without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Familiarity with Notion, Slack, Google Suite, Frame.io, Claude, and other modern project management and AI tools.
• Curiosity about creative AI and how emerging tools can make teams, workflows, and project management more efficient.
• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Communications, or a related field preferred.