Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Web Development Project Manager

🎯 Role Definition

A Web Development Project Manager leads cross-functional teams to deliver web applications, e-commerce sites, and responsive digital experiences on time and on budget. This role combines technical web development knowledge (front-end, back-end, APIs, CMS) with program and stakeholder management skills to define scope, manage schedules, mitigate risks, and ensure high-quality releases. The ideal candidate balances strategic product thinking, people leadership, and hands-on coordination across designers, engineers, QA, DevOps, and product owners.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Web Developer or Full-Stack Engineer transitioning to project/program ownership
Technical Project Coordinator or Associate Project Manager in digital/agency environments
Product Owner, UX Lead, or QA Lead moving into delivery leadership

Advancement To:

Senior Project / Program Manager, Director of Web Development Delivery
Head of Engineering Operations, Product Delivery Lead
Director of Digital Experience, VP of Engineering (web & mobile)

Lateral Moves:

Product Manager for web products or e-commerce
Technical Program Manager (platform or infra-focused)
Delivery Lead at a digital agency or consultancy

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Own end-to-end delivery of web development projects (public websites, PWAs, e-commerce storefronts, CMS migrations, microfrontend rollouts), establishing timelines, milestones, and success metrics; coordinate cross-functional teams to meet scope, budget, and quality targets.
Define and document project scope, functional and non-functional requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, and technical constraints in collaboration with Product, UX, and Engineering stakeholders.
Lead Agile ceremonies (sprint planning, daily stand-ups, backlog grooming, sprint reviews, retrospectives), enforce cadence and continuous improvement across multiple scrum teams delivering web features and releases.
Create and maintain realistic project plans, release schedules, and resource allocation charts; proactively identify and resolve roadblocks, dependencies, and critical path items that impact web project timelines.
Manage stakeholder expectations through clear communication, weekly status reports, executive updates, and dashboards that surface progress, risks, ROI, and KPIs for web traffic, conversion, performance, and uptime.
Coordinate design handoffs and front-end development workflows to ensure accessibility (WCAG), responsive design, cross-browser compatibility, and SEO best practices are implemented prior to launch.
Run technical risk assessments and feasibility reviews for architecture choices (headless CMS, serverless, microservices, third-party integrations) and recommend mitigation strategies and contingency plans.
Oversee third-party vendor and agency relationships (creative agencies, integration partners, hosting providers), negotiate SOWs, and manage vendor deliverables, SLAs, and invoices for web projects.
Facilitate API integration planning and testing between web frontends and backend services, payment gateways, analytics, and 3rd-party platforms; coordinate contract testing, staging, and deployment verification.
Drive QA strategy for web releases including test plans, automated test coverage (unit, integration, end-to-end), browser matrix testing, regression testing, and bug triage to meet quality gates.
Partner with DevOps and Cloud teams to manage CI/CD pipelines, staging environments, release orchestration, rollbacks, and site reliability requirements (monitoring, error budgets, incident response).
Monitor and optimize website performance and page speed, coordinating performance budgets, lazy loading, image optimization, and front-end build optimizations to meet Core Web Vitals targets.
Manage content migration and governance for CMS implementations and migrations (e.g., WordPress, Contentful, Drupal, Sitecore, Headless CMS), ensuring data integrity and SEO continuity.
Define and track project success metrics such as time-to-market, sprint velocity, defect rates, uptime/availability, conversion rate impact, and customer satisfaction (NPS) for web initiatives.
Lead cross-functional release readiness reviews and go/no-go decision processes; ensure legal, security, accessibility, and SEO sign-offs are obtained before production releases.
Serve as escalation point for critical incidents and outages impacting web properties; coordinate incident response, root cause analysis, postmortems, and remediation plans.
Coach and mentor junior project managers, scrum masters, and delivery coordinators on Agile practices, web delivery standards, and stakeholder communication.
Maintain project documentation, runbooks, technical notes, and handover materials to support ongoing operations and future product iterations.
Conduct capacity planning and hiring prioritization in collaboration with engineering managers to align team skills with upcoming web initiatives and maintain delivery velocity.
Drive cost optimization for web delivery by analyzing hosting, CDN, third-party services, and licensing spend; recommend cost-saving technical and process improvements.
Implement A/B testing and experimentation rollout plans in partnership with product and analytics teams to validate hypotheses and measure conversion and engagement gains.
Ensure security and privacy compliance in web features, coordinating penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, and remediation tracking with security teams.
Maintain a continuous improvement backlog focused on developer experience, automation, and technical debt reduction to sustain long-term velocity and maintainability of web platforms.
Foster strong collaboration between UX, content strategy, SEO, and engineering to deliver coherent user journeys across devices and channels.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc analytics requests and collaborate with data/analytics teams to validate tracking, events, and conversion funnels on web properties.
Contribute to the organization’s digital roadmap by identifying web platform improvements, feature prioritization, and technical investments that drive business outcomes.
Assist business units and marketing teams to translate campaign requirements into engineering tasks and release plans; coordinate launch calendars.
Participate in sprint planning and Agile ceremonies as a servant leader, guiding product and engineering teams to practical estimations and prioritizations.
Maintain and present post-launch evaluations and run postmortems to capture lessons learned and iterate on delivery processes.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Agile project management (Scrum, Kanban) with experience running multiple concurrent web teams and scaling ceremonies.
Hands-on familiarity with front-end technologies (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, React, Vue, or Angular) to communicate effectively with developers.
Understanding of back-end architectures and APIs (REST, GraphQL), web services, microservices, and integration patterns.
Experience with CMS platforms and migrations (e.g., Contentful, WordPress, Drupal, Sitecore, headless CMS architectures).
Proficiency with project and issue tracking tools (Jira, Confluence, Asana, Trello) and familiarity with release management workflows.
Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines, release automation, and environment promotion (Git, GitHub/GitLab, Jenkins, CircleCI, Bitbucket pipelines).
Web performance optimization techniques and metrics (Core Web Vitals, Lighthouse, page speed, caching, CDN configuration).
SEO fundamentals for technical site structure, metadata, canonicalization, hreflang, and redirects to preserve organic traffic.
Accessibility (WCAG) requirements and experience coordinating accessibility audits and remediation.
Experience with e-commerce platforms and payment integrations (Shopify, Magento, Commerce Cloud, Stripe, PayPal).
Basic familiarity with cloud infrastructure and hosting (AWS, Azure, GCP) and content delivery networks (Cloudflare, Akamai).
Test strategy knowledge including automated E2E testing frameworks (Cypress, Selenium, Playwright) and QA processes.
Analytics and experimentation tools experience (Google Analytics/GA4, Tag Manager, Amplitude, Optimizely) to validate product outcomes.
Security and compliance awareness related to web applications (OWASP, HTTPS, CSP, GDPR/CCPA considerations).
Vendor management, SOW negotiation, and budget tracking for external partners and agencies.

Soft Skills

Strong stakeholder management and executive communication: distills technical status into business-impacting insights and next steps.
Exceptional organization and time management: manages competing priorities and dependencies across cross-functional teams.
Leadership and team facilitation: coaches teams, resolves conflicts, and motivates engineers, designers, and product owners to deliver.
Problem solving and critical thinking: identifies root causes, mitigates risks, and makes data-driven tradeoff decisions.
Customer-focused mindset: aligns delivery to user experience goals and business KPIs such as conversion, retention, and engagement.
Negotiation skills: balances scope, timeline, and resources while maintaining quality and business value.
Adaptability and resilience: manages ambiguity and pivots plans in response to changing requirements or urgent incidents.
Attention to detail: ensures release checklists, QA sign-offs, and compliance items are completed.
Cross-cultural sensitivity and collaboration: works effectively with distributed teams and external partners.
Continuous improvement orientation: drives retrospectives, process improvements, and automation to improve delivery.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, Web Development, Digital Media, Business, or related field; OR equivalent practical experience in web delivery and project management.

Preferred Education:

Master’s degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, MBA, or certifications such as PMP, CSM/PSM (Scrum Master), SAFe, or AgilePM.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science / Software Engineering
Information Systems / Technology Management
Human-Computer Interaction / UX Design
Digital Media / Web Development
Business Administration / Project Management

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 4–8 years in web development delivery, with at least 2–3 years in a project or program management role coordinating web teams.

Preferred: 5+ years managing complex web projects (e-commerce, CMS migrations, multi-site rollouts, headless implementations) and demonstrated success delivering high-traffic, production-grade web applications.