Engagement Manager (Financial Services)

About the Role

We are seeking experienced financial services (FS) management professionals interested in generating strategies and delivering those strategies to drive a greater future for our clients. As an Engagement Manager at Kenway, you will manage a diverse set of stakeholders, drive critical decisions, and solve complex problems. From day one, you’ll lead projects, teams, and solutions targeting the latest business and technical challenges companies face today.

Engagement Managers at Kenway lead end-to-end delivery of complex client initiatives, managing scope, budget, risks, and teams to ensure high-quality outcomes while applying deep industry and technical expertise. You will also build trusted client relationships, drive account growth, mentor team members, and contribute to cross-functional initiatives that enhance Kenway’s impact and capabilities.

Within Kenway’s Financial Services vertical, Engagement Managers demonstrate, deploy, and deepen proficiency delivering across the financial services ecosystem, including banking and capital markets, insurance, wealth and asset management, payments and fintech, and related industries.

Core Traits

• Delivery Excellence: Engagement Managers are first and foremost consulting practitioners. Candidates must embrace and demonstrate the ability to deliver exceptional quality firsthand throughout Kenway’s engagements, while leading, coaching, and enabling broader project teams to do the same.
• Accountability: Engagement Managers must demonstrate a deep sense of integrity, personal responsibility, and commitment to holding others to the same standards. They are the ultimate point of accountability for the health and quality of all activities within and across their projects.
• Tenacity: Under all circumstances, dynamics, and conditions, Engagement Managers are expected to think, behave, and act proactively to preemptively identify, mitigate, and prevent issues, while driving progress and taking advantage of opportunities.
• Design Thinking: Engagement Managers must demonstrate creativity, innovation, and intellectual fluidity, flowing between strategic thought leadership, conceptual problem solving, and executional rigor. They design solutions, translate them into executable plans, and navigate between strategy and execution throughout engagements.
• Professionalism: Engagement Managers interface with executive leadership and must demonstrate executive presence, poise, and cogency in all communications and interactions with client, prospect, and internal stakeholders.
• Aptitude: Engagement Managers demonstrate curiosity, climb learning curves quickly, and adapt solutions to the uniqueness of each client and project.
• Industry Acumen: Engagement Managers within the Financial Services vertical demonstrate proficient understanding of industry trends, regulatory landscapes, value chains, business operations, and technical nuances unique to the sector, while engaging in continuous learning.
• Functional Acumen: Engagement Managers must have a sound command of programmatic skills to lead projects and an understanding of Kenway’s full suite of services to design solutions and lead engagements with technical and/or non-technical scope.
• Commitment to Kenway’s Guiding Principles: Engagement Managers steward Kenway’s culture and demonstrate unwavering commitment to our Guiding Principles.

Responsibilities

Delivery Excellence

• Own end-to-end delivery for client engagements, managing scope, budget, timeline, risks, and quality.
• Take ownership of bookings, minimize variance between bookings and actuals, and manage discrepancies.
• Lead complex business and technology initiatives across multiple industries.
• Apply deep industry, business, and technical knowledge to solve client challenges and achieve project objectives.
• Drive project teams to deliver high-quality outcomes, coaching and empowering team members.
• Lead working sessions, presentations, and executive discussions, communicating complex topics clearly and confidently.
• Proactively manage risks, escalations, and resource needs, ensuring alignment with project and account objectives.

Client & Relationship Management

• Build trusted, long-term relationships with client stakeholders, understanding their goals and challenges.
• Identify business problems and opportunities, facilitating discussions and connecting clients with Kenway expertise.
• Support account-level strategy by contributing to proposals, SOWs, pitches, and revenue forecasts.
• Expand and nurture client networks, driving engagement beyond immediate projects.
• Strategically leverage Kenway deliverables to broaden our footprint and influence.

Kenway Impact

• Leverage mastery of client industries, documenting and sharing knowledge to grow Kenway’s expertise.
• Coach and mentor team members, preparing talent for future leadership opportunities.
• Contribute to initiatives and passion projects that drive Kenway’s growth, culture, and capabilities.
• Leverage Challenger Sale behaviors to advance client outcomes, delivering insights, recommendations, and innovative solutions.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience leading complex business or technology initiatives.
• Financial services strategy consulting experience is preferred, but a combination of strategy consulting and financial services industry experience will be considered.
• Bachelor’s degree; advanced degrees or certifications in related finance, business, economics, or quantitative fields preferred (e.g., MBA, CFA, CPA, CAMS).
• Proficient understanding of one or more value chains across the Financial Services ecosystem, including:
  • Banking & Capital Markets: Retail and commercial banking, lending and credit, treasury, capital markets operations.
  • Insurance: Underwriting, claims processing, policy administration, actuarial and risk assessment.
  • Wealth & Asset Management: Investment management, wealth advisory, fund administration, trading operations.
  • Payments & Fintech: Payments processing, digital banking, embedded finance, fintech platform integration.
• Deep understanding of key financial services data domains and concepts (e.g., transaction and payments data, credit and risk data, customer/KYC data, regulatory reporting data) and experience translating data into actionable business, risk, and compliance outcomes.
• Strong command of the financial services regulatory and compliance landscape (e.g., Dodd-Frank, Basel III/IV, BSA/AML, KYC/CDD, GLBA, SOX, PCI DSS, GDPR and state privacy laws) and its implications for project delivery.
• Familiarity with industry-standard platforms (e.g., core banking platforms such as FIS, Fiserv, and Temenos; CRM/wealth platforms such as Salesforce Financial Services Cloud; trading and portfolio systems such as Bloomberg AIM, Charles River, and Aladdin; policy administration systems such as Guidewire and Duck Creek) and an understanding of the technical nuances unique to the financial services sector.
• Demonstrated success identifying, scoping, and implementing high-impact financial services use cases (e.g., fraud and AML detection, regulatory reporting automation, customer 360/personalization, risk and credit analytics, digital transformation) with measurable business outcomes.
• Deep knowledge of core consulting skills, including strategic planning and road-mapping, program governance, risk management, stakeholder management, financial and resource allocation, and change management.
• Proven experience leading resources, preferably in a project-based model.
• Demonstrated success in client business development, identifying new opportunities, and authoring impactful client proposals and SOWs.

About Kenway Consulting

Kenway Consulting is a Management and IT consulting firm expanding our growing staff. Your strengths in leading teams across designing, implementing, and constructing reusable services and frameworks are needed to drive solutions to our clients’ critical technology and business problems. You will have the opportunity to make an immediate impact with our world-class clients.

Our projects focus primarily on enterprise solutions, straddling clients’ technology and business organizations. Our solution-based approach leverages the diverse combination of skills and experience of our staff. We provide an inclusive, team-driven environment, working together to identify clients, technologies, and people in support of Kenway’s ambitious growth targets.

We offer numerous career paths and opportunities to continually develop your skills and experience. We recognize that you have a life outside of your job and staff project teams to deliver the highest quality work for our clients while honoring the many facets of our consultants’ lives.

Benefits

• Ability to chart your individual career path based on your expertise and passions.
• An environment that encourages you to identify new opportunities and provides the support to make it happen.
• An atmosphere that promotes a balanced lifestyle by working with local (Chicagoland) and national clients in a flexible consulting model.
• The opportunity to build and be part of a fun and collaborative team.
• A competitive compensation package and exceptional benefits.