Senior Program Manager, Commercial
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- Canada
- $145,000-153,000 per year
- Permanent
- Full-time
- Provide holistic oversight of a portion of Local Produce's creative portfolio, managing the interconnected ecosystem of people, time, and budget across your assigned campaigns and initiatives-serving as 'air traffic control' to ensure optimal resource allocation and utilization
- Monitor portfolio health and react quickly with solutions when projects deviate from plan, reallocating resources and adjusting scope to keep work on track while protecting team focus and preventing burnout
- Lead end-to-end program management for the most complex, high-priority initiatives within your portfolio that span multiple creative disciplines, have cross-functional dependencies, involve external vendors, or are business-critical with high visibility
- Develop comprehensive program plans with clear workstreams, milestones, and dependencies; coordinate across teams while managing risks, issues, and changes; and drive regular program reviews to ensure successful delivery
- Provide portfolio-level and program-specific reporting that gives leadership clear visibility into creative capacity, utilization, and expenses; forecast future resource needs and evaluate tradeoffs between in-house talent, agency support, and contractors
- Design and maintain portfolio management systems, dashboards, and reporting tools that enable real-time visibility into resource allocation, capacity, project status, and program health
- Establish frameworks for intake, prioritization, and resource allocation that ensure your portfolio stays aligned with business goals, and determine when initiatives require dedicated program management vs. portfolio-level oversight
- Partner with the Head of Creative Operations on capacity planning for Local Produce, owning capacity planning for your portfolio while maintaining a clear view of available bandwidth across all creative disciplines and proactively flagging capacity risks with recommended solutions
- Translate company goals into operational objectives for your portfolio and build supportive relationships with stakeholders across Marketing, Creative, Production, and Finance
- Partner with leadership to foster a positive, collaborative culture within Local Produce and encourage experimentation with new ways of working, including AI tools and emerging technologies
- 8-10 years of experience in Creative Operations, Production Management, or Studio Operations, with demonstrated expertise in both portfolio management and complex program management
- Proven track record providing portfolio-level oversight in fast-paced creative environments-managing the ecosystem of people, time, and budget rather than individual project execution
- Deep experience leading complex programs involving multiple creative disciplines, cross-functional teams, and external partners- with a focus on brand, product, and consumer
- The ability to function in a highly
- Strong background in capacity planning, resource forecasting, and portfolio optimization
- Experience serving as 'air traffic control' for creative teams while also 'piloting' the most critical initiatives
- Strong understanding of creative disciplines and how to coordinate them in complex programs
- Ability to thrive in an extremely fast-paced environment, proactively identifying and implementing solutions while consistently demonstrating a high bar of excellence and polish in all deliverables
- Deep hands-on experience with program management tools (e.g., Workfront, Asana, Monday.com, etc.)
- At least 3-5 years in an agency environment (advertising agency, creative agency, or production company), with experience managing both creative capacity across portfolios and leading complex, multi-work stream programs
- Strong analytical skills with ability to model scenarios, forecast capacity needs, identify risks, and evaluate complex tradeoffs between speed, quality, and cost across functions
- Systems thinking-ability to design portfolio management frameworks that provide visibility and enable informed decision-making
- Lead the design and implementation of new ad formats.
- Collaborate across teams and across functions to set product requirements and long-term strategies.
- Uphold and elevate technical standards, ensuring superior code quality, test coverage, and system performance.
- Embrace cross-functional roles and tackle challenges beyond just code to amplify product outcomes.
- Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent proven industry experience (4+ years).
- 5+ years of experience in software engineering.
- Comprehensive understanding of distributed systems, proven experience with data processing technologies such as DBT and Airflow and common web frameworks such as Rails.
- Highly proficient with SQL, capable of writing and reviewing complex queries for data analysis and debugging.
- You can design for scale with the entire system in mind.
- Solid communicator, comfortable seeking and receiving feedback.
- Strong analytical and debugging skills.
- Strong sense of ownership working with a large codebase and diverse suite of products.
- A collaborative mindset to be able to partner with engineers, designers and PM's from multiple teams to co-create impactful solutions while supporting system contributions.
- Strong organizational skills with the ability to communicate and present ideas clearly and influence key stakeholders at the manager, director, and VP level.
- Prior work experience in the digital advertising industry.
- Experience with big data technologies such as Spark, Hadoop, Flink, Hive or Kafka, and with both streaming and batching data pipelines.
- Proven experience with distributed system design.
- Strong general programming and algorithm skills.
- Strong attention to detail and accuracy in the implementation, keen eye for edge cases and code reviews.
- Data driven mindset.