digital project manager

title: Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Digital Project Manager
salary: $ - $
categories: [Project Management, Digital, Product, Marketing, IT]
description: A comprehensive overview of the key responsibilities, required technical skills and professional background for the role of a Digital Project Manager.
Comprehensive list of responsibilities and required skills for a Digital Project Manager.
SEO-optimized and recruiter-written: covers agile delivery, stakeholder management, roadmap ownership,
budgeting, vendor coordination, UX/UI collaboration, analytics, and tools like JIRA, Confluence, and Google Analytics.

🎯 Role Definition

The Digital Project Manager is accountable for delivering digital products, campaigns and platform enhancements on time, on budget and to scope. This role leads cross-functional delivery teams (design, engineering, QA, marketing, analytics) and acts as the single point of accountability for project planning, risk and change management, stakeholder communication and the continuous improvement of delivery processes. The ideal candidate blends strong project management discipline (agile & waterfall), technical fluency, client-facing experience and a relentless focus on outcomes, KPIs and user experience.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Project Coordinator / Project Administrator
Digital Producer or Traffic Manager
Junior Project Manager or Account Executive

Advancement To:

Senior Digital Project Manager / Lead Project Manager
Program Manager / Delivery Lead
Head of Digital Delivery / Director of Project Management

Lateral Moves:

Product Owner / Product Manager
UX/Product Design Manager
Account Director / Client Services Director

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Own end-to-end delivery of digital projects (websites, mobile apps, eCommerce, marketing automation and platform integrations) by creating and maintaining comprehensive project plans, release roadmaps, sprint backlogs, milestones, resource allocations and delivery schedules.
Serve as the primary stakeholder liaison: establish clear communication cadences, produce executive status reports, align priorities across marketing, product, design and engineering, and proactively manage expectations with internal and external stakeholders.
Facilitate and lead agile ceremonies (sprint planning, stand-ups, retrospectives, backlog grooming) while tailoring agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban) to team size, product maturity and client preferences to maintain predictable delivery velocity.
Manage project scope and change control: evaluate change requests, quantify impacts to cost, schedule and quality, obtain approvals, update baselines and communicate trade-offs to stakeholders to prevent scope creep.
Build, manage and report against project budgets including forecasting labor, vendor costs, contingency, change orders and third-party integrations; reconcile invoices and ensure financial delivery targets are met.
Identify, assess and mitigate project risks early by maintaining a risk register, escalating critical issues, implementing contingency plans and ensuring transparent, solution-oriented communication with project sponsors.
Coordinate cross-functional teams (UX, UI, front-end, back-end, QA, DevOps, content, SEO, analytics) to ensure design and technical requirements are clearly documented, prioritized and implemented to specification.
Translate business requirements into deliverable user stories, acceptance criteria and technical tasks; collaborate with product owners and engineers to ensure stories are estimable, testable and aligned to acceptance metrics and KPIs.
Drive quality assurance and release management: define test strategy, prioritize defects, coordinate UAT, manage bug triage, and orchestrate deployment plans with rollback procedures and post-launch support windows.
Monitor and optimize project performance with relevant KPIs (timeliness, scope variance, burn rate, velocity, defect density, customer satisfaction) and deliver actionable insights to continuously improve delivery processes.
Manage third-party vendors and contractors: draft SOWs, negotiate deliverables and SLAs, monitor performance, and integrate external deliveries into the project plan to maintain single-source accountability.
Own requirements gathering and backlog prioritization workshops with product, marketing and engineering to ensure alignment with business objectives, customer outcomes and commercial impact.
Lead client-facing meetings and steering committees: present roadmaps, product demos, performance metrics and risk status; capture feedback and convert strategic directives into executionable initiatives.
Ensure compliance with data privacy, security and accessibility standards (GDPR, SOC/ISO considerations, WCAG) by coordinating security reviews, accessibility audits and compliance checkpoints during the delivery lifecycle.
Manage cross-project dependencies and resource conflicts across multiple simultaneous initiatives by negotiating priorities, reassigning resources and escalating portfolio-level risks to senior leadership.
Implement and maintain project documentation (requirements docs, runbooks, release notes, project retros, onboarding guides) to improve team onboarding, knowledge transfer and audit readiness.
Mentor and coach junior PMs, project coordinators and cross-functional contributors on best practices in agile delivery, stakeholder communication, estimation, and risk remediation.
Drive process improvement initiatives (post-mortems, retrospectives, templates, automation of reporting) to increase delivery predictability, reduce waste and shorten time-to-market.
Serve as the voice of the customer internally by incorporating user research, analytics insights and customer feedback into prioritization and delivery decisions to maximize product adoption and business outcomes.
Coordinate content operations, SEO and analytics requirements with content strategists to ensure content readiness, correct tagging, tracking and reporting prior to launch.
Prepare and maintain launch readiness checklists, runbooks and hypercare plans; coordinate cross-team activities during release windows to ensure smooth deployments and rapid incident response where needed.
Facilitate prioritization and trade-off discussions that balance engineering effort, commercial impact and UX quality to meet release windows and business milestones.
Drive post-launch evaluation: capture performance metrics, analyze product adoption and conversion rates, identify remediation items and scope subsequent optimizations or roadmap updates.
Maintain a polished, client-ready repository of project artifacts — status reports, executive summaries, financial reconciliations and lessons learned — to support renewals, upsells and long-term client relationships.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc analytics requests and collaborate with analytics teams to define dashboards and reporting that inform ongoing prioritization and ROI measurement.
Contribute to the organization's digital delivery playbook and roadmap by documenting repeatable processes, tooling recommendations and vendor evaluations.
Collaborate with business units to translate strategic goals into product epics, measurable objectives and engineering requirements.
Participate in cross-functional strategic planning, sprint planning and agile ceremonies across delivery squads to improve coordination and throughput.
Assist in vendor sourcing and evaluation, including RFP responses, vendor scorecards and contractual negotiations.
Provide training sessions and onboarding materials for new project team members on project management tools and processes (JIRA, Confluence, Asana).
Support client success initiatives by delivering handover materials, training clients on product features and collecting feedback for continuous improvement.
Help define and enforce data governance and tagging standards to ensure analytics integrity and consistent measurement across initiatives.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Agile delivery methodologies (Scrum, Kanban); ability to tailor frameworks to team needs and product maturity.
Project scheduling and estimation (story point sizing, capacity planning, release planning).
Proficiency with project management tools: JIRA, Confluence, Asana, Microsoft Project or equivalent.
Familiarity with version control basics and developer workflows (Git, branching strategies, CI/CD concepts).
Experience managing digital analytics and measurement: Google Analytics / GA4, Adobe Analytics, event tracking, dashboards.
Budgeting and financial forecasting for projects, including change order management and vendor invoicing.
Basic technical literacy in web and mobile technologies (HTML/CSS, responsive design, REST APIs, third-party integrations).
QA and release management practices, test planning, UAT coordination, defect triage and regression planning.
Experience with UX/UI workflows and deliverables (wireframes, prototypes, design systems) and collaborating with designers.
Knowledge of SEO fundamentals, tagging, redirects and content readiness requirements.
Familiarity with accessibility standards (WCAG) and security/privacy considerations (GDPR basics).
Reporting and data visualization skills (Excel, Google Sheets, Looker, Tableau, Power BI or similar).
Contract and vendor management experience: SOWs, SLAs, performance metrics and procurement coordination.
Certifications (preferred): PMP, Prince2, Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) — advantageous for large, regulated environments.

Soft Skills

Strong stakeholder management and executive communication: ability to present complex trade-offs clearly and concisely.
Excellent written communication: clear documentation, requirements, status reports and executive summaries.
Leadership and team facilitation: inspiring cross-functional teams, mediating conflicts and driving decisions.
Problem-solving and analytical mindset: data-driven prioritization and root-cause analysis.
Time management, organization and ability to manage multiple concurrent projects without sacrificing quality.
Negotiation and diplomacy: balancing competing priorities across product, design, engineering and commercial teams.
Customer-focused mindset and empathy for user experience and business outcomes.
Adaptability and resilience in fast-paced, ambiguous environments with shifting priorities.
Coaching and mentoring abilities to upskill junior PMs and delivery coordinators.
Attention to detail combined with a strategic perspective on roadmap trade-offs and commercial impact.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree (BA/BS) in Business, Marketing, Computer Science, Information Systems, Communications or related field.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor's degree plus professional certification (PMP, CSM, PSPO) or a Master's degree (MBA, MSc in Information Systems) for senior roles.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Business Administration / Management
Computer Science / Software Engineering
Information Systems / IT Management
Marketing / Digital Marketing
Human-Computer Interaction / UX Design

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

3–7 years managing digital projects or programs (agency, in-house digital teams, or consultancy environments).

Preferred:

5+ years of progressive digital project management experience, with demonstrated success delivering complex web, mobile or eCommerce projects.
Experience in agency environments or client-facing delivery, handling multiple concurrent accounts and managing external vendors.