Associate Director, Project Management - Pharma Digital Media

We are looking for an Associate Director, Project Management with healthcare/pharma agency experience, who knows that great digital media work does not simply “move through the system.” It is planned, pressure-tested, routed, launched, optimized, documented, and protected by someone who understands both the media engine and the regulatory reality of U.S. pharmaceutical marketing.

This is a hands-on leadership role for a pharma digital media project manager who can operate as the connective tissue across clients, agency partners, internal media teams, creative partners, MLR stakeholders, vendors, and operational systems. You will lead project success from initiation through launch and optimization, while also helping grow the standards, talent, tools, and workflows that make the work faster, clearer, more compliant, and more scalable.

If your idea of project management is forwarding updates from one inbox to another, this is probably not the role. If your idea of project management is bringing order to complexity, asking the question everyone else missed, building the system that prevents the same fire from happening twice, and making digital pharma media delivery feel calm even when the timeline is not, we should talk.

What You Will Do

• Lead day-to-day project management for multichannel pharma digital media initiatives across paid search, paid social, programmatic, endemic, point-of-care, publisher partnerships, and other healthcare media tactics.
• Own project intake, setup, timelines, critical paths, milestones, dependencies, documentation, approvals, handoffs, risk logs, status updates, and launch readiness from initiation through optimization.
• Serve as the central point of coordination across clients, sister agencies, internal media teams, creative partners, MLR stakeholders, vendors, analytics, finance, billing, and project planning teams.
• Translate client objectives, brand strategy, media strategy, regulatory requirements, asset needs, and operational constraints into practical project plans teams can execute.
• Lead kickoffs, internal statuses, client or partner check-ins, escalation conversations, and project recaps with clarity, confidence, and the right amount of controlled urgency.
• Use Department leads as clear escalation points when risks, blockers, ownership gaps, or cross-functional decisions require timely resolution, ensuring issues are raised with the right leaders before they impact timelines, compliance, budget, or launch readiness.
• Own and protect MLR-related workflow for digital assets, including routing, version control, documentation, approval tracking, compliance checkpoints, and launch dependencies.
• Build, manage, and improve Wrike workflows, blueprints, dashboards, request forms, timelines, hour allocations, project structures, and reporting views so the system creates clarity rather than noise.
• Monitor scope, budgets, resourcing, burn, vendor dependencies, platform requirements, publisher requirements, and overall project health; identify risks early and recommend practical mitigation plans.
• Partner cross-functionally to ensure work is delivered on time, on brief, on budget, and in alignment with approved process, regulatory expectations, and launch requirements.
• Streamline, automate, standardize, and improve workflows without creating process for process’s sake, while coaching direct reports and junior PM talent beyond task coordination into true project leadership.

What Makes This Role Different

This is not generic agency project management. This is pharma digital media project leadership. The person in this role needs to understand how media tactics are built, what assets are required, how regulatory review impacts timing, where launch risk hides, why platform and publisher requirements matter, and how one missed detail can slow an entire campaign. You will connect the dots between strategy, execution, compliance, technology, people, and process.

What You Bring

• 5+ years of project management experience in digital media, advertising, healthcare marketing, or a closely related agency environment; hands-on digital media execution experience may also be considered when paired with strong project leadership capability.
• 2+ years of hands-on U.S. pharmaceutical marketing experience, including familiarity with digital marketing regulatory requirements, MLR review processes, and compliant asset management.
• Deep understanding of digital media tactics, operational requirements, creative and asset dependencies, platform and publisher requirements, launch processes, and cross-functional handoffs.
• Proven ability to manage med-legal-regulatory project flow for digital assets, including routing, tracking, documentation, version control, compliance checkpoints, approval readiness, and launch dependency management.
• Advanced Wrike proficiency, including building and managing workflows, blueprints, dashboards, request forms, timelines, hour allocations, project structures, and reporting views.
• Strong understanding of creative development processes and the integration points between creative teams and media agency execution.
• Experience managing direct reports, coaching junior talent, and building project management capability within a team.
• Ability to function independently and collaboratively, with the willingness to lead the room and also do the work: timelines, Wrike updates, meeting facilitation, documentation, follow-ups, and issue tracking.
• Strong communication, judgment, curiosity, critical thinking, and the ability to translate ambiguity into action without oversimplifying the problem — plus a healthy intolerance for avoidable chaos.

How You Lead

• You respect established standards, adapt when a reasonable exception is needed, and raise risks before they become everyone’s problem.
• You ask sharp questions, connect incomplete information, and make sure teams understand not only what needs to happen, but why it matters.
• You bring structure without bureaucracy, speed without recklessness, confidence without ego, and the belief that project management is a growth function, not an administrative function.

What Success Looks Like

• Digital media projects launch with clear ownership, accurate timelines, documented dependencies, disciplined MLR management, and fewer last-minute surprises.
• Clients, sister agencies, and internal teams know where work stands, what is needed next, where risk exists, and how decisions affect delivery.
• Department leads are engaged as appropriate escalation partners, helping resolve blockers, clarify ownership, reinforce accountability, and keep project teams aligned on decisions that affect delivery.
• Wrike becomes a source of clarity, not a decorative archive of overdue tasks.
• Project teams experience fewer handoff gaps, fewer repeated process failures, stronger accountability, and junior PMs grow in judgment, confidence, media fluency, and ownership.

The annual base salary for this position ranges from $110K to $135K The base salary range represents the anticipated low and high of the Syneos Health range for this position. Actual salary will vary based on various factors such as the candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies, and proficiency for the role. In addition, some positions may include eligibility to earn commissions/bonus based on company and / or individual performance.

At Syneos Health, we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace. If your past experience doesn’t align perfectly, we encourage you to apply anyway. At times, we will consider transferable skills from previous roles. We also encourage you to join our Talent Network to stay connected to additional career opportunities.

Why Syneos Health Communications? We are powered by Syneos Health, a global professional services organization designed to help the biopharmaceutical industry shorten the distance from lab to life®. We have a proven pedigree in health, with industry titans in every facet of healthcare. This eliminates guesswork and fuels our passion for total, life-changing solutions. At the heart of health, we’re uniquely poised to predict what’s next and respond to the market’s demand for smarter and faster answers. We are able to help our customers make important decisions within their business due to our unique understanding of the complexities that come along with working in the healthcare industry. Syneos Health Communications is able to make the complex, simple.

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