Engagement Director

THE ROLE: ENGAGEMENT DIRECTOR

The Engagement Director is a holistic systems thinker, empathetic team driver, with excellent interpersonal skills who builds and nurtures long-lasting client relationships. They’re someone who embraces (even relishes) the unexpected nature of the business, agile in various working scenarios, while being the ultimate planner and a champion of process and, more importantly, the work. 

As team leaders, they must understand, support, and motivate multi-disciplinary teams, all in support of strategic and creative excellence. They’ll need to fly at 30,000ft and 3ft—driving operational impact and executional excellence. 

As a senior voice when it comes to client empathy and perspective, they guide teams through the client ecosystem, coaching team members on client interactions/exchanges, modeling best practices and behaviors. They take the lead and do not shy away from uncomfortable dialogue in pursuit of the best project outcome, through honest and clear conversations. 

Their leadership helps shape the culture within the Engagement group, constantly helping navigate new and unexpected challenges across all projects with an eye for mentoring the Engagement Managers and Engagement Leads to their full potential.

The Engagement Director plays the role of brand stewards to SYLVAIN’s strategic and creative craft. They foster a deep understanding and investment in the development of the work, steering teams through the day-to-day operations with a constant eye towards the larger vision and future opportunities. In partnership with their core triad team they navigate organic growth, always capitalizing on their understanding of the client business (and category at large), the client hierarchy (and dynamics), and what excites SYLVAIN internal teams.

TYPICAL ACTIVITIES + RESPONSIBILITIES:

Client Partnership

• Managing and fostering strong client relationships—from day-to-day up to C-Suite—as a core partner and consultant throughout the engagement lifecycle.
• Acting as a strategic and creative thought partner to discipline leads in Strategy and Design.
• Viewing situations and work through “client eyes” in order to position the team for success.
• Analyzing the client ecosystem to better navigate the work across the right audiences and stakeholders.
• Manages project scopes and negotiates solutions with a balance of client empathy and business mindedness.
• Identifying organic growth opportunities; actively seeking and converting new projects, with inputs from Senior Leadership & Biz Dev team.
• Gaining a deep understanding of the client organization and dynamics, building extended relationships, and facilitating important connections.
• When appropriate, leading the RFP process internally. Writing clear compelling proposals, creating scopes of work, and negotiating through to final alignment, in partnership with L-Team.

Project Management 

• Actively managing projects at different altitudes, depending on project needs, team structure, and seniority of other team members.
• Co-leading a “group” of multi-disciplinary teams in partnership with Design Directors and Directors of Strategy.
• “Steering” a wide range of projects, including new kinds of deliverables and bespoke approaches or methodologies.
• As the project architect, leading the translation of complex scopes and engagements into clear project plans, structures, teams, and flow. At times “driving” when a project requires it.
• Providing oversight, when working with EMs and ELs, to ensure they are successfully “driving” their project responsibilities.
• Designing successful project plans with strategy and design teams across multi-week and multi-month engagements, ensuring efficient and empathetic work plans.
• Managing the creative strategic process and workflow, anticipating, communicating and adjusting for team needs, developing strong cadences for collaborative moments, and proactively re-steering when adjustments must be made.
• Facilitates strong working relationships within project teams, and ensures full understanding of objectives, roles, feedback, responsibilities, and timeframes for deliveries.

Business Operations

• Fluency and understanding of SYLVAIN’s business model and process to oversee business operations across multiple projects, guiding teams towards compliance and profitable project execution.
• Actively monitoring all open projects within their assigned projects and EMs: tracking against deliverables and milestones, real-time actuals, potential overages, and compliance with service agreements.
• Managing EMs and ELs to ensure that the process for financial tracking and reporting on assigned projects are established and updated on a timely basis.
• Providing guidance and solutions when financial and/or operational issues arise.
• Actively work with our Finance and Leadership teams in preparing and analyzing financial data to help inform critical business decisions.
• As part of the Engagement Leadership team, help to establish and enforce Engagement best practices, proposing tools and processes to facilitate the Engagement discipline.
• Coaching and developing Engagement Managers through the day-to-day of projects, and identifying knowledge gaps and/or opportunities for L&D.

THE IDEAL CANDIDATE

The ideal candidate will be a... 

• Empathetic leader
• Strategic multi-tasker
• Relationship builder
• Flexible collaborator
• Optimistic problem solver
• Impeccable organizer
• Ruthless prioritizer
• Clear communicator
• Cultural contributor

Other requirements:

• 7+ years of experience in a similar role and setting
• Experience in Strategy, Design, and Campaign projects
• Mastery of G Suite (Google Drive) and MS Office Suite
• A knowledge of the Adobe suite of products
• Must be willing to work in the office part time

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

The base salary for this position at the time of posting ranges by region, outlined below. Individual compensation may vary based on business needs, experience, responsibility level, and qualifications. Not all applicants’ experience will match the qualifications of this role, in which case an alternative role or level may be suggested. 

New York City: $135,000-$165,000 per year

The role is eligible for annual review and a discretionary annual bonus. We offer Open PTO and a robust benefits package that includes 401K with a percentage match, an annual culture and development budget, access to ClassPass, and a suite of benefits through our PEO provider, Justworks.

We currently offer a flexible working schedule, including ‘Work from Anywhere’ benefits throughout the year. Candidates must be willing to work from the office 2-3 days a week, most weeks.

ABOUT SYLVAIN 

SYLVAIN is a strategy and design company that makes new human and business value for the Now, Novel, and Next. Dissatisfied with the status quo, we collect unorthodox perspectives and uncommon ways of framing the future. By seeking better answers, and pushing for more purpose, we’re solving the most consequential business challenges of our time—always inspiring, inciting, and provoking progress. 

Founded in
 2010, SYLVAIN is a member of kyu Collective, a group of independently-led companies that share a similar mission. We have offices in New York City; Richmond, VA; Los Angeles, CA; and Amsterdam, NL.

Learn more about us at our website, or follow us on Instagram. And check out more of our thinking on our weekly newsletter: Progress Report, and our podcast: Critical Nonsense.

DIVERSITY AT SYLVAIN

SYLVAIN is committed to building and sustaining a culture that celebrates our diversity and is rooted in community. We recognize that the collective sum of individual differences, life experiences, knowledge, innovation, self-expression, and talent that our employees invest in their work represents a significant part of not only our culture, but our reputation and company’s achievement.

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we embrace and encourage our employees’ differences in age, race, ethnicity, disability, family or marital status, gender identity or expression, language, natural origin, religion, socio-economic status, veteran status, and other characteristics that make our employees unique. Lending such an array of qualities to our work ensures a human-centered approach to our way of doing things and treatment of each other.