The Senior Director of Client Engagement is a strategic client and professional services leadership role at CampusWorks responsible for the successful delivery and client outcomes of a portfolio of professional services engagements. Reporting to the Vice President of Client Engagement, the Senior Director serves as the primary point of contact for professional services delivery within assigned client accounts and is accountable for delivery excellence, client satisfaction, trusted client relationships, forecast accuracy, timely revenue recognition, and on-time and on-budget project completion.
The Senior Director leads professional services engagements from initiation through completion, including workplan development, project oversight, client alignment, engagement economics, and direction of assigned project teams. Consultants assigned to engagements are formally managed within the Services organization; however, the Senior Director directs their work on assigned engagements and provides timely and substantive feedback regarding their performance.
The Senior Director works closely with Resource Management, Services, Client Engagement leadership, and Commercial teams to ensure engagements are appropriately staffed, client commitments are achieved, risks are addressed, and opportunities for additional client value are identified. In collaboration with the Vice President of Client Engagement, the Senior Director supports account strategy and builds strong relationships across assigned clients.
This position requires strong professional services delivery experience, sound business and financial judgment, executive-level client relationship skills, and the ability to lead effectively across a matrixed organization. This position will be 35% billable.
Essential Job Duties:
- Own the successful delivery of professional services projects and interim leader engagements within assigned accounts, ensuring contracted services, deliverables, quality standards, timelines, and expected client outcomes are achieved.
- Lead all aspects of engagement initiation, including transition from contract to delivery, workplan development, project launch, establishment of delivery expectations, and coordination of assigned resources.
- Develop and maintain clear, actionable workplans aligned with the statement of work, client priorities, project milestones, resource requirements, and expected outcomes.
- Define engagement resource requirements and collaborate with Resource Management and Services leadership to identify appropriate resources and make adjustments as client or project needs change.
- Orient, lead, and coach assigned project teams throughout the engagement, providing clear direction regarding project objectives, client expectations, deliverables, schedules, and work quality.
- Monitor engagement performance, milestones, deliverables, risks, dependencies, and client issues and take timely action to keep projects progressing toward expected outcomes.
- Identify and address project delays, scope concerns, client dependencies, resource issues, and other conditions that may affect successful delivery.
- Manage project closeout, including confirming completion of contracted outcomes, capturing lessons learned, and identifying opportunities to improve future delivery.
- Manage a portfolio of concurrent client engagements while appropriately balancing client priorities, project complexity, delivery risk, and organizational commitments.
- Serve as the primary point of contact for client stakeholders regarding professional services delivery within assigned accounts.
- Build trusted relationships with client sponsors, executives, project leaders, and other stakeholders through regular communication, sound judgment, responsiveness, and a clear understanding of institutional priorities.
- Lead regular client meetings and project reviews to communicate progress, confirm priorities, gather feedback, address concerns, and maintain alignment between client expectations and contracted services.
- Understand clients' evolving needs and challenges and adjust engagement plans, within the boundaries of the contracted scope, to ensure work remains relevant and produces meaningful outcomes.
- Help clients resolve barriers that may delay project progress, decisions, access to information, or achievement of expected outcomes.
- Review project deliverables and work products to ensure they meet client expectations, demonstrate appropriate quality, and clearly communicate the impact and value of the work.
- Act as a trusted advisor by helping client leaders connect project activities and recommendations to their broader institutional goals.
- Direct the work of consultants assigned to professional services engagements in alignment with the statement of work, project plan, client expectations, and CampusWorks standards.
- Establish clear expectations for assigned project team members regarding responsibilities, deliverables, deadlines, client interaction, communication, and work quality.
- Maintain regular communication with project team members to monitor progress, resolve barriers, ensure accountability, and support successful project delivery.
- Provide timely, candid, and substantive performance feedback regarding assigned consultants to the appropriate Services leader for employees and Resource Management for independent contractors.
- Promptly identify performance, capability, availability, or fit concerns that may affect engagement outcomes and work with Services and Resource Management leadership to determine appropriate action.
- Partner with Services leadership regarding consultant capability and readiness while recognizing that formal supervision, professional development, and employee performance management reside within the Services organization.
- Participate, as appropriate, in the identification, interviewing, and selection of consultants needed to meet specific client or engagement requirements.
- Manage the financial performance of assigned engagements within the levers available to Client Engagement, with a focus on timely revenue recognition, accurate forecasting, delivery efficiency, scope management, and gross margin performance.
- Ensure engagements begin promptly and effectively following contract execution so that delivery and revenue recognition are not unnecessarily delayed.
- Maintain accurate engagement workplans and forecasts and proactively manage conditions that may create revenue or delivery variance.
- Monitor assigned consulting hours against the workplan and collaborate with project teams, clients, Resource Management, and Services leadership to address significant variances.
- Manage project-specific utilization of assigned resources by ensuring consultant time is aligned with planned work, client availability, engagement milestones, and evolving project requirements.
- Protect engagement economics by actively managing scope, avoiding unnecessary non-billable activity, monitoring travel and other project expenses, and promoting efficient delivery.
- Identify opportunities to deliver contracted outcomes more efficiently while maintaining quality, client satisfaction, and the integrity of the engagement.
- Monitor gross margin performance against expectations established at contract signing and proactively identify and communicate risks that may affect financial performance.
- Listen for emerging client challenges, priorities, and unmet needs during normal delivery activities and identify opportunities where CampusWorks may be able to provide additional value.
- Communicate qualified business development leads and client needs promptly to the appropriate Client Engagement or Commercial leader.
- Provide delivery expertise, client context, and subject matter support to Client Engagement and Commercial teams as they evaluate potential opportunities.
- Participate in client meetings, proposal development, finalist presentations, solution design, and other business development activities when delivery or subject matter expertise is needed.
- Support account strategy in partnership with the Vice President of Client Engagement by providing insight into client priorities, organizational dynamics, project outcomes, emerging risks, and potential areas of future need.
- Maintain appropriate separation between delivery leadership and commercial ownership. The Senior Director identifies and supports opportunities but does not own commercial negotiations, Salesforce opportunity management, contracting, or booking.
- Identify recurring delivery challenges, client needs, project risks, and successful practices across assigned engagements and share those insights with appropriate Client Engagement, Services, and organizational leaders.
- Use project outcomes, client feedback, and lessons learned to recommend improvements to service delivery, engagement practices, tools, and supporting processes.
- Contribute practical client and delivery insight to the continued evolution of CampusWorks' professional services offerings.
- Collaborate across Client Engagement, Services, Resource Management, Commercial, and other functions to improve client outcomes while maintaining clear functional accountabilities.
- Represent client and engagement needs in cross-functional discussions and proactively surface risks when organizational dependencies may affect client commitments.
Client Engagement Leadership:
Client Relationship Management:
Project Team Leadership and Performance:
Engagement Economics, Forecasting, and Resource Utilization:
Client Growth and Business Development Support:
Portfolio and Service Improvement:
Additional Responsibilities
- Travel to client sites, as needed
- Other duties, as assigned.
Required Skills/Abilities:
- Demonstrated ability to lead and direct matrixed project teams, including consultants who do not directly report to the position.
- Demonstrated ability to provide clear direction, candid performance feedback, and effective coaching in a professional services environment.
- Experience managing senior-level client relationships and working directly with executives and other institutional decision-makers.
- Strong business and financial acumen, including understanding of professional services revenue, utilization, project economics, forecasting, scope management, and gross margin.
- Demonstrated ability to identify client needs and business opportunities while maintaining appropriate boundaries between professional services delivery and commercial ownership.
- Strong understanding of higher education trends, challenges, operating environments, and opportunities strongly preferred.
- Experience leading transformation initiatives within higher education or similarly complex organizations preferred.
- Excellent written, verbal, presentation, facilitation, and executive communication skills.
- Strong judgment and the ability to navigate competing priorities, organizational dependencies, resource constraints, and complex client situations.
- Demonstrated ability to work effectively across organizational boundaries and achieve results through collaboration, influence, clear accountability, and timely escalation.
- Strategic and results-oriented mindset with the ability to connect project execution to client outcomes, organizational performance, and long-term client value.
Minimum Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree, in a related field.
- 5+ years professional services, consulting, project/program delivery, or comparable client-services leadership experience, including responsibility for multiple concurrent client engagements.
- 5+ years experience working in higher education or in an organization serving higher education institutions.
- Demonstrated experience developing and managing project workplans, schedules, deliverables, risks, budgets, forecasts, and engagement economics.
Preferred Qualifications:
- 10+ years of progressively responsible professional services, consulting, client engagement, or higher education leadership experience.
- Experience leading transformation initiatives within higher education or similarly complex organizations.
What You Can Expect from Us
At CampusWorks, we don't just help our clients succeed; we help our employees succeed. Competitive pay, robust benefits for full-time employees, and professional development opportunities are a few of the many reasons that CampusWorks is a great place to build your career.
Our employees enjoy:
Meaningful work. Our employees often tell us that their work gives them a sense of purpose because it makes a difference in the lives of students and educators. CampusWorks Inc., as a large consulting firm, provides its employees with an opportunity to work both onsite and remotely with our clients across the United States and in Canada. With the nature of our clients’ work evolving quickly, we’re all being asked to support larger CampusWorks initiatives. Upon joining CampusWorks in a consulting role, your talent and expertise may be applied to a range of projects, assignments, and clients.
A virtual and onsite workplace. In an effort to reduce our environmental footprint, CampusWorks became a virtual company in 2012. As such, our team members are located across the U.S. and Canada, where they work from their home offices and at client sites.
Flexibility. We value work-life balance because we know that happy employees create happy customers. That's why CampusWorks offers both full-time and part-time 1099 consulting career opportunities to fit life's unique demands.
A company that gives back. Every year CampusWorks proudly supports numerous charitable fundraising initiatives that align with our vision to make higher education accessible to everyone.
At CampusWorks, we value the unique backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives each CampusWorker (we call ourselves CampusWorkers) brings to our workplace each day. We believe everyone deserves a fair shot at success and appreciate the experiences each person brings beyond the traditional job requirements. If you are passionate about higher education and creating Happy Campuses, let's talk! If you’re a close but not exact match with the description, we hope you’ll still consider applying.
About CampusWorks
Founded in 1999, CampusWorks is dedicated to helping higher education overcome business and technological challenges that stand in the way of student success and completion. We work with community colleges, technical colleges, four-year public and private institutions, multi-college districts, and statewide higher education systems to tackle problems big and small. Our services are rooted in systems thinking and reach across the institution—from Student Services to Human Resources to Finance to Academics—to achieve transformative results.
Want to learn more about life at CampusWorks? Visit https://www.campusworksinc.com/about/ to see how we empower Higher Education to reach its full potential
Friendly Note to External Agencies:
At CampusWorks, we kindly request that you please refrain from submitting blind submissions or resumes/CVs on behalf of recruitment agencies. To ensure a smooth and effective collaboration, we would like to inform you that any candidates sent to us without a signed agreement in place will regrettably not be accepted or considered as a submission.
CampusWorks, Inc. provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, amnesty or status as a covered veteran in accordance with applicable federal, state and local laws.
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