Workday Lead Engagement Manager

About the role

Join Kainos and shape the future. As a Workday Lead Engagement Manager, you will ensure the successful delivery of Workday solutions for clients by working closely with client business teams and internal sales and delivery teams to define the scope, objectives, and approach of solutions that are fit for purpose and commercially viable. This is a senior position accountable for the entire delivery lifecycle.

Responsibilities

• Commercially manage the implementation of global Workday programs from pre-sales through implementation to handover to AMS (Application Management Services).
• Act as the key client interface between functional and technical teams and the client.
• Provide domain experience (HCM, Finance, Payroll, or relevant Workday capability) to offer functional insight and thought leadership.
• Manage all aspects of delivery, including project planning, resourcing, milestone tracking, commercial management, and customer satisfaction.
• Lead and support blended teams of colleagues, client, and partner resources to share knowledge and develop an integrated delivery ethic.
• Agree on objectives, outputs, milestones, and timescales with the client, along with associated contract and commercial terms.
• Identify requirements, business processes, application configurations, testing plans, and other artifacts to ensure shared understanding and facilitate knowledge transfer.
• Create well-structured and accurate deliverables and present them to client steering-level groups to secure proposed recommendations and agreement.
• Identify and act on opportunities to win business, including negotiating and closing at a senior client level.

Requirements

• Established manager of systems implementations with direct experience in the successful delivery of IT solutions within a consulting environment.
• Full lifecycle project management experience, from initial opportunity through to requirement development, functional solution design, implementation, data migration, system testing, user acceptance testing, go-live, and service management.
• Two years of experience in a consulting/IT services environment.
• Strong commercial management, influencing, and negotiation skills.
• Excellent customer focus, with the ability to assess customer needs, build relationships, and manage customer expectations.
• Ability to know when to push back, escalate, or go above and beyond to satisfy a customer.
• Strong communicator, able to engage with customers and colleagues with impact, credibility, and empathy, including in remote working situations.
• Sound ability to formally present to senior client audiences.
• Strong business writing skills with experience producing business cases, requirement documentation, tender documents, contracts, statements of work, and change requests.
• Demonstrable success in identifying and acting on opportunities for additional business.
• Ability to provide effective pre-sales support, including devising and costing viable, winning solutions in collaboration with a sales team.
• Sound commercial judgment, with a proven track record in executing contract and commercial terms for projects.
• Commercial experience running a team, including managing distributed teams.
• Good team player, willing and able to act as a role model, mentor, and manage people.
• Ability to make sound decisions under pressure, balancing client demands and Kainos commercials.
• Positive "can-do" attitude toward commercial, technical, and staffing challenges.
• Able to implement improvements in tools and/or processes to benefit the practice.
• Able to travel to customer sites in the same region (minimal out-of-region travel may also be required).

Skills

• Experience with Workday or other SaaS delivery methodologies (desirable).
• Experience managing, mentoring, and developing teams (desirable).
• Strong functional domain expertise in areas such as core HR, Finance, and Payroll (desirable).