Client Engagement Manager

Job Description

The Client Engagement Manager is the gatekeeper of Product and Services resources for strategic ERP opportunities, partnering with Account Executives from early-stage discovery through Statement of Work execution and hand-off to Delivery. This role owns solution scoping, deal economics, and commercial structuring for QAD Adaptive ERP and Champion AI engagements, ensuring every proposal is grounded in disciplined discovery, priced to protect margin, and staffed for predictable delivery. Acting as the primary Professional Services counterpart to Sales, the Client Engagement Manager balances competitiveness with commercial rigor and ensures a clean transition from sales engagement to project execution.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Pre-Sales Discovery & Solution Scoping

• Partner with Account Executives from early-stage opportunities to shape services positioning and deal strategy.
• Lead structured discovery covering services scope: pain points, workflows, success criteria, delivery considerations, and training requirements.
• Support the AE in architecting the solution and defining services components (deliverables, timeline, effort), incorporating Solutions Engineering input on technical feasibility and dependencies.
• Enforce engagement request prioritization, directing Tier 2 and smaller opportunities to self-service playbooks so direct support is reserved for the highest-value deals.

SOW Development & Commercial Structuring

• Draft and validate Statements of Work in partnership with the AE, defining scope boundaries, assumptions, dependencies, and acceptance criteria.
• Validate pricing, discounting, and total cost of ownership to protect deal economics, including in multi-year contract structures.
• Review commercial arrangements — services pricing, risk-sharing, and contract terms — for consistency with company policy.
• Recommend resource allocation for delivery based on scope, timeline, and required skill sets.

Deal Governance & Sales Partnership

• Serve as the primary Professional Services liaison to the Account Executive throughout the sales cycle, including participation in deal reviews.
• Ensure alignment with Services Delivery on the proposed solution before a deal is closed.
• Track win/loss drivers and request patterns to inform playbook and resource-allocation improvements.
• Maintain current knowledge of service offerings and industry-specific playbooks to support consistent, competitive proposals.

Delivery Hand-Off & Continuity

• Co-lead the hand-off from Sales to Services Delivery, ensuring the delivery team receives a complete, validated SOW and supporting discovery artifacts.
• Act as an escalation point for pre-sales misalignment or scope disputes prior to project kick-off.
• Partner with Delivery leadership to feed field learnings back into scoping standards and estimation models.

Qualifications

Experience

• 5+ years in Professional Services, Solutions Consulting, or Pre-Sales within ERP or enterprise SaaS environments.
• Demonstrated experience writing and negotiating Statements of Work, estimating project scope and effort, and structuring services pricing.
• Working knowledge of ERP implementation methodologies (manufacturing, supply chain, or related domains) strongly preferred.
• Experience partnering directly with Account Executives in a matrixed Sales / Delivery organization.

Skills & Competencies

• Strong commercial acumen: pricing strategy, margin protection, forecasting, and contract structuring.
• Ability to translate discovery findings into an executable, well-bounded scope of work.
• Comfortable applying pricing and scoping discipline under sales-cycle time pressure.
• Proficiency with CRM/CPQ tooling (, Salesforce) and services estimation tools.
• Executive-level written and verbal communication skills.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree required; MBA or equivalent advanced degree a plus.

Additional Expectations

• Willingness to travel as required to support key client engagements and on-site discovery workshops.

• Ability to operate across time zones in support of global account teams.

• High level of rigor in scope definition, risk identification, and governance under sales-cycle time pressure.

Additional Information

• Compensation:
• Plus a strong benefits package inclusive of PTO, 401K matching, and Healthcare/Medical Insurance plans.
• Virtual-First Culture: work remotely, with the flexibility to lead in-person customer workshops in your market.
• Atmosphere of Growth: join a team where idea-sharing is prioritized over hierarchy, at the leading edge of agentic AI for manufacturing.
• Comprehensive Benefits: health, dental, vision, PTO, 401K matching, and a collaborative culture of smart, hard-working people.