Project Manager in City of London

An exciting opportunity has arisen for an established project manager to join our fast growing and award-winning agency. Here, you will drive and develop projects and accounts and be fundamental to the business and its continued successes.

About Opinium: MRS 2021 and 2024 Agency of the Year. Winner of the MRS best place to work award three times, the Drum Best Place to Work 2018 & 2019, and the 2019 Women in Research Best Agency to Work Globally. Opinium is a strategic insight agency, that truly puts its people at the centre of everything they do. Across our four offices in London, New York, Amsterdam and Cape Town, we help our clients harness the power of insight on a global scale to build, grow, promote and make strategic business decisions. We also use Opinium for good, working with multiple charities and volunteering.

Our culture: We really believe we have a unique culture which provides a stimulating, challenging and rewarding workplace whilst providing a supportive environment and focus on the wellbeing of our people. “When measuring success, revenue growth and employee wellbeing should go hand-in-hand. It’s the only way to build an insight agency that clients want to work with.” Opinium CEO, Chair Market Research Society (MRS)

Your opportunity: To support our ambitious growth plans, we are seeking to expand Opinium’s Project Management Team. This is an extremely exciting and important move for Opinium, as the project management function acts as a catalyst for the wider research and operations teams. While Opinium has research teams based in London, Amsterdam and New York, the project management team only sits within London. This role would be to work as part of Opinium’s Project Management team, working on projects directly supporting our US office, based in NYC. The team in NYC has seen tremendous recent growth and is in need of an expert project manager to help establish and drive efficient project management operations. You will be the first project manager directly supporting the US team, and would thus have a lead role in driving major team-wide and company-wide initiatives that drive growth and success.

As part of a very close-knit team, your role will involve working directly with our US office, working closely with their clients and internal teams on multiple projects in parallel. You will oversee the delivery from inception through to final deliverables, ensuring that projects run efficiently, to specification and to budget. This role would require non-standard UK hours, and would typically be 10:00 AM – 6:30 PM or 10:30 AM to 7:00 PM to support US project work and time zones. These times may be flexible earlier or later based upon daily project needs and agreement with your team or manager as needed. Our goal is to ensure you are part of the London culture, while still supporting the team in the US.

We are looking for people who are passionate, resilient, creative, and authentic. You would value working for a business whilst working on projects for the greater good and building relationships with colleagues and teams.

Role & responsibilities: Your role is vital to the smooth running of our processes and projects. Here, you will be required to undertake the following core functions:

• Join key account teams to take responsibility for the end-to-end management of national and international projects, from developing the proposal through to project closure.
• Assess project feasibility, provide costs, and create project plans/timelines for new business proposals and live projects.
• Identify opportunities during the project lifecycle for efficiencies and improvements – both procedural and financial.
• Responsible for maximising financial performance across projects, ensuring costs are minimised where possible.
• Conduct project reviews, assessing the learning and identifying future improvements that could be applied to future projects.
• Act as a point of contact for clients, providing regular updates on project status.
• Grow and manage relationships across Opinium’s partner network.
• Work on wider Operational and Project Management initiatives.

Skills and qualities: Must have skills. We are looking for project managers with around four to five years’ experience within a market research environment. Experience managing qualitative and quantitative projects is essential. We’re all about passion at Opinium, so successful applicants will show a desire to give it their all, as well as:

• A proven track record of managing market research projects, both quantitative and qualitative.
• Experience working with international internal teams would be a bonus.
• Experience career/line managing junior colleagues would be a bonus.
• Strong organisational skills, with the ability to expertly manage multiple priorities and projects at once.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Proactive attitude is essential as we are looking for self-starters.
• Outstanding attention to detail.
• Confidence in managing budgets.
• People management and the ability to effectively delegate upwards and downwards.
• Experience in client management.
• Analytical and strong IT skills expected (Excel, Word, PowerPoint) as well as the ability to quickly get to grips with market research software.

Other skills and requirements: Fluent spoken & written business English. Strong team player. Understand the importance of meeting deadlines. A desire to expand one’s own knowledge.

Education & experience: A good academic record. 4-5 years of project management experience at a market research agency.

What we offer you: We have a wide range of wellbeing tools and initiatives so that you can be your best inside and outside work. A job that can grow as quickly as you can – our headcount has more than doubled in the last two years and this is only the start. The tools, resources and support you need to succeed and grow. A career manager (that invests and looks after your career). A collaborative and supportive team. A truly flexible work environment, hybrid working with a focus on prioritising work-life balance. A fun, inclusive and thoughtful company culture. Competitive salary, annual leave, and an excellent pension scheme. Benefits including life insurance, critical illness insurance, dental insurance, Bike to Work scheme, Season Ticket Loan, savings plans and a monthly wellbeing allowance (£60 per month e.g. gym, sports club, learn new language), volunteering days, pre-paid vouchers for annual flu jab/eye test, annual health assessments, flexi start/leave, birthday come-in-lates or leave-earlies, WFH equipment allowance.

Equal opportunity employer: Opinium is committed to a work environment that is inclusive to all and free of discrimination. We are an equal opportunity employer without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression and genetic predisposition.