Manager, AI & CX Services
Customer Experience & AI EnablementPosition Summary
The Manager, AI & CX Services leads a professional services delivery team of CX and contact center engineers, delivering complex implementations and migrations across leading CCaaS and UC platforms, plus custom development and Applied AI. The Manager owns the team's delivery margin, budget, and burn and is accountable for on time, on quality delivery across the full lifecycle.
Leading and developing the team day to day, the Manager reads the funnel to plan capacity, supports pre-sales scoping, and partners across Sales and commercial, pre-sales, and proposal colleagues. Depth in one or more contact center/CCaaS platforms is expected, with breadth across the ecosystem valued.
Key Responsibilities
- Manage a professional services delivery team of CX/contact center engineers to deliver complex implementations and migrations across leading CCaaS/UC platforms and custom development/Applied AI, often spanning multiple platforms and customer locations.
- Manage resources, schedules, and financials, including the delivery margin, budget, and burn for the team (or single team practice) held, and adhere to stage gate quality and control guidelines throughout the full delivery lifecycle.
- Lead, coach, and develop the team day to day: assign and balance work; build and motivate the team to meet goals, milestones, and responsibilities; and provide feedback, mentorship, and training.
- Manage issues, risks, change requests, dependencies, and critical path deliverables to ensure successful, on time delivery.
- Serve as the central point of contact and primary interface for project escalations; establish client and business relationships and manage customer expectations.
- Plan, document, and manage go-live events and related production changes, including go-live and immediate post go-live incident support, and availability for after hours cutovers, change windows, and urgent escalations as needed.
- Read the sales funnel and convert it into a forward capacity view for the team; flag under-utilization and hiring needs early.
- Support pre-sales: review proposal material, SOWs, and executed contracts to determine scope and required resource teams; contribute scoping, feasibility, and level of effort; and protect margin during pre-sales for the team (or single team practice) held.
- Provide status reporting and dashboards on milestones, deliverables, dependencies, risks, issues, and KPIs to leadership and stakeholders; analyze results and troubleshoot problem areas.
- Review the customer satisfaction and delivery results (CSAT, NPS, and delivery KPIs) for the team and use data driven insights to identify pain points, bottlenecks, and areas for improvement.
- Lead process improvement and help establish delivery practices, templates, tools, and standards, applying lean and agile methods to streamline workflows and drive continuous improvement, and conduct lessons learned reviews at project closure with after action reports.
- Ensure delivery meets Waterfield Tech standards and remains compliant with RFP, SOW, and contract terms; maintain booking, time entry, and delivery operations within Microsoft Dynamics 365/Project Operations.
- Collaborate with People & Culture to recruit, onboard, and retain talent and build a collaborative, inclusive team.
- Continue professional development to stay current on emerging technologies, methods, and platforms; perform other duties as assigned by leadership.
How This Role Is Measured
- Delivery execution & quality: On time milestone delivery and schedule variance across the team's engagements; reduction in rework and escalations.
- Team economics: Delivered margin vs. plan; budget and burn vs. plan; utilization to target for the team held.
- Customer satisfaction: CSAT/NPS on delivered projects.
- Capacity & forecast: Forward capacity coverage vs. demand; demand forecast accuracy; early flagging of under-utilization and hiring need.
- Reporting & standards: Team adherence to established KPIs; timely, accurate reporting and dashboards; process improvement outcomes (cycle time, quality).
- People: Team retention, engagement, development, and certification/skills growth.
Primary Delivery & Technical Experience
- Deep, hands-on delivery expertise in one or more contact center/CCaaS practices is required; more than one is preferred: Five9, Genesys, Cisco (Webex Contact Center/UC), Avaya, Zoom, and Google (Contact Center AI/Dialogflow).
- AI enablement: Conversational AI, virtual agents, agent assist, real-time analytics, and AI-powered self-service.
- Custom development/Applied AI: Integrations, APIs, and AI-enabled applications that extend the contact center platforms.
- Multi-vendor/multi-platform delivery: Combining two or more of the above with CRM, WFM, QA, and analytics integrations; legacy to cloud migration delivery.
Qualifications
Experience- 8+ years delivering technical professional services engagements (contact center/CCaaS implementations and migrations), including planning, resourcing, and execution, with progression into managing professional services delivery teams for contact center/CCaaS platforms.
- Grounded in hands-on delivery as an implementation consultant, technical/solutions architect, professional services delivery engineer, or telephony/contact center (CCaaS) engineer.
- Conversational AI design and NLU tuning experience, or experience leading a team with that expertise, required.
- Hands-on Dialogflow CX development experience, or experience leading a team with that expertise, required.
- Strong understanding of professional services delivery principles, methodologies, governance, and quality control, working with business stakeholders in a cross-functional matrix environment.
- Prior experience in a technical support or technical management role preferred.
Technical Proficiency- Hands-on familiarity with one or more CCaaS/UC platforms and CX/CCaaS delivery.
- Microsoft Dynamics 365/Project Operations for booking, time entry, and delivery operations; delivery dashboards.
- AI-powered delivery and PPM tools (e.g., Microsoft Copilot, Claude, AI-enhanced PPM).
Soft Skills- Team leadership: motivates and drives resources and stakeholders up, across, and down the organization.
- Excellent attention to detail; adapts to shifting priorities, competing demands, and timelines.
- Strong analytical and problem solving skills; manages multiple complex efforts simultaneously.
- Excellent oral and written communication and customer service skills across all levels of the organization.
- A passion for mentoring and developing team members; comfortable with ambiguity and constant change.
Education- Bachelor's Degree required; Master's a plus. Emphasis in Business, IT, Engineering, or a related field preferred. Equivalent work experience will be considered.
Additional Requirements
- Manufacturer/platform certifications strongly valued across the CCaaS/UC ecosystem.
- PMP or an equivalent delivery leadership certification a plus.
- ITIL a plus.
- Availability to work flexible hours as needed, including after hours cutovers, change windows, and urgent escalations.
Physical Requirements
- Sitting: Ability to sit for extended periods (up to 80% of the time).
- Lifting: Ability to lift or carry objects up to 10 lbs.
- Equipment: Frequent use of computer, telephone, and standard office equipment.
- Travel: Ability to travel up to 5% for client meetings, training, or installations.
