Project Management Lead - Talent Pipeline

As a Project Management Lead at APPLY, you will sit at the intersection of delivery, people, and growth, owning multi-track programs and portfolios across digital strategy, products, platforms, and marketing. You set and enforce delivery standards to ensure transparent, predictable, and commercially sound execution.
With a background in digital agency or consultancy environments, you have a track record of running large digital programs and leading delivery practitioners. You seamlessly navigate between high-level program strategy and granular workstream details, resolve complex challenges, and earn the trust of teams and leadership.
You are also, unapologetically, an AI-forward delivery leader. APPLY delivers through an agentic model in which human practitioners work alongside AI agents across the project lifecycle, and the Project Management Lead is accountable for making that model work at program and team level: defining the guardrails your teams operate within, owning the review gates across workstreams, and keeping human judgment at the centre of everything that leaves our door. You are hungry for all things AI, you enjoy pulling apart your team's processes to make them better, and you bring others with you as this landscape keeps moving.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Program & Portfolio Management

- Lead small-to-medium programs and portfolios (up to $5M annual revenue) with multiple tracks of work, providing day-to-day delivery direction to the Project Managers aligned to your program and running individual tracks yourself where needed.

- Develop, maintain, and execute program delivery plans, including milestones, deliverables, dependencies, and resource allocation across all tracks.

- Proactively manage risks, issues, dependencies, assumptions, and decisions across programs and projects to resolution.

- Enforce project management best practices and refine or establish processes to address gaps.

- Oversee team capacity planning in collaboration with discipline leads, and act as backfill for your Project Managers when needed.

- Keep the program knowledge base organized, current, and usable by the whole team.

- Coach teams on Waterfall, Kanban, Agile and Agentic delivery methods, selecting the right approach for each engagement and its stage.

Agentic & AI-Enabled Delivery Leadership

- Establish delivery guardrails for agentic engagements, ensuring human review and approval for all AI-assisted outputs across workstreams.

- Structure work between AI agents and team members with clear review gates, risk logs, and permission boundaries.

- Align senior client stakeholders to an agentic operating model, emphasizing outcome-based metrics, transparent AI usage, and fast review cycles.

- Report on outcome as well as activity at program level — time to value, delivery velocity against a human-only baseline, and measurable value validation.

- Champion reusable and scalable prompts, skills, agents, and automations across the Project Management discipline.

Client & Stakeholder Management

- Cultivate and manage direct client relationships at middle-management and executive levels, acting as the senior delivery voice on your programs.

- Communicate program status, risks, and trade-offs clearly to internal teams and external stakeholders, delivering difficult news early and constructively.

- Provide guidance on complex and challenging client situations, diffusing tension and choosing a path to resolution.

- Partner with Client Services and account leadership to identify growth opportunities, bringing commercial awareness to every delivery conversation.

Business Development

- Contribute to RFPs, pitches, and proposals for new and existing clients.

- Develop and present program delivery approaches to prospective clients, including timelines, ways of working (including agentic delivery models), resourcing plans, and budget estimates.

- Collaborate with other disciplines to create standardized delivery approaches for common service offerings.

- Experience contributing to pitches, RFPs, or delivery approaches for new business.

REQUIREMENTS

Project Management Excellence

- 8–15 years leading end-to-end digital solution delivery in consulting or agency environments for enterprise clients, including multi-track programs.

- Proven ability to build trusted relationships with senior client leadership (Director, VP, C-suite).

- Expertise in Agile, Kanban, waterfall and agentic delivery frameworks, with the judgment to select and coach the right approach for each engagement.

- Strong commercial acumen across program budgets, forecasting, fixed-price and T&M agreements, and proposal estimates.

- Previous experience successfully delivering small-to-medium programs or portfolios (up to $5M annual revenue) from kickoff through closure as a trusted senior delivery partner and partner with Client Services to secure portfolio expansion opportunities.

- Ability to demonstrate measurable value and maintain baseline margin targets while proactively mitigating scope, timeline, and commercial risks.

- Strong ability to mobilize and guide teams through ambiguity in an AI-driven environment, ensuring smooth adoption and execution of agentic delivery workflows.

- Experience with modern digital ecosystems (Composable/Headless CMS, E-commerce/Commerce, Loyalty, Personalization, Analytics).

- Strong proficiency in industry-standard project management and collaboration tools including Claude, Gemini, Co-pilot, JIRA, Confluence, Notion, Instagantt, Smartsheet, and Google Suite.

- Deep knowledge of the full software development lifecycle, CI/CD, and related delivery workflows across product, design, development, and QA.

- Knowledge of technical concepts including AI, machine learning, data analytics, cloud computing, and platform integrations.

- Demonstrable critical thinking, creative problem-solving, and willingness to take ownership of complex challenges.

Communication & Soft Skills

- Communication Excellence: Exceptional written and verbal communication, tailored across audiences from steering committees to delivery teams with clarity and transparency.

- Interpersonal Intelligence: High emotional intelligence, navigating conflict with empathy, practicing compassionate candor, and influencing stakeholders without formal authority.

- Leadership & Mindset: Strong accountability for program outcomes, customer-centric mindset, and adaptability to coach teams in a fast-changing AI landscape.

- Sound Judgment: Experience-based judgment to guide teams, address complex challenges, and serve as a trusted voice in decision-making.

AI & Agentic Delivery

As APPLY operates on an agentic model, hands-on AI fluency is essential, and as a Lead you set the bar for your team. You will use these tools daily, coach others in them, and comfortably lead discussions around agentic workflows with clients and internal teams.

- Hands-on experience using LLMs and AI workflows to accelerate planning, documentation, and reporting, alongside strong critical evaluation skills to refine outputs for quality and set team review standards.

- A passion for AI with a commitment to continuous growth, experimentation, sharing learnings, and guiding teams through evolving ways of working.

- Experience leading program-level agentic delivery, designing human-AI workflows, and guiding team change management is a nice to have.

- Familiarity with BMAD, Markdown, CLI AI tools (e.g., Claude Code), and MCP connectors is a bonus.

- Experience building or sponsoring reusable AI skills, agents, or automations adopted across practice areas is a bonus.

- Relevant AI certifications (e.g., GCP Generative AI Leader, Gemini Enterprise, Anthropic Academy) is considered an asset.

LIFE AT APPLY
 
People are at the core of everything we do at APPLY. We provide you with modern tools, systems and approaches, value your time, safety, and health, and strive to build a work community where you can thrive and grow. Here are a few benefits we offer to support you:
 
Agentic Delivery: Our people work in a modern way to deliver client outcomes. Broaden your skills on a range of engagements with international brands that have a global impact.
An inclusive and safe environment: We’re truly committed to building a culture where you are celebrated and everyone feels welcome and safe.
AI & Strategic Upskilling: Accelerate your professional growth with generous training budgets and mentorship, with a specific focus on Agentic AI expertise and the critical human skills required for the future of work.
Generous vacation policy: Work-life balance is key to our team’s success, so we offer flexible personal time off (PTO); allowing ample time away from work to promote overall well-being.
Customizable benefits: Tailor your extended health and dental plan to your needs, priorities, and preferences.
Flexible work arrangements: We work in a variety of ways, from remote, to in-office, to a blend of both.
 
APPLY is a safe, respectful, and inclusive community where differences are celebrated. We are committed to equal opportunity and fostering a workplace where everyone belongs. Learn more in our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) section. For recruitment accommodations, please email [email protected].