Services Engagement Manager

About the company

Finastra is a worldwide financial services software provider focused on broadening access to financial services and helping define the future of the sector. Its platforms support essential capabilities across lending, payments, and universal banking, serving more than 7,000 clients, including 80% of the world’s top 50 banks, across over 110 countries.

Role overview

The Services Sales Engagement Manager is a professional services pre-sales specialist who works closely with account executives and delivery teams to prepare commercially and operationally viable statements of work, implementation plans, and pricing for opportunities that include professional services.

This position is responsible for the services-commercial structure of each deal, making sure the scope, effort, risks, and pricing are accurate so that the opportunity can be delivered successfully and profitably.

This is a professional-services-centric engagement position, not a general sales or account ownership role. The role does not include quota responsibility, ongoing account management, or standard selling duties.

Key responsibilities

In this role, you will develop and refine SOWs, implementation plans, SOW appendices, and professional services schedules so they match the commercial terms agreed by the account manager. You will define deliverables, milestones, acceptance criteria, dependencies, assumptions, staffing needs, and delivery timelines.

You will also build services pricing models and cost estimates that support margin goals while meeting customer expectations. This includes selecting and recommending the most suitable commercial approach, such as fixed price, time and materials, milestone-based, or outcome-based pricing.

As the professional services specialist in deal discussions, you will help translate customer needs into scoped solutions and SOW language. You will keep version control and an audit trail for all SOW documents and ensure alignment with internal contracting standards. You will coordinate approval workflows with finance, legal, delivery leadership, and sales operations before deal sign-off.

You will identify delivery risks, prerequisites, and change-control triggers during the proposal stage, then manage a structured handover to delivery teams after contract signature, including resource alignment, knowledge transfer, and kickoff materials.

The role also includes building and maintaining SOW templates, pricing calculators, checklists, and deal playbooks to support scalable professional services quoting. You will train and guide sales and delivery stakeholders on SOW practices and scoping standards.

In addition, you will monitor estimate-to-actual variance, SOW cycle time, margin performance, and post-delivery outcomes to strengthen future scoping and pricing accuracy.

You will help identify the appropriate people and functions from across the professional services organization needed to support each opportunity, and you will coordinate matrixed pre-sales support.

Performance measures

Success in this role will be assessed through PS bookings performance and average margin on PS bookings. Key operational measures include average SOW cycle time from initial scoping brief to signed SOW, conversion rate from PS SOW opportunity to signed deal, estimate accuracy against actual effort and cost, on-time handover to delivery with complete artifacts, number of SOWs requiring rework due to compliance or contractual issues, and customer or delivery satisfaction measured through early post-kickoff feedback or relevant NPS.

Experience and qualifications

Experience in professional services pre-sales, PS engagement management, services solutions engineering, or PS delivery leadership supporting sales is required, preferably within the software industry. You should have proven experience preparing and negotiating SOWs, fixed-price and time-and-materials engagements, resource scoping, and pricing for software or implementation projects.

Experience working with sales teams and delivery organizations is important, along with familiarity with contract, legal, and finance review processes.

Commercial and technical skills

You should bring strong commercial judgment, including understanding of pricing models, margin management, and the basics of ROI and TCO. You must be able to write clearly and communicate effectively so business requirements can be turned into precise SOW language and pricing justification. Comfort with CRM and PSA tools, such as Salesforce and time-entry platforms, as well as Excel-based pricing models and document version control, is expected.

Working style and attributes

The role calls for someone who is highly organized, detail-focused, and capable of keeping complex deal materials aligned across multiple stakeholders. You should be collaborative, persuasive, and able to stay neutral between sales goals and delivery constraints. A practical, solutions-oriented mindset is important, along with the confidence to challenge assumptions constructively when needed to protect delivery feasibility and reduce business risk.

Education and certifications

A bachelor’s degree in business, engineering, computer science, or a related discipline is preferred. Project management certifications such as PMP or Prince2, or qualifications in commercial negotiation, are considered advantageous.

Benefits

• Flexible work support that may include unlimited vacation depending on location and business priorities, hybrid arrangements, and inclusive leave policies such as time off for voting, bereavement, and illness.
• Well-being support through confidential one-to-one therapy via an employee assistance program, wellbeing champions, community groups, and regular events and initiatives designed to support personal and professional wellness.
• Insurance and financial benefits, including medical, life, and disability cover, a retirement plan, lifestyle benefits, and other location-based offerings.
• Paid volunteer time and donation matching to support sustainability and community involvement.
• Access to DE&I communities such as Count Me In, Culture@Finastra, Proud@Finastra, Disabilities@Finastra, and Women@Finastra.
• Learning and growth opportunities through online learning and accredited courses via the Skills & Career Navigator tool.
• Employee recognition through the global Finastra Celebrates program and participation in employee surveys that help shape the company culture.
• Some benefits may vary based on location.

Culture

Finastra values individuality and the diverse ideas, backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences that employees bring. The company aims to create an environment where people can learn from one another, celebrate differences, and feel safe being themselves.

Additional information

This opportunity is based in Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It is a full-time onsite role.

No salary or stipend information was provided in the source.