Manager, Strategic Advisory

About the role

In this role, you lead 1-2 engagements at a time. You manage the work plan, the team, the timeline, the quality, and the day-to-day work required to answer tough questions well.

You won’t be running things alone, and it’s important to be clear about that. Many consulting job posts promise more autonomy than they deliver. Here, every engagement includes a senior executive sponsor and a practice leader. They know the client, often for years, and are involved in scoping, reviews, and meetings with you. Your job is to make the engagement work; their job is to support you and ensure the answer is right.

This setup gives you plenty of direct client time. Our teams are small, so there’s no layer of analysts between you and the work. Clients already know us well because they’ve been members for years. You’ll work closely with them in sessions, war games, interim reviews, and final presentations.

Most people join this role from an Engagement Manager or Project Leader position. The main difference here is where you begin. Since the client is already a member and the market data is in the platform, you skip the first month and start right at the question.

What you'll do

• The engagement: You’ll manage the workplan, staffing, timeline, quality, and recommendations, with the sponsor and practice leader working alongside you instead of just reviewing at the end.
• The team: Each engagement has two to four people. You’ll assign work, review results, coach in real time, and provide formal feedback.
• The storyline: You decide what we’ll say, in what order, and what evidence is needed to support it. You build and defend the story.
• The day-to-day with the client: You’ll manage the team’s expectations, understand internal dynamics, and address surprises early. You’ll be the main contact between sessions.
• The room: You’ll lead workshops, war games, and strategy sessions with senior leaders.
• The engagement design: Not every problem fits a template. When it doesn’t, you create the approach.
• The commercials: You’ll scope extensions and new phases, write statements of work, and ensure the work remains profitable.
• The connection to the platform: You’ll work with research, data science, and Analyst Desk teams to get what your engagement needs and share what you learn back into the platform.

What success looks like

First 30 days: You’ve taken over at least one live engagement, learned the platform well enough to direct research, and met the client teams on your accounts with their sponsor.

First 90 days: You’re running engagements. Your team’s work goes directly to the client without the practice leader needing to rewrite it. The client’s team comes to you first. At some point, you’ll decide to change an engagement’s direction based on new evidence, which is expected.

First year: You’ve led engagements in areas like growth strategy, GTM enablement, M&A and diligence, war gaming, and corporate strategy. At least two clients have extended or expanded your work. You’ve developed a Senior Associate who can take over a workstream independently. You’re seen as a credible voice in a C-suite meeting for at least one market.

What we're looking for

• 6+ years in management consulting, strategy consulting, corporate strategy, corporate development, or investment banking, including at least two years running project teams and owning delivery.
• You’ve led full engagements, not just workstreams. You understand the impact of getting the scope wrong in the first week.
• You can lead a room of executives with differing opinions and still guide them to a decision.
• You’ve managed people—staffed, coached, reviewed, and had at least one tough conversation that helped someone improve.
• You can build models, and you know when a model isn’t what matters most.
• AI tools are part of your regular work, not just something you tried once. You’ve built workflows that your team has used.
• You spot the next engagement opportunity even while working on the current one.
• You’re genuinely interested in our markets: identity, fraud, financial crime, cybersecurity, and financial services. It’s clear when someone isn’t curious about these topics.

Nice to have

Experience managing engagements at MBB, LEK, Parthenon, Monitor Deloitte, or a Big 4 strategy practice is a plus. So is commercial due diligence for private equity, designing war games or scenario planning, having clients request you by name, or creating a method, tool, or IP that lasted beyond its original project.

How we work

We work in a hybrid model: four days in the office, with Fridays optional. This is an in-person team because workshops, war games, and collaboration happen faster together. We’re in the office Monday through Thursday. Friday is flexible: work from home, the office, or a client site.

We have nine guiding principles. Four are especially important for this role: Operate Like an Owner, Be Brief, Be Bright, Be Gone, Solve, Don’t Just Spot, and Integrity Is Non-Negotiable. These aren’t just slogans; they guide our hiring, promotions, and feedback.

Compensation

The base salary ranges from $180,000 to $215,000, with a target bonus of 20% and equity. Full benefits are included.