Project Director

As Project Director, you lead a diverse team and oversee a variety of projects within your team, driving creative excellence, ensuring profitability for the business, and building long term relationships with key clients. You will be key to nurturing these relationships with our clients, sparking creative ideas and planning more predictable return revenue with our key clients and our best in class teams. This is an accounts role and could be based from London, USA, UAE or KSA with frequent travel to clients and partners. 

• This leadership role leverages three key talent areas. A project director must offer exceptional performance in all areas and demonstrate senior level competency
• Ability to lead and drive the studio culture and ongoing work. This includes the direct involvement of hiring, promotions, and career development for members of their team. Along with the ability to provide and drive excellence in the quality of work delivered to clients
• Ability to pitch, win, and grow key client relationships.  As one of the leaders of the organisation is able to build relationships and become a trusted advisor  with clients through presentation talent, expertise, and team direction
• Ability to successfully execute and deliver on large scale projects and programs. Overseeing a project from creative concepting to final deliverables. Has a strong understanding of successful project management and balances client expectations against project scope, schedules, risks, and changes. Has an experience, approach, and POV on how to manage all aspects of client work against project profitability and success

Main Responsibilities

Leadership

• Line manage a mixed team of talents such as creatives, producers and artists who together create best in class project work for accounts; nurture staff growth and support development as individuals through the company hierarchy
• Troubleshoot, balance competing interests between members, be decisive
• Hold ultimate accountability for your client account and team, strive for constant improvement
• Build and maintain long-term client relationships, through projects (Discoveries to Deliveries) and the times in between projects
• Through these relationships, work directly with our clients to achieve their big picture goals as partners rather than service providers growing our revenue and value
• Act as a role model for your team and the company
• Foster strong team spirit, ensure the team is supporting each other to the best of everyones’ abilities
• Troubleshoot, advise and guide - balance competing interests between members, be decisive

Creative

• Guide projects towards creative excellence through leadership, ideation, and management of Creative Directors and Creatives
• Work closely with our clients to build trust and gain their support in our creative proposal
• Push the boundaries on constant innovation
• Share knowledge and represent Squint externally through thought leadership, speaking engagements, etc

Financial

• Accountability for account growth
• Accountability for margin protection on account contracts 

Account Management 

• Oversee 1-3 key accounts for the business at any one time 
• Maintain regular contact with key persons within each organisation multiple times per month (joining calls, travelling to their offices, lunches etc) 
• Create and maintain client maps to understand client’s org chart, leadership, varying departments and extend Squint/Opera’s relationships through the organisations, be the go to knowledge base to brief in new team members or production teams
• Ensure existing key clients are retained long term by adding value to them and reporting to them against their KPIs and longer term vision 
• Negotiate pricing and scopes of work with ease, with a mind towards the account’s pricing appetite, Squint’s business needs and production expectations
• With the Regional Partner and CRO, participate in weekly Key Account meetings and report on progress related to Squint KPIs (e.g. new revenue booked, new contacts made, speaking engagements, etc)
• Participate in revenue planning and strategy at a Journey level ensuring that opportunities to grow revenue streams are aligned to overall strategy of business unit or Journey overall and create opportunity roadmaps to support this
• Through diagnostic and discovery discussions with the client, develop an intimate understanding of their needs, behaviours and client journey. Synthesise complex information to advise the clients of how to achieve their goals utilising our services and sparking and seeding initial creative ideas
• Map out project planning annually and beyond in partnership with the client, with the objective to create more predictable revenue relating and easing delivery planning 
• Brief internal teams on new projects, ensure that delivery teams are well informed of the account, the account’s overarching business goals, and all its personalities and nuances
• Stay involved in active projects under the key accounts, serve as an escalation point without participating in the day-to-day of production

Character Traits

• Field awareness: able to absorb many variables and be decisive about next steps
• Strategic mindset
• Natural team leadership
• Conflict resolution
• Financial acuity
• Inspirational
• Collaborative
• Gifted presentation skills, eloquence, command
• Reliability
• Empathy, warmth, compassion
• Commercially Driven: Continuously on the lookout for new markets to enter and opportunities for Squint to leverage 
• Ability to visualise how to add value and translate a client’s vision into actionable goals 
• Industry leader: Keep Squint at the forefront of the industry and a dominant force in each market we enter
• Growth mindset: Committed to expanding our  potential into new areas of opportunity 
• Natural leadership: Lead by example, empowering others in the team and able to keep a clear and steady head

Qualification/ Experience

• 10+ years experience in a leadership role in a creative client services environment
• Experience in account and programme management, business development, project direction or similar
• Experience with contracts, business operations, and making decisions at an executive level

Outcomes

• Long-lasting relationships with clients and partners are formed; one-off clients become repeat clients
• Consistent and more predictable revenue from key accounts year on year
• Achieving annual revenue targets established for each account at the beginning of the year

 

Hours

This is a full-time position. 

Our working hours are 9:30am – 6:00pm  [Monday through Friday, with one hour for lunch]

We currently have a hybrid approach to working with a mixture of in-house and remote days.

Benefits 

• Unlimited holiday
• Medicash health scheme 
• Company pension scheme 
• Weekly masterclasses 
• Cyclescheme 
• Medical insurance 
• Secondments between our London and New York studios 
• Life and AD&D insurance
• Access to FSA, HSA, and pre-tax commuter benefits
• Training and development opportunities 

This is just a snapshot of some of the perks you can expect at Squint. 

About Squint/Opera 

Squint/Opera is a leading creative studio which bridges the worlds of architecture, design, media, and technology to create compelling, narrative-driven experiences. As experts in blending digital media with physical reality, we help our clients craft digital content to immerse their audiences and communicate big ideas.

Squint was founded in London in 2001, by four young friends who wanted to help visionary thinkers and institutions make the radical a reality. For more than 20 years, we have delivered projects in every corner of the globe and for a wide range of clients across architecture, government, real estate, museums, and attractions.

Squint/Opera is now part of Journey, a leading innovation and design agency who specialise in crafting compelling experiences across the physical and digital realms. Together, Squint/Opera and Journey create the first agency with proven expertise blending the physical and virtual worlds at a global scale.

Our Values 

We seek employees who inherently represent our values:

• Embrace change 
• Seek invention 
• Increase our knowledge 
• Say it simply 
• Ego-free

Apply Now

We want to create a positive impact on a global scale. And to do that, we know that the people at Squint/Opera have to reflect all global lives and identities. No matter your background, identity, or even if your experience doesn’t exactly match but you think you could still be successful in this role — we’d love to hear from you!

We work flexible hours, we support remote working, and if that doesn’t quite work, we will definitely listen to what will. We’re striving to create a place where all feel valued and welcome — and would love to hear how we could do that for you. 

#LI-Hybrid