Engagement Manager

We’re hiring an Engagement Manager

Employment type: Full Time/Direct Hire

Location: Northern Virginia/DC Metro Area & Richmond, VA

Location Type: Hybrid - Home Office/Local Ippon office

About Ippon:

The Ippon story started in 2002 in Paris, France - cue in the accordion. Our founder and CEO Stéphane Nomis used his unique experience as an international Judo champion to create a culture based on the sports values of ambition and excellence. Our USA Headquarters office is located in Richmond, VA, with additional offices in New York, NY, Washington DC, and Charlotte, NC. We are a technology consulting firm that specializes in helping accelerate our client’s digital roadmap in the areas of Product Management, Cloud, Data, and Software Engineering.

About the position:

The Engagement Manager owns the long-term health, relationship, and growth trajectory of 1-2 assigned strategic accounts. The role sits at the intersection of client relationship stewardship, account revenue growth, and internal orchestration - accountable for extending existing work, originating new opportunities, and making sure the client experiences one coherent Ippon, not a set of disconnected project teams.

The role carries two distinct sets of responsibilities. Billable work: acting as a hands-on project/program lead, applying deep subject matter expertise to the delivery of active engagements. Non-billable work: driving account growth through relationship building, need sensing, and opportunity development. The ideal candidate brings strong project/program management skills, executive presence, a passion for delivering innovative solutions, and the hunger to find and chase growth opportunities. Financial services domain experience is strongly preferred, along with a genuine curiosity to develop a deep understanding of the client's business.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Billable Work - Project Oversight & Subject Matter Expertise

• Own delivery by serving as a billable consultant, applying project, program, or product management expertise on assigned engagements - matched to what the client's engagement actually needs.
• Develop and manage project/program plans, timelines, budgets, and resource allocation, or own product roadmap and backlog priorities when serving in a product management capacity.
• Lead a regular cadence of client meetings to review status, action items, and deliverables.
• Collaborate with cross-functional and technical teams to keep delivery on time and on budget.
• Identify and mitigate project risks, and resolve issues before they escalate.
• Work with the Technical Lead to assign responsibilities within the project team and set clear expectations.
• Optimize and negotiate resource allocation to maximize project efficiency.
• Ensure the Ippon delivery playbook is followed, and feed back ideas on process improvements.

Non-Billable Work - Account Growth

Relationship Building & Business Acumen

• Build and personally maintain relationships across multiple levels and functions of the client organization, backed by a live stakeholder/relationship map (role, influence, sentiment, last touchpoint) and a regular cadence of relationship-only touchpoints, separate from project status meetings.
• Understand the client's business strategy, budget cycles, org structure, and competitive pressures well enough to connect Ippon's capability to what the client is actually trying to achieve, bringing outside market and industry perspective into client conversations.

Growth & Opportunity Development

• Own a revenue target for the assigned account(s), delivered through a mix of extension of existing engagements and net-new opportunities; track every active SOW's end date and drive extension conversations 6-8 weeks ahead of expiration.
• Co-draft SOW extensions and change orders with the AE and finance, and partner with the AE and pre-sales team to scope and draft proposals and SOWs for new opportunities.
• Build structured account intelligence over time (org charts, budget cycles, technology roadmap, competitive pressures) and run a deliberate need-sensing cadence (skip-levels, delivery-lead debriefs, post-go-live retros to surface needs before they're formal projects).
• Maintain the account's pipeline in Salesforce with realistic stages and a weighted forecast, and speak to coverage ratio against target at any point in the quarter.

Account Health & Internal Alignment

• Own the overall account health view, delivery quality, relationship strength, financial health, and growth trajectory and run or actively shape Quarterly Business Reviews with a clear agenda and honest scorecard.
• Escalate internally with enough lead time that leadership hears about risk from the Engagement Manager first, not the client.
• Align delivery leads, AE, practice leadership, staffing/talent, and finance around a single, current view of the account through a regular internal sync, and manage handoffs cleanly when a delivery lead rotates off.
• Use Claude (Chat, Cowork, Design) and account health dashboards to prepare for meetings, synthesize account intelligence, and turn notes into account plan updates (a force multiplier, not a replacement for client time).

Competencies we are looking for:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of experience as a PM in a client-facing IT consulting role, with strong knowledge of project management methodologies and best practices.
• 3+ years of experience as a PM supporting technical product roadmaps and strategies.
• Strong communication, leadership, and interpersonal skills; comfortable pivoting between business and technical audiences.
• Experience working in or strong familiarity with the financial services domain (enterprise experience with a large financial services company preferred).
• Familiarity with Salesforce and with Claude (Chat, Cowork, Design) or comparable AI tools for account planning and client prep.
• Prior experience in Product Management, Project/Program Management, or IT Strategy.
• Account management or change management certification a plus
• Availability to travel to client sites for major meetings (QBRs, executive touchpoints, kickoffs) typically 4 trips per year across assigned accounts, roughly 5-10% travel.

What we offer:

• Generous Paid Time Off policy - Ippon offers flexible time off to help you be your best
• Health, dental, and vision insurance - We are dedicated to helping our employees live healthier lives through comprehensive health programs
• 401k with company match - Ippon offers an industry leading 401(k) matching plan
• Family Leave - We support the importance of family and offer maternity, paternity, and family medical leave plans
• A fun, smart, and healthy work environment, focused on our values and teamwork