Customer Engagement Manager
Posted Updated
Description
- The Director, Customer Delivery & Outcomes owns a portfolio of strategic enterprise accounts end-to-end: every engagement, every outcome, every relationship, every expansion opportunity
- Think of this as the McKinsey Associate Partner model applied to enterprise AI delivery
- You are the single point of accountability for your accounts
- The customer calls you — not your manager — when they have a problem
- You staff delivery teams, oversee solution quality, run executive readouts, measure ROI, drive adoption, rebuild trust when things break, and grow the book through proven production value
- This is not a project management role
- This is an account ownership role that combines delivery orchestration, outcome ownership, customer leadership, and commercial growth
- Own your accounts end-to-end: every engagement, every outcome, every relationship. Everything good or bad stops with you
- Be the single point of contact the customer calls for any problem — delivery, quality, adoption, escalation, or expansion
- Maintain a holistic view of each account: engagement status, risk exposure, opportunity pipeline, and the customer’s strategic priorities for the quarter
- Run account planning: engagement roadmaps, resource forecasting, risk assessment, and growth strategy
- Staff and direct delivery teams (Engineering Leads, Implementation Managers, AI Application Engineers) across your accounts
- Oversee delivery quality across all engagements: review solution architectures, attend go-live rehearsals, ensure evaluation rigor
- Manage cross-engagement dependencies within an account (e.g., shared integration infrastructure between parallel deployments)
- Serve as the delivery escalation point: join war rooms, coordinate fixes across Engineering and Product, and communicate resolution to the customer
- You don’t write code — but you review architectures, challenge unrealistic scope, and ensure go-live readiness. Your leverage is orchestration and judgment
- Own post-go-live outcomes: adoption, ROI, accuracy, and user trust. This role absorbs the Outcomes Manager function for your accounts
- Run regular usage readouts: AI deflection rates, false positive/negative trends, HITL escalation patterns, user bypass rates, and trust signals
- Separate product gaps from process, training, or expectation gaps. Not everything that looks broken is an engineering problem
- Drive continuous improvement cycles: readout → diagnose → prioritize → fix → re-measure
- Communicate outcomes in business language: efficiency gains, cost savings, error reduction — not just dashboards, but diagnosis and action plans
- Run QBRs with VP/C-level stakeholders: present outcomes, risks, improvement plans, and the strategic roadmap
- Navigate internal customer politics: when the VP of IT and VP of Business disagree on priorities, facilitate alignment around shared success metrics
- Communicate bad news credibly: present the data, the diagnosis, and the recovery plan — without losing trust
- Handle C-level escalations. When the CTO threatens to terminate or the CFO questions ROI, you are the person in the room
- Grow your book through outcome-driven expansion: deliver the first SOW excellently, measure ROI rigorously, present evidence to the C-suite, then propose the next SOW grounded in proven value
- Identify new use cases by deeply understanding customer business processes and pain points — not by pushing a product catalog
- Know when to push for expansion vs. when to stabilize. Premature expansion erodes trust. You earn the right to grow by delivering first
- Co-sell with Sales: provide the delivery credibility and outcome evidence that makes expansion proposals close
- Act as the voice of your customers to Product and Core Engineering. Translate field patterns into structured, actionable feedback — not one-off requests
- Identify cross-customer patterns that signal platform gaps or opportunities
- Partner with Product on customer-facing roadmap discussions: what’s coming, what’s not, and how to manage expectations
- Coach Engineering Leads and Implementation Managers on architecture quality, customer communication, delivery discipline, and outcome thinking
- Promote shared standards and best practices across engagements
- Build reusable account-level assets: engagement playbooks, QBR templates, outcome tracking frameworks, and expansion qualification criteria
- Track record managing or directing delivery teams (Engineering Leads, TPMs, consultants) assigned to their accounts
- Post-go-live outcome ownership: measured ROI, tracked adoption, driven continuous improvement, and rebuilt trust after production issues
- Commercial accountability: grown account revenue through outcome-driven expansion, not just retention
- Production track record — beyond POCs. Scale and accountability required
- 15+ years in enterprise technology delivery, consulting, account management, or customer leadership
- 5+ years owning enterprise accounts end-to-end: delivery, outcomes, relationship, and growth — not individual projects within someone else’s account
- Enterprise stakeholder management at VP/C-level across multiple concurrent accounts
- Experience in a scaling startup ($5M–$50M ARR) where account management practices were being built, not inherited
- Familiarity with enterprise integrations (APIs, auth, CRM/HRIS/ITSM platforms) at a judgment level, not implementation level
- Experience with partner-mediated delivery (delivering through consulting partners to end clients)
- Background at a consulting firm (McKinsey, BCG, Deloitte) or enterprise SaaS PS org (ServiceNow, Salesforce, UiPath) in a delivery-heavy account leadership role
- Experience with AI, automation, or agentic workflow platforms in production