Creative Program Manager Jobs in Chicago, IL (NOW HIRING)

Paylocity is an award-winning provider of cloud-based HR and payroll software solutions, offering the most complete platform for the modern workforce. The company has become one of the fastest-growing HCM software providers worldwide by offering an intuitive, easy-to-use product suite that helps businesses automate and streamline HR and payroll processes, attract and retain talent, and build a strong workplace culture.

While traditional HR and payroll providers automate basic HR processes such as payroll and benefits administration, Paylocity goes further by developing tools that HR and businesses need to compete for talent and deliver against the expectations of the modern workforce.

We give our employees what they need to succeed, including great benefits and perks! We offer medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and a 401(k) match, as well as perks that support you, your family, and your finances. And if it’s career development you desire, we provide that, too! At Paylocity, people matter most and have always been at the heart of our business.

As part of the Sales & Marketing team, you’ll help us solve challenges and succeed as you grow and understand the unique needs of our clients and tailor easy-to-use solutions to deliver the performance they need.

With a position in Sales & Marketing, you’ll strengthen our relationships with clients, anticipate their needs, and think outside the box to unlock new possibilities.

This is a fully remote position, allowing you to work from home or location of record within the U.S. with no in-office requirements. You must be available five days per week during designated work hours. The work arrangement for this role is subject to change based on business needs and individual performance. This may include adjustments to on-site requirements or schedule expectations, as necessary.

Senior Program Manager, Creative

We’re looking for a Senior Program Manager, Creative to lead creative operations and project management across Paylocity’s fast-moving marketing and creative organization. In this role, you’ll own and optimize how creative work progresses through Wrike, from intake and prioritization to resourcing, delivery, and reporting. You’ll partner closely with creative, video production, content, campaign, web, social, paid, product, and other cross-functional teams to keep high-priority work organized, visible, and on track.

This role is ideal for someone who is highly organized, comfortable managing multiple priorities, and confident leading creative workflow systems, stakeholder communication, and team planning.

What you’ll do:

• Lead intake, triage, and routing for creative requests across go-to-market and other internal Paylocity teams
• Manage creative projects end to end, from intake through final delivery, ensuring timelines, dependencies, approvals, and deliverables stay on track
• Own complete project planning, staffing, and deadline management to make sure every project is properly resourced and aligned to deliverable expectations
• Look around corners, anticipate risks, and partner with creative/content team leads on contingencies to keep high-visibility projects moving forward
• Act as the owner of project timelines and brief requirements, building trust through clear, consistent communication with requestors and stakeholders
• Monitor team bandwidth, workload, and availability, and adjust schedules based on shifting priorities, team capacity, and out-of-office coverage
• Take ownership of project staffing and serve as a gatekeeper for team priorities so teams stay focused and are not overextended
• Lead weekly workload and resource planning meetings to align priorities, identify bottlenecks, and improve visibility across the creative team
• Partner with creative leadership to assign work based on team member specialization, skill set, capacity, and business priority
• Support high-priority and high-visibility creative work with clear project plans, kickoff meetings, milestone tracking, recurring check-ins, and stakeholder updates
• Ensure deliverables align with project goals, brand standards, voice and tone guidelines, and quality expectations across campaigns, content, and creative work
• Build and maintain utilization dashboards, pipeline reporting, executive status views, and other reporting that helps leadership make informed decisions
• Prepare and present project status reports, budget updates, and retrospectives for internal and cross-functional stakeholders
• Create, maintain, and optimize request forms, blueprints, custom fields, dashboards, calendars, automations, and process documentation to improve consistency and scale. Train new team members on creative processes/workflows/best practices.
• Contribute to the development of templated processes for project kickoffs, scoping, resourcing, and execution
• Support creative operations by streamlining workflows, improving internal production pipelines, and refining handoffs between creative, cross-functional teams, and internal clients
• Implement consistent project management practices across multiple concurrent workstreams, including digital, social, video, content, and other integrated marketing assets
• Identify competing priorities, roadblocks, and escalation needs early, and communicate them clearly and proactively to stakeholders and GTM leadership
• Own and manage the creative program in Wrike, including workspace structure, workflows, permissions, automations, dashboards, calendars, and reporting
• Serve as the primary point of contact for Wrike troubleshooting, adoption, and day-to-day support for creative request workflows
• Promote best practices in creative operations, project management, and workflow optimization across the team

What you’ll bring

Required qualifications

• 7+ years of project management experience in creative operations, marketing operations; agency experience is strongly preferred
• Hands-on experience managing workflows and project operations in Wrike
• Proven experience supporting creative or marketing teams in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment
• Demonstrated success leading multiple concurrent, complex, and high-visibility projects across a range of stakeholders
• Deep experience managing diverse project types, including digital marketing, integrated campaigns, and creative and content deliverables
• Strong project management skills, with the ability to balance priorities, staffing, timelines, and deliverables across multiple workstreams
• Experience with resource planning, workload management, and team utilization reporting
• Ability to build and improve project intake processes, request forms, dashboards, reporting tools, and execution workflows
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work effectively with cross-functional partners, internal clients, and senior leaders
• Ability to think on your feet, solve problems resourcefully, and make sound decisions without heavy oversight
• Experience identifying process gaps and developing new execution processes aligned with best practices where needed

Preferred qualifications

• Familiarity with creative team structures and workflows across content, design, web, social, video production and campaign teams
• Experience supporting campaign launches and other high-visibility marketing initiatives
• Experience working with B2B SaaS organizations
• Experience creating or managing SOPs, project templates, or team charters
• Experience working with executive reporting and leadership dashboards
• Familiarity with Wrike AI agents or AI-enabled workflow tools
• Video Production PM experience

What success looks like

In the first 3–6 months, success in this role may include:

• Improving visibility into creative intake, workload, and project status across teams
• Creating more consistent and scalable workflows in Wrike and training existing team on changes/best practices
• Helping the team balance resources more effectively and reduce bottlenecks
• Increasing on-time delivery for high-priority creative projects
• Strengthening adoption of project management best practices across the creative organization

Paylocity is an equal-opportunity employer. Paylocity is committed to the full inclusion of all individuals. We recruit, train, compensate, and promote regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, veteran status, and other protected status as required by applicable law. At Paylocity, we believe diversity makes us better.

We embrace and encourage our employees’ differences in age, culture, ethnicity, family or marital status, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, physical and mental ability, political affiliation, race, religion or spiritual belief, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, veteran status, and other characteristics that make our employees unique. We actively cultivate these differences through our employee resource groups (ERGs), employee experiences, perspectives, talents, and approaches to drive innovation in the software and services we provide our customers.

We comply with federal and state disability laws and make reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. To request reasonable accommodation in the job application or interview process, please contact accessibility@paylocity.com. This email address is exclusively designated for such requests, aligning with federal and state disability laws. Please do not send resumes to this email address, as they will be removed.

The base pay range for this position is $85,000 - $110,000/yr; however, base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. This position is eligible for an annual bonus and restricted stock unit grant based on individual performance in addition to a full range of benefits outlined here. This information is provided per the relevant state and local pay transparency laws for the location in which this position will be performed. Base pay information is based on market location. Applicants should apply via www.paylocity.com/careers.

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