Project Manager / Operations Coordinator

Project Manager / Operations Coordinator — Multi-Business Creative Studio (Part-Time, Remote) (looking for a very long term commitment)

Hours: ~10 hours/week, with the option to grow if the fit is right
Pay: $8-12 USD/hour (DOE), paid bi-weekly via Wise or PayPal
Status: Independent contractor
Time zone: Must overlap with US Pacific Time by at least 2 hours during the workday

About us

We're a small operation running several interconnected businesses — a Shopify merchandise platform serving a community of YouTube creators, a high-traffic educational web property, and a few other ventures in adjacent creative spaces. We don't operate like a corporate org. We operate like a workshop: a small number of people, a lot of moving parts, and a strong preference for systems that hold the chaos rather than people memorizing it.

We're hiring someone to be the person who sees the whole picture across the workshop — not to do every task, but to make sure no important thread gets dropped between the people who handle the threads.

What you'll do

- Own ---------- as the source of truth. Maintain boards across product launches, creator releases, customer support trends, and operational projects. If it's not on the board, it doesn't exist.
- Maintain the creator release calendar. We work with multiple YouTube creators whose launch dates drive everything downstream (production, shipping, marketing). The calendar needs to be accurate, current, and visible to the right people.
- Produce a weekly status note — short, plain-language, no fluff — that synthesizes what's moving across the businesses, what's stuck, and what needs the owner's attention this week. Think of it as a 5-minute read on Monday morning.
- Coordinate handoffs between the customer support contractor, the factory liaison (handled by an existing partner), and the owner. Not "send the email for them" — make sure the right person has the right context to do their part.
- Spot drift. If a project hasn't moved in two weeks, ask why. If two people are doing the same thing, raise it. If a launch date is at risk, flag it before it slips.

This role has no access to payment systems, refund authority, or financial accounts. It is a coordination and synthesis role. You'll see what's happening; you won't be moving money.

What we're looking for

- 3+ years of project management or operations experience, ideally for small businesses, agencies, creator-economy companies, or e-commerce brands. Big-company PMO experience is fine but not what we're hiring for.
- Demonstrated comfort with ---------- (or a clear track record with similar tools — ClickUp, Notion, Asana — and willingness to standardize on Monday).
- Clear, concise written English. Your weekly status notes are a deliverable, not an afterthought. We'll read them carefully.
- A synthesis instinct. The hard part of this job isn't tracking tasks — software does that. The hard part is noticing the pattern across tasks: "three different creators are blocked on the same factory," or "we keep promising launch dates we don't hit by the same number of days." We want someone who notices.
- Independence. We don't have time to give you daily direction. You should be the kind of person who reads the state of things, d ---------- what matters, and brings us the three questions worth answering this week.

Bonus, not required

- Experience supporting YouTube creators, Twitch streamers, or other digital-native creative principals
- Experience with Shopify-based merchandise businesses
- Background working across multiple time zones (Philippines, US, China)

How to apply

Send a short message — not a formal cover letter — answering these three things:

1. Describe a time you noticed a problem that nobody had asked you to look for. What was the pattern, how did you spot it, and what did you do about it?
2. Imagine you've just been hired and it's the end of your first week. What would you have done with those 5 hours, and what would your first weekly status note look like? (No need to be exhaustive — a sketch is fine.)
3. Include the phrase "red kite at sunrise" somewhere in your message so I know you read this whole posting.

Applications without all three will not be reviewed. I read every reply personally.