Job highlights

- 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 Engagement Manager should not need to perform every teams job but must have enough understanding to challenge assumptions,ask the right questions and identify gaps.
- What decision is required

Job Summary 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).

Job Details

- 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

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 customers 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.

- 1. 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.

- 1. 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 - Recent 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.

- 1. 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.

- 1. 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.

- 1. 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 teams job but must have enough understanding to challenge assumptions, ask the right questions and identify gaps.

- 1. 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: Its a small change-well 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.

- 1. 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.

- 1. 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.

- 1. 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.

- 1. 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.

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.

Disclaimer: This job posting and Location has been aggregated from external source. Role details, content, and availability are subject to change. Applicants are advised to confirm the latest information directly on the company website before applying.

📌 Client Engagement Manager - Technology Services & Delivery (Chennai)
🏢 TekClan
📍 Chennai