Project Manager

6-month fixed-term contract for parental leave cover

About the role

We're looking for a Project Manager to join us on a six-month fixed-term contract, covering a member of our team while they're on parental leave. You'll take ownership of a portfolio of client projects-web applications built on Laravel and Vue-and see them through planning, delivery and release.

Because this is a leave cover, we need someone who can become productive quickly. You'll be stepping into work that's already in flight, with clients who already have relationships, expectations and history with us. There'll be a proper handover and plenty of support, but the first few weeks will involve asking good questions, reading the room, and getting your arms around several projects at once.

More than a specific methodology, we're looking for someone with strong delivery judgement. Someone who communicates clearly with clients and developers alike, who raises risks early rather than hoping they resolve themselves, and who understands that delivery is a series of trade-offs. Sometimes the right decision protects the scope; other times it protects the relationship, the budget or the team. We're looking for someone who can make those calls thoughtfully.

This role is primarily based in our Abbotsford (Melbourne) office. Our engineering team is distributed across Australia and internationally, but this role works closely with our Melbourne-based leadership team and local developers. We offer flexibility where it makes sense, but we're looking for someone who enjoys being part of the office and contributing to the team culture.

Why you'll enjoy working here

We're an agency, so you'll work across a range of client projects, products and industries. Rather than supporting dozens of different technologies, we've intentionally standardised on Laravel and Vue, together with our own shared component library. That consistency is a real advantage in a contract role. The projects may differ, but the patterns, tooling and delivery rhythms won't, which makes getting up to speed considerably faster.

You'll also be joining a team that's expecting you. A leave cover is a planned handover, not a scramble, and we've structured it that way: documented projects, a warm introduction to clients, and colleagues who know these codebases well. Six months is long enough to do genuinely meaningful work, and we'd like you to leave the projects in better shape than you found them.

What you'll be doing

• Owning end-to-end delivery across a portfolio of concurrent client projects.
• Acting as the primary point of contact for clients-running status updates, managing expectations and handling escalations.
• Planning and scheduling work, coordinating resourcing with our development and design leads.
• Managing scope, change requests, variations and budgets, and flagging commercial risks early.
• Facilitating delivery ceremonies such as stand-ups, planning sessions and retrospectives.
• Identifying, tracking and mitigating project risks and issues.
• Working with technical leads to sequence work sensibly and unblock the team.
• Maintaining clear project documentation, reporting and forecasting.
• Supporting a clean handback at the end of the contract, so the returning team member picks up projects in good order.

What we're looking for

• Demonstrated commercial experience managing digital or software delivery projects, ideally in an agency, consultancy or client-facing environment.
• A track record of picking up in-flight work and becoming effective quickly.
• Excellent client-facing communication skills, including the ability to have difficult conversations early and well.
• Strong commercial acumen. Comfortable with budgets, estimates, scope management and variations.
• Experience with agile and hybrid delivery approaches, and the judgement to apply them pragmatically rather than dogmatically.
• Enough technical literacy to hold credible conversations with developers about web applications, APIs, environments and releases (you don't need to write code).
• Strong organisational skills and the ability to manage several projects simultaneously without losing detail.
• Availability to commit to the full six-month term.

Nice to have

• Experience delivering projects on a PHP stack, particularly Laravel, or with Vue.js frontends.
• Familiarity with tools such as Jira, Notion, Asana, Trello or similar.
• Experience managing multiple concurrent clients and competing priorities.
• Experience coordinating design and UX work alongside development.
• Prior experience with project transitions, handovers or interim roles.
• Formal delivery qualifications (for example Scrum, PRINCE2 or PMP) are useful, but not a substitute for experience.

Who you are

You'll likely be someone who:

• Is comfortable joining something mid-flight and asking the questions that need asking.
• Communicates openly and directly, and surfaces problems while they're still small.
• Exercises good delivery judgement-balancing scope, budget, quality and relationships to suit the project, the team and the client.
• Takes ownership of your work and sees problems through to resolution.
• Is organised, calm under pressure, and reliable with the details.
• Believes great software is delivered by great teams, not individual heroes.

You'll join a collaborative team working across a diverse range of products and industries, with real ownership of client relationships and delivery outcomes from early on. We encourage curiosity, knowledge sharing and thoughtful discussion, and believe the best ideas can come from anyone on the team.

We know great project managers don't always tick every box. If this role sounds like a good fit for how you like to work, we'd encourage you to apply-even if your experience comes from a different technology stack or industry. We'd rather bring in someone with excellent delivery judgement and a collaborative mindset than someone who happens to have run this exact type of project before.