Client Partner

Location: London

Department: Client Services

Hours: Full-time

About YLD:

Everything we do is to empower our clients to move forward. Our purpose is to help our clients develop the capabilities they need to outperform their competitors. Our success is a consequence of ensuring our clients are successful. Our company is built on extraordinary people; we aim to attract, inspire, develop and retain them. YLD is a software engineering and design consultancy; we create digital capabilities for our clients that last beyond our engagement. We have offices in London, Lisbon, Porto.

About the role:

YLD has grown substantially over the last 18 months and as a result of that, we are looking for a Client Partner to join our team. This role combines responsibilities from managing client relationships directly with its key stakeholders, as well as understanding our senior consultant's expertise in the world of Agile experience. This might mean that you have a background in Engineering, Product Design, Delivery or another hands-on discipline, but we are open-minded to all experiences.

It will be your role to partner with our clients and work with our consultants to ensure that our engagements are impactful, meaningful and successful. You will do this by building relationships, building trust with key stakeholders and cementing your role as a trusted advisor.

Working in partnership with our senior leadership team and reporting to our Head of Technology, you’ll provide passionate, committed leadership, and direction to the business. You’ll set teams working on complex products or services for clients, ensuring they have the guidance and resourcing needed.

Your day-to-day responsibilities will look like this:

• Running our client's engagements throughout their entire lifecycle. This means working with Commercial during the early commitments, identifying areas of opportunity during our discovery and development phase, and working with delivery teams to ensure that we are fulfilling the client's expectations of us;
• Working closely with our clients to build long-term partnerships and establish trust with key stakeholders that empowers us to do things the way that, we believe, are in the best interest of the client;
• Running regular account assessments (weekly, monthly, quarterly) with the client as well as acting as a point of escalation as and when needed;
• Owning and managing profitability and performance across engagements, in line with our internal financial targets, as well as ensuring a smooth billing process and being a point of escalation for prompt payments from our clients;
• Driving the perception of our work within the client organisation and, when appropriate, supporting client transformation activities and identifying new potential avenues for further improvement;
• Working with our internal People & Operations team to manage staffing for the engagement, which will also include interviewing and onboarding new team members;
• Working quickly, effectively and collaboratively when dealing with any people matters which may affect the success of a client engagement.

You’ll have the following skills and experience:

• Proven success having worked in a similar role within a software development consultancy;
• Strong consulting and stakeholder management experience;
• A wide knowledge of all aspects of large-scale software delivery in complex environments. Ideally, you’ll have a background of working hands-on within a delivery team;
• Experience working in complex organisations and multi-supplier environments is an advantage;
• Excellent relationship-building skills, gained from working with clients on complex software delivery engagements. You’ll quickly be able to build a professional rapport with both clients and the YLD team, and build this into long-lasting relationships built on trust;
• A pragmatic and strategic approach to engagement management;
• Excellent communication skills, e.g. you will be expected to write and contribute to marketing collateral as well as participate in writing case studies. You’ll be aware of when it’s appropriate to adapt your communication to suit the situation, i.e.: when you need to be more concise and when you need to give more detail;
• An awareness of when to escalate issues, and when you can handle matters on your own, reporting on them afterwards;
• Strong financial skills and commercial awareness.

You’ll be:

• Self-motivated, proactive and always looking for ways to improve and develop yourself;
• Detail oriented;
• Problem-solving skills that balance innovation with pragmatic technology choices to solve business needs;
• Used to working in a team-oriented, collaborative environment;
• Analytical and problem-solving-oriented;
• Open to travel to our London/client offices when needed;
• A genuine believer in diversity and fairness.

As well as the chance to work with a forward-thinking, ethical, and fun group of people, you’ll also get:

• Company Private Health care
• Enhanced fully paid maternity and paternity leave for up to 6 months
• Company’s Pension Scheme
• 25 days annual holiday (excluding Public Holidays)
• £2000 annual allowance for Training/Conferences
• £300 annual allowance for additional hardware
• Mental Health support: access to Spill app
• Meditation/Sleep support: Headspace or Calm app subscription
• Bonus (depending on Company performance and results)
• Company laptop
• Generous referral schemes

Our typical Recruitment Process looks like this:

• 1st Interview with someone from the Talent team (30/45 mins)
• 2nd Interview with one of our Client Partners and a Delivery Manager (~1h)
• A final conversation with our COO or Managing Director (~1h)

We live and breathe our values, and know you will too:

• Growing every day
• Including everyone
• Relationships built on honesty and ethics
• Inspiring solutions
• Winning together

We’re an equal-opportunity employer and value diversity of all kinds. We don’t discriminate based on race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, pregnancy or maternity, age, marital status, or disability status. We also offer a remote-first working environment, meaning that flexible working and work-life balance come as standard for all employees.