Client Engagement Manager – Technology Services & Delivery

Department: Client Engagement / Professional Services Employment Type: Full-Time Experience: 8–12+ years preferred Reports To: Head of Delivery / COO / CEO Role Type: Client-facing, Delivery & Commercial Governance About the Role We are looking for a strong and commercially minded Client Engagement Manager who will own the relationship between our customers and our technology delivery teams from Statement of Work (SOW) through successful delivery. This is not a traditional Project Manager role. The Client Engagement Manager is expected to understand the SOW, contractual commitments, scope boundaries, deliverables, timelines, assumptions, dependencies, resource commitments and commercial implications of every engagement under their ownership. The person will act as the operational bridge between the customer, Product Owners/Business Analysts, Technology Delivery Teams, QA, Architects, Project Managers and company leadership. A critical responsibility of this role is maintaining alignment between what the customer expects, what the company has contractually committed to deliver, and what the delivery team is actually building. The successful candidate must be comfortable having difficult conversations with customers when necessary. They should know when to say “No” or “Not within the current scope” professionally and constructively, while helping the customer identify the appropriate path forward through prioritization, trade-offs or a formal Change Request (CR). ________________________________________ Key Responsibilities 1. Client Engagement & Relationship Management Own the day-to-day engagement with assigned customers and become the primary point of accountability for delivery. Develop a strong understanding of the customer's business objectives, priorities, stakeholders and expected outcomes. Build trusted relationships while maintaining appropriate professional and commercial boundaries. Conduct regular customer meetings, project reviews, status discussions, steering committee meetings and escalation conversations. Ensure customers have clear visibility into: • Project status • Deliverables • Milestones • Risks and issues • Dependencies • Decisions required • Scope changes • Budget or effort implications • Upcoming activities The Client Engagement Manager should create confidence through clarity, predictability and disciplined execution, rather than simply agreeing to every customer request. ________________________________________ 2. SOW & Contract Governance Before delivery begins, thoroughly understand the signed: • Statement of Work • Contract • Deliverables • In-scope and out-of-scope items • Assumptions • Dependencies • Milestones • Acceptance criteria • Resource commitments • Customer responsibilities • Commercial model • Billing milestones • Change-control provisions Translate contractual commitments into an executable delivery plan with the delivery team. Ensure the entire project team understands exactly what has been committed to the customer. Maintain traceability between: SOW → Requirements → Backlog → Deliverables → Testing → Acceptance → Billing/Milestones Continuously validate that project execution remains aligned with the agreed SOW. ________________________________________ 3. Scope Management – Protect the Engagement One of the most important responsibilities of this role is preventing uncontrolled scope expansion. The Client Engagement Manager must identify situations where customer expectations or requests move beyond the agreed SOW. Examples may include: • Additional features • Additional integrations • New reports or dashboards • Additional workflows • Additional environments • New data sources • Additional user groups • Increased migration scope • Additional testing requirements • Additional documentation • Additional training • Changed business rules • Additional security/compliance requirements • Accelerated timelines • Additional support expectations The Engagement Manager must not allow the delivery team to quietly absorb additional work simply to satisfy the customer. Instead, they must clearly explain: “This requirement is outside the currently agreed scope. We can absolutely evaluate it, but we need to assess the effort, timeline and commercial impact and process it through Change Control.” Being able to professionally say “No—not within the current SOW” is a core expectation of this role. The objective is not to create conflict with the customer. The objective is to maintain transparency and ensure that both organizations understand the consequences of changes. ________________________________________ 4. Change Request (CR) Management Not every missing requirement should simply be rejected. There may be situations where a requirement was not explicitly captured during initial scoping but becomes necessary for the solution to operate successfully from Day One. The Client Engagement Manager must work with the BA, Architect and Delivery Team to determine whether the requirement is: • Already covered by the SOW • A clarification of an existing requirement • A defect • A missed requirement • A necessary dependency • A new requirement • An enhancement • A genuine scope change Where additional effort is required, initiate the formal Change Request process. Every CR should clearly document: • Requested change • Business justification • Original scope • Proposed new scope • Technical impact • Effort required • Resource impact • Timeline impact • Cost impact • Risks • Dependencies • Revised acceptance criteria No material out-of-scope work should enter delivery without appropriate review and approval. The Client Engagement Manager is responsible for ensuring that additional work does not silently consume project margins or create unplanned commitments. ________________________________________ 5. Project & Delivery Management Own the overall delivery governance of assigned customer engagements. Work closely with delivery leads to establish and maintain: • Project plans • Sprint/release plans • Milestones • Deliverables • Dependencies • Resource plans • RAID logs • Decision logs • Action registers • Change Request registers • Customer dependencies • Acceptance criteria Continuously compare: Planned vs. Actual across effort, schedule, scope and deliverables. Identify deviations early rather than waiting until a milestone is missed. Drive corrective actions when projects move away from the agreed plan. ________________________________________ 6. Cross-Functional Team Leadership Work closely with: • Customer stakeholders • Business Analysts • Product Owners • Solution Architects • Developers • Technical Leads • QA Engineers • DevOps/Cloud teams • Project Managers • Account/Sales teams • Finance and Leadership Ensure everyone understands their responsibilities, deliverables and deadlines. The Engagement Manager should not need to perform every team's job but must have enough understanding to challenge assumptions, ask the right questions and identify gaps. ________________________________________ 7. Process Discipline & Team Accountability Establish and enforce delivery discipline across the engagement. Ensure team members consistently follow agreed processes for: • Requirements documentation • User stories • Acceptance criteria • Estimation • Sprint planning • Development • Code review • Testing • Defect management • Documentation • Deployment • Customer acceptance • Change management Avoid informal commitments such as: “It's a small change—we'll just do it.” Every commitment consumes capacity. The Engagement Manager must ensure that effort is understood, prioritized and commercially accounted for. Create a culture where the team raises scope concerns early instead of absorbing additional work without visibility. ________________________________________ 8. Requirements & BA Governance Work closely with Business Analysts to ensure requirements are sufficiently understood before development begins. Ensure requirements have: • Business context • Functional requirements • Non-functional requirements • Acceptance criteria • Dependencies • Assumptions • Data requirements • Integration requirements • UX expectations where applicable Challenge ambiguous requirements before they become development or QA problems. Ensure customer decisions and requirement clarifications are properly documented. ________________________________________ 9. QA, UAT & Acceptance Management Work with QA and customer stakeholders to ensure testing aligns with agreed requirements and acceptance criteria. Ensure there is clarity around: • Test scope • Test environments • Test data • Functional testing • Integration testing • Regression testing • UAT • Defect severity • Release readiness • Customer acceptance Prevent UAT from becoming an uncontrolled requirements-discovery phase where new functionality is treated as defects. Clearly distinguish between: Defect vs. Requirement Gap vs. Enhancement vs. Scope Change. Drive formal customer acceptance of completed milestones and deliverables. ________________________________________ 10. Commercial & Budget Responsibility The Client Engagement Manager must think commercially—not only operationally. Understand: • Project budget • Planned effort • Actual effort • Resource cost • Billable utilization • Remaining budget • Billing milestones • CR revenue • Forecast effort • Project margin Regularly review whether the engagement remains financially healthy. Identify situations where: Effort is increasing but revenue is not. Raise commercial risks immediately. Ensure the company is compensated appropriately for additional services being provided. Customer satisfaction must never come at the cost of uncontrolled scope expansion and loss of project profitability. ________________________________________ 11. Risk & Escalation Management Identify risks before they become issues. Typical risks may include: • Scope creep • Requirement ambiguity • Customer dependency delays • Resource constraints • Integration dependencies • Environment readiness • Data availability • Security approvals • Delayed customer decisions • Technical complexity • Budget overruns • Timeline slippage Maintain clear ownership and mitigation plans. Escalate issues early with facts, options and recommended next steps. Never allow major project problems to remain hidden until deadlines are missed. ________________________________________ 12. Customer Communication Provide concise, fact-based communication to customers. A strong Client Engagement Manager should be capable of communicating: What was agreed. What has been delivered. What remains. What has changed. What is blocking progress. Who owns the dependency. What decision is required. What happens if the decision is delayed. Whether there is a cost or timeline impact. Meeting discussions must result in documented decisions, actions, owners and due dates. ________________________________________ 13. Pre-Sales to Delivery Transition Participate in handover from Sales/Pre-Sales before project commencement. Review the proposal, SOW and commercial commitments critically. Identify gaps between what was sold and what can realistically be delivered. Challenge unclear assumptions before the project begins. Ensure that Sales commitments are properly translated into delivery commitments and that the delivery team understands what has been promised. ________________________________________ What Success Looks Like A successful Client Engagement Manager will ensure that: • Customers know exactly what to expect. • Delivery teams know exactly what they are responsible for. • Projects remain aligned with signed SOWs. • Scope creep is identified and controlled. • CRs are raised when additional work is required. • Customer dependencies are documented and actively managed. • Risks are identified early. • Teams consistently follow delivery processes. • Milestones are achieved predictably. • Deliverables receive formal customer acceptance. • Additional effort does not silently reduce project margins. • Leadership has accurate visibility into project health. • Difficult customer conversations happen early rather than after a project has already gone off track. ________________________________________ Required Experience We are looking for candidates with approximately 8–12+ years of experience across technology consulting, professional services, project/program management or client engagement. The candidate should have significant experience directly managing enterprise customers and technology delivery engagements. Strong experience is required in: • Client engagement management • IT services / technology consulting • Project and program management • SOW management • Scope management • Change Request management • Commercial/budget management • Agile/Scrum delivery • Enterprise software implementations • Requirements management • UAT and release management • Risk management • Executive stakeholder communication Experience managing fixed-price or milestone-based engagements is particularly valuable because these environments require strong scope and commercial discipline. ________________________________________ Skills & Competencies Client Leadership Able to build trusted customer relationships without becoming purely customer-driven. Assertiveness Comfortable challenging customers, internal teams and leadership when expectations are inconsistent with contractual commitments. Commercial Awareness Understands that effort, scope, timelines, resources and profitability are interconnected. Negotiation Able to navigate difficult conversations around scope, deadlines, priorities, CRs and commercial implications. Project Management Strong understanding of planning, estimation, dependencies, milestones, risks and delivery governance. Technology Understanding Does not need to be the solution architect but must understand enterprise software delivery sufficiently to challenge teams and communicate effectively with customers. Communication Excellent written and verbal communication with the ability to communicate equally effectively with executives, business stakeholders and technical teams. Attention to Detail Able to identify inconsistencies between SOWs, requirements, plans and actual execution. Ownership Does not wait for problems to resolve themselves. Drives issues through to closure. ________________________________________ The Mindset We Are Looking For The ideal candidate understands that great client engagement does not mean saying “Yes” to everything. It means creating a relationship where commitments are clear, decisions are transparent and both organizations understand their responsibilities. They should naturally ask: “Is this in the SOW?” “What is the acceptance criterion?” “Who owns this dependency?” “Was this requirement previously agreed?” “What additional effort will this require?” “What is the timeline impact?” “What is the commercial impact?” “Do we need a Change Request?” “Has the customer formally accepted this deliverable?” They should be equally comfortable telling the internal delivery team: “We committed to this in the SOW. We need to deliver it.” and telling the customer: “We can support this requirement, but it is outside the agreed scope. Let's evaluate it through the Change Request process so we can properly align the scope, timeline and commercial impact.” ________________________________________ Preferred Qualifications • Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Business, Management or related field • PMP / PRINCE2 / PMI-ACP or equivalent project management certification • Scrum/Agile certification • Experience in enterprise consulting or professional services organizations • Experience with SaaS, cloud, AI, data, CRM, BPM/workflow or enterprise application implementations • Experience managing distributed/onshore/offshore delivery teams • Experience working with customers in the US, UK and/or European markets ________________________________________ Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Performance for this role should be measured across both customer success and commercial delivery discipline, including: • On-time milestone achievement • SOW compliance • Scope variance • Budget vs. actual effort • Project gross margin protection • Change Requests identified and commercially captured • Customer acceptance turnaround • Project risk management • Customer satisfaction • Escalation frequency and resolution • Forecast accuracy • Delivery predictability • Process compliance across project teams The objective is not simply to keep the customer happy. The objective is to create successful, predictable and commercially healthy customer engagements where the customer receives what was committed, the delivery team operates with clarity, and the company is appropriately compensated for the services it provides.