Associate Managing Director, Aquent Studios

Are you a visionary leader with a passion for driving growth and innovation within a dynamic client relationship? Aquent Studios is seeking an exceptional individual to join our team as a pivotal business leader, dedicated to expanding and enriching our partnership with one of the world's most influential technology companies. In this role, you won't just manage an account; you'll be the architect of its evolution, identifying untapped opportunities, crafting bespoke solutions, and leading engagements from concept to successful implementation. Your strategic acumen and commercial leadership will directly impact the client's diverse product groups and corporate functions, bringing transformative change and ensuring our services continuously deliver unparalleled value and efficiency. This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of a key client relationship, fostering innovation and driving significant business outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

• Partner directly with senior leadership to strategically grow the account, engaging new client groups and expanding work across the organization.
• Cultivate robust stakeholder relationships and identify new business opportunities within product groups and business units.
• Deeply understand client business priorities, organizational challenges, and emerging needs, translating these into impactful engagements utilizing our current, expanded, or new capabilities.
• Create and maintain a strong pipeline of incremental opportunities, ensuring sustained growth.
• Cultivate strong client relationships to identify opportunities for advisory or consultative services, partnering with our subject matter experts to lead discovery and understand client needs, desired outcomes, and operational requirements.
• Develop innovative solutions utilizing our capabilities, including marketing operations, creative services, AI and automation, events and experiences, and content development.
• Define the scope, deliverables, resource structure, and implementation of client engagements, applying a keen understanding of financial fundamentals to positively affect profitability and continuously drive margin improvement.
• Develop compelling pricing and financial models that meet requirements and profitability objectives.
• Lead RFI & RFP requests, and expertly write and negotiate proposals, Statements of Work (SOWs), contract renewals, and change orders.
• Maintain full business ownership of engagements from sale through implementation, ongoing operations, renewal, and expansion.
• Develop comprehensive account plans that address client priorities, retention, and growth, including renewal and expansion strategies well in advance of contract expiration.
• Lead client governance and executive business reviews/QBRs, identifying opportunities to demonstrate business impact, operational efficiency, innovation, and cost savings.
• Proactively identify account risks and implement corrective actions, monitoring scope adherence, expansion, and leakage.
• Oversee revenue, gross profit margin, and financial performance for the account, operating to execute against growth, profitability, and operational targets.
• Ensure timely and accurate invoicing, and advance innovative, efficiency-driving approaches such as AI, automation, and new workflows to improve the quality, speed, or cost of delivering project outcomes.
• Track and report on account health, pipeline opportunities, and progress against growth and margin-improvement goals.
• Partner with our delivery teams to ensure flawless execution of engagements, ensuring they understand contractual scope, business objectives, deliverables, financial expectations, and client priorities.
• Maintain visibility into the work at all times, ensuring quality, resource requirements, milestones, risks, and overall delivery performance.
• Support resource and capacity planning to align skillset with the scope of work/engagement, and lead the resolution of significant client, commercial, or operational issues.
• Foster a culture where people are encouraged to speak up, share ideas, and contribute to how the business grows and improves.
• Challenge the team to experiment, encourage creativity, and share ideas to iteratively make things better, leading with trust and providing autonomy.
• Empower employees to take ownership of their work and results, building an environment where the work is interesting and meaningful.
• Help people see the impact of their work so they feel connected to the outcomes and motivated to accomplish great things together, coaching and sharing feedback to support their growth.

Must-Have Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in account management, client services, or a consultative client-facing role, ideally within technology, creative services, managed services, agency, or consulting environments.
• Proven experience managing relationships with a large-scale or enterprise-level client, including exposure to senior stakeholders across multiple business units or teams.
• Familiarity with services provided by a creative agency, such as content, creative, integrated marketing, digital experiences, marketing operations, and AI and automation.
• Experience with managed services and project delivery models, where output is measured against a defined scope of work.
• Basic financial acumen, including working with budgets, forecasts, or account profitability metrics, with a strong interest in growing into full P&L ownership over time.
• A bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience; strong academic performance or evidence of intellectual curiosity and initiative (independent projects, leadership roles, relevant certifications, or self-directed learning).
• Practical experience using AI tools (e.g., Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT, or similar) to support daily work, with experience applying them more strategically to creative processes and workflows.
• Exceptional communication, relationship-building, and stakeholder management skills.
• Demonstrated ability to lead or influence work through collaboration rather than direct authority.

Who You Are

You possess a genuine curiosity about how work gets done and how it could be done even better. You are comfortable engaging with senior clients, yet equally adept at rolling up your sleeves to ensure programs move forward effectively. You consistently seek out and embrace greater responsibility, thinking in interconnected systems that link client needs, delivery execution, and financial outcomes. Whether your background is in account management, agency, or consulting, your track record of building authentic relationships and solving complex problems to drive client business growth is what truly sets you apart.