Services Engagement Manager

Tenex.AI Inc

$90K — $130K *
Business Services
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5-7 years of experience in professional-services delivery or consulting, particularly in cybersecurity or enterprise software.
  • Proven ability in scoping projects, estimating efforts, and authoring Statements of Work (SOWs).
  • Strong expertise in project management with a focus on engagement P&L and margin oversight.
  • Effective at managing executive stakeholders, including CISOs, requiring strong communication skills.
  • Measured on delivery and margin rather than relationship longevity; must be assertive and diplomatic.

Responsibilities

  • Shape engagements by translating customer needs into clear Statements of Work (SOW).
  • Validate scope integrity before signing by assessing margin feasibility and identifying out-of-scope elements.
  • Manage the entire engagement from kickoff to delivery, ensuring milestones are met.
  • Coordinate resources effectively, aligning engineers and experts with engagement plans.
  • Monitor scope and margin throughout the project, implementing change orders when necessary.
  • Achieve formal customer acceptance and ensure financial closure is handled smoothly.
  • Facilitate a structured transition to the Customer Success Manager and contribute to the services catalog.

Benefits

  • Ownership of significant professional services engagements from start to finish, influencing customer outcomes and delivery integrity.
  • Collaboration with a skilled team focused on enhancing security operations.
  • Comprehensive benefits package in addition to competitive salary.
  • Growth-oriented culture with opportunities to learn about AI, cybersecurity, and new technologies.
Full Job Description
Location: Hybrid in Overland Park, KS or Sarasota, FL. TENEX will provide a company paid relocation package to either Kansas City metro or Sarasota metro area.

About the Opportunity:

The Services Engagement Manager (SEM) is the single accountable owner of scoped, time-bound professional services engagements - from the moment they're shaped in the sales cycle, through delivery, formal acceptance, and clean financial closure. The role protects two things at once: our customers' outcomes and our delivery integrity. Where a Customer Success Manager owns the open-ended ARR relationship and is measured on retention and growth, the SEM owns a discrete, funded engagement and is measured on margin, on-scope and on-time delivery, and a clean exit. This is a senior, highly cross-functional role at the intersection of sales, delivery, and customer success, reporting to the VP of Customer Success.

What You'll Do:
  • Shape and scope engagements with Sales. Translate customer requirements into a defensible Statement of Work - scope boundaries, assumptions, deliverables, acceptance criteria, effort estimates, and milestone/payment structure.
  • Guard scope integrity before signature. Validate that what Sales is proposing can be delivered at target margin, identify what's out of scope, and propose a change order before an engagement is signed.
  • Own the engagement end to end. Drive the engagement plan, cadence, and milestone tracking from kickoff through delivery.
  • Orchestrate delivery resources. Sequence and prioritize Forward Deployed Engineers, detection engineering, subject-matter experts, and third-party partners against the plan.
  • Manage scope and margin in flight. Actively manage scope against the SOW, raise change orders for additions rather than absorbing silent creep, and run the engagement P&L - tracking burn against estimate and flagging overruns early.
  • Drive to acceptance and clean closure. Secure formal customer sign-off against defined acceptance criteria and execute clean financial closure, including final milestone completion, invoicing readiness, and revenue-recognition support.
  • Hand off and improve the catalog. Run a structured handoff to the Customer Success Manager for any steady-state relationship, and feed reusable scope and estimate patterns back into the services catalog.

What You Bring:
  • Professional-services delivery or consulting experience in cybersecurity or enterprise software, with a track record of personally authoring SOWs, estimating effort, and owning a margin or utilization number.
  • Strong scoping and effort-estimation skills, SOW authoring, and change-order discipline.
  • Project and delivery management strength, including engagement P&L and margin management.
  • Executive stakeholder management - credible in front of a CISO - plus enough SecOps / detection-engineering fluency to scope engagements and serve as a real check on what's being sold.
  • Comfortable being measured on delivery and margin outcomes over relationship longevity, with a bias toward closure and the ability to hold the scope line firmly and diplomatically.

Bonus Points:
  • A delivery or project-management background paired with genuine technical depth.
  • Experience working with partners on jointly owned engagements.
  • Background in a high-growth startup or MDR / security-services environment.

Education & Certifications:
  • Bachelor's degree in Business, Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
  • Relevant certifications such as PMP, ITIL, Security+, or CISSP are a plus.

Why Join Us?
  • Opportunity to own high-stakes professional services engagements end to end - from scoping through formal acceptance and clean closure - as the single accountable owner of customer outcomes and delivery integrity.
  • Collaborate with a talented and innovative team focused on continuously improving security operations.
  • Competitive salary and benefits package.
  • A culture of growth and development, with opportunities to expand your knowledge in AI, cybersecurity, and emerging technologies.

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