Freelance Senior Project Manager

This is a brief for someone who can own projects end-to-end, make decisions, manage budgets, and challenge stakeholders and agencies when timelines slip, briefs lack clarity, or costs come under pressure.

The setting is the UK beverages arm of one of the world’s largest food and drink companies. Right now, that beverages portfolio is mid-transformation, including a mission to bring a fast-growing modern soft drink to UK shelves, and this role exists because that ambition needs someone to turn intent into delivery.

The Role
You’ll take complex FMCG programmes from brief and strategic intent through to final delivery, building the plans, timelines, milestones, budgets and governance that hold them together.

You’ll sit at the centre of an unusually broad network: marketing, commercial, consumer insights, innovation, design, external agencies and bottlers. That means leading cross-functional teams, aligning competing priorities and driving decisions rather than chasing them.

You’ll brief and manage agencies and suppliers, owning scope, risk and dependencies. And when a timeline isn’t realistic or a budget comes under strain, you’re the person expected to say so, and to propose the solution that protects both quality and commercial outcomes. Senior leadership will look to you for structure, pace and a clear read on where things stand.

The Package
£350 – £375 per day
Hybrid working
Outside IR35 contract
4+ month contract, giving full ownership through a complete delivery cycle

The Person
You’re a Freelance Senior Project Manager or Client Lead working in or around FMCG – in-house at a large consumer brand, or agency-side on FMCG accounts.

You’ve owned projects end-to-end before: plans, budgets, governance, agencies, suppliers. You can walk into a complex, multi-stakeholder programme cold, read the politics quickly and impose order. And you’re credible enough to challenge senior stakeholders when the situation calls for it.