Digital Account Director London, England
Job description
Overview
The principal role of the Digital Account Director is to manage the development and delivery of high calibre digital solutions for our Corporate Communications business through the digital project managers within your team ensuring they are clearly defined, well managed and delivered to time, scope and budget.
Working closely with the design, development and account teams, you will be defining the solution to meet our clients’ requirements, managing the project delivery schedule and budgetary estimates, and driving the programme of work from inception through to successful delivery; ensuring projects are delivered on time, to budget and to high levels of client satisfaction.
You will also be responsible for mentoring and managing Digital Project Managers and Junior Project Managers and delegating work to these individuals in your team and ensuring they deliver quality solutions and excellent service.
This role will suit a self-motivated individual who wants to make a real difference in their role - both to enhance their career and skills, and to deliver award winning, innovative projects for global brands. It will require an organised mind, digital expertise, great people skills and real attention to detail.
Key Responsibilities
Project management
Successfully allocate and manage the projects within your team, ensuring the work is aligned to the available skills within the team along the following guidelines:
Directly managing large scale or complex solutions
Working closely with the Head of Digital Strategy on new solutions to ensure we have a clear scope of work, budget and schedule for these projects which can be handed to a DPM or JDPM for delivery. This will require direct involvement through the discovery stage and leading the definition stage of these projects
Overseeing the day to day requests that come into your team from clients for support, maintenance and general queries and updates and ensuring your Project team deliver these
Successfully ensuring that projects delivered by your team are to scope, schedule and budget by:
Working with internal teams to interpret the client’s brief and work with the teams to create a digital solution that will meet the client’s needs;
Developing a set of clearly defined deliverables for each project including comprehensive project documentation including project schedules, requirements documents, functional specifications and project schedules;
Proactively managing the scope, timings and priority of projects managing all timescales and internal and external resources to ensure these don’t deviate from agreed schedules;
Ensuring quality assurance is applied to all of the delivered projects
Proactively identifying and managing project problems and risks and providing effective solutions to address them;
Coordinating and managing the work required across clients to deliver the projects such as shared library updates
Successfully liaise and co-ordinate suppliers, completing the briefing process and ensuring that all work meets Black Sun’s quality standards.
Team management:
Overseeing the booking of resources across the whole digital team – and ensuring that your team have booked in resources in advance
Ensuring that the status report and project schedules are always up to date and accurate and that the wider team has a good understanding of the required deliverables for the next 2 weeks
Ensure that your team follow our documented processes and procedures, without exception, and use all of our templates in delivering client work
Mentor and managed assigned team members, helping them to develop their skills and career; and
Manage and liaise with team members on a day to day basis, proactively providing support, guidance and advice to ensure that service and quality standards are maintained
Client relationship management and development:
Own the project level relationships with your clients, whilst recognising that the day to day communication may be between the client and members of your team
Attend and lead client meetings and conference calls especially the key ‘gates’ between stages of the project
Deliver exemplary client services at all times helping to ensure we maintain high levels of client satisfaction and continually seek ways to exceed clients’ expectations. We would also expect that you would be able to handle difficult or sensitive enquiries or problems with tact and diplomacy.
Conduct reviews of our client work and identify any cross sales and upsales opportunities
Commercial responsibilities
Ensure budgetary estimates are produced and client sign off secured for all projects;
Manage the financial risk of projects by adhering to all financial working practices and processes including creating budget proposals, completing regular reconciliations, raising and issuing purchase orders for external costs and completing accurate timesheets;
Ensure that no work outside the scope of the agreed specification is undertaken, prior to agreeing the scope of the additional work and receiving approval on the cost estimate from the client; and
Research and development:
Continually drive your understanding of our clients’ businesses, the industries they operate in, and trends in digital best practice corporate communications; and
Continually develop your knowledge and views on key market insights and to share your knowledge with your team and the wider business.
Reporting relationships:
Reporting to the Head of Digital Delivery
Working closely with the wider project management team as well as the Creative and Application Development teams
Personal Profile
The successful candidate will have the following qualifications, experience and personal qualities:
Qualifications
Project management qualifications
Strong academics with a minimum of 2:1 degree
Experience and skills:
At least 5+ years’ experience in managing large build digital projects from inception to delivery with the ability to work unaided;
Ideally, will have experience project managing corporate website, extranet and intranet builds;
Familiarity with best practices in website development, including accessibility, usability and design;
Experience interacting with clients at a variety of levels and across functions, managing client expectations and ensuring high levels of client satisfaction;
Experience of scoping digital projects of significant scale and complexity and identifying project risks;
Some people management experience would be ideal;
Excellent communication and presentation skills are essential;
Good knowledge of project management techniques for digital solutions including requirements definition, sitemaps, schematics and wireframes, web analytics, etc.;
Must be able to work effectively under pressure, within strict time constraints and must be able to manage multiple projects in a fast-paced, time sensitive environment.
Technical knowledge and skills
Microsoft Project expert user
Content management systems;
Issue and bug tracking (i.e. JIRA)
QA techniques and processes
Knowledge of W3C WCAG levels and requirements.
Personal Qualities
Passionate about digital
Strong interpersonal and communications skills necessary to build trust and respect both externally and internally
Extraordinary attention to detail and a desire to produce the highest quality solutions
Technically literate, and also able to communicate complex digital solutions into layman’s language
High-quality service ethic and committed to customer service excellence
Ambition to self-improve
Ability to manage many urgent and often conflicting priorities
Strong ‘can do’ attitude with an innate ability to take initiative and work by yourself as well as in a team
Good sense of humour is essential!
Come join Us!
Black Sun Global
Across the globe, there is a powerful movement demanding that business focus on purpose, sustainability, and wider value creation. It has never been more important for organisations to build and maintain trust with their key audiences. And that’s where Black Sun come in – we are a partner to some of the biggest brands and businesses worldwide – helping them to build enduring relationships with their stakeholders and spark positive change through better engagement and inspiring communications.
As our world rapidly changes, our focus remains constant. At heart we are storytellers, we define articulate and shape the value creation story, bringing it to life across different channels and communications formats. Our team is made up of over 150 talented specialists working across the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia – analytical thinkers, renaissance creatives, digital mavericks and inspiring change makers!
For more than twenty years, we have won many awards and recognition for our work – but great work doesn’t happen by magic – join Black Sun and you will become part of an amazing, diverse, and inclusive community – a team of passionate and skilful people who will expand your horizon, energise your talents and ignite that spark of magic within you.
Beyond what you would expect; a competitive salary, great benefits and hybrid working – we will support you in developing the skills and expertise to fast track your career. You will have the opportunity to make a difference every day, shaping the future of communications and creating positive change – and most importantly, to have fun along the way.
The Positive Change Group
Black Sun is the founding agency at the centre of The Positive Change Group. The Positive Change Group is a truly international stakeholder advisory and engagement collective of like-minded specialist agencies with a shared ambition to help bold and visionary businesses Spark Positive Change – to make a deeper impact on society, shape more ethical practices, build inclusive communities and deliver more sustainable performance.
The Group currently consists of four pre-eminent agencies: Black Sun Global, People-Made, Stratton Craig and GoCo. Each agency brings together deep expertise on different aspects of stakeholder advisory and engagement – including brand culture, strategic communications, reporting, ESG advisory, analytics and creative storytelling. Current clients within the Group include major international firms, such as AstraZeneca, Burberry, Diageo, Meta, Olam, Virgin Atlantic and Vodafone.
With headquarters in London, Singapore, and offices worldwide, the group is transforming the way companies engage with their customers, employees, investors, and communities worldwide. As business increasingly recognises that long-term success is dependent on the support and advocacy of their stakeholders – the Positive Change Group is helping their clients to inspire trust, build more positive relations and create sustainable value for the people that matter most to them.
Interview process
Phone chat with talent acquisition manager
1st Interview with hiring manager
2nd interview with hiring director and hiring manager
Benefits
In addition to a competitive salary based on skills and experience, as an employee at Black Sun, you will have access to a range of great benefits and perks, including:
25 days holiday per year with ‘bonus’ days for long service
Bonus scheme
Personal development opportunities
Group life assurance
Group personal pension plan
Employee assistance programme
Hybrid working:
Over the last 18 months, the way in which we work has changed. We surveyed and engaged with our staff to learn about what Black Sun’s future of work looks like, and thanks to everyone’s positive engagement and feedback, we developed a hybrid way of working, governed by three fundamental principles: Colleague, Client, and Culture. This means that however you decide to deliver work, you should protect all these 3 C’s. After a period of onboarding, employees can work from home, office and, where applicable, on-site with clients. The number of days is dependent on teams, role, time of year and deliverables.
Here at Black Sun we pride ourselves on being committed to offering equal opportunities to all potential employees and have zero tolerance for discrimination. We foster a business culture where ideas and decisions from all people help us grow, innovate, create the best work and be relevant in a rapidly changing world
