Ascendion
Website:
ascendion.com
Company:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ascendion
Seniority: Not Applicable
Industries: Technology, Information and Internet
Job details:
Role Purpose
The Practice Manager / Circle Lead owns both the operational health and capability maturity of the Practice. The role is accountable for financial discipline, margin performance, utilization, forecast accuracy, pipeline visibility, resource productivity, certification programs, learning plans, hackathons, reusable assets, delivery standards, and community engagement.
This is a business-minded practice builder role. The successful candidate must care equally about running a healthy practice and growing a stronger capability ecosystem—ensuring the Practice is financially disciplined, talent-ready, market-relevant, and scalable.
Positioning: A business-minded practice builder who combines financial discipline, operational rigor, and capability development to grow a healthy, scalable, and market-leading practice.
Key Responsibilities
Practice Dimension
What Operational Health & Financial Discipline
Own practice-level revenue, gross margin, utilization, cost, SG&A, forecast accuracy, pipeline coverage, demand visibility, and resource productivity. Drive disciplined reviews and corrective actions.
Margin, Utilization & Cost Optimization
Identify margin leakage, under-utilization, bench risk, subcontractor cost issues, revenue leakage, and cost variance drivers. Create and track margin improvement and utilization recovery actions.
Pipeline, Forecast & Capacity Planning
Partner with Sales, Delivery, and Finance to align pipeline, bookings, capacity, skills, and delivery readiness. Improve forecast accuracy and provide early visibility into demand or staffing risks.
Practice Strategy & Capability Roadmap
Define the practice development roadmap, capability priorities, delivery standards, reusable accelerators, and maturity goals in partnership with Practice Leadership and SMEs.
Certification & Learning Programs
Drive certification plans across cloud, AI, data, platform engineering, service management, or other priority domains. Track nominations, completions, renewals, capability coverage, and business relevance.
Hackathons & Innovation Programs
Plan and execute hackathons, innovation sprints, demo days, and challenge-based events that create reusable assets, automation ideas, client proof points, and differentiated capability stories.
Communities, Assets & Knowledge Sharing
Run communities of practice, learning circles, expert sessions, brown bags, playbook creation, case-study development, solution briefs, templates, and reusable delivery assets.
Talent Readiness & Skill Inventory
Maintain visibility into skill depth, certification coverage, SME availability, capability gaps, succession risks, training needs, and readiness for pipeline demand.
Governance & Leadership Reporting
Prepare leadership-ready updates covering financial health, utilization, margin actions, pipeline risks, certification progress, innovation outcomes, talent readiness, and decisions needed.
Success Measures
- Practice achieves or improves revenue, margin, utilization, cost, and forecast accuracy targets.
- Margin improvement and utilization recovery actions are visible, owned, tracked, and closed.
- Pipeline, capacity, skill readiness, and delivery risks are proactively surfaced to leadership.
- Certification targets improve across strategic capability areas and support business priorities.
- Hackathons and innovation forums produce reusable assets, demos, automation ideas, or client-facing proof points.
- Reusable playbooks, templates, and accelerators improve consistency across pursuits and delivery execution.
Key Skills & Competencies
Financial Discipline
Strong understanding of services financials, revenue, gross margin, utilization, cost, SG&A, leakage, forecast accuracy, and margin improvement actions.
Practice Building Mindset
Ability to grow a practice through talent development, capability roadmaps, standards, reusable assets, communities, and measurable maturity goals.
Program Execution
Experience planning and running certification drives, learning cohorts, hackathons, workshops, technical forums, and cross-functional initiatives.
Technology & Services Acumen
Strong understanding of IT services, managed services, cloud, data, AI, automation, platform operations, or related enterprise technology domains.
Executive Communication
Ability to convert financial, operational, and capability data into clear leadership narratives, risk views, decisions, and progress updates.
Stakeholder Influence
Ability to work with Practice Leaders, Delivery Leaders, Sales, Finance, HR / L&D, architects, SMEs, and external partners to drive outcomes without direct authority.
Operational Discipline
Strong follow-through, reporting hygiene, cadence management, metric standardization, attention to detail, and bias for closure.
Qualification & Experience
- Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems, Business, Operations, Finance, or a related field; MBA preferred.
- 8+ years of experience in practice management, capability operations, delivery operations, PMO, business operations, technology consulting, or professional services.
- Experience managing or influencing business health metrics such as revenue, margin, utilization, pipeline, cost, forecast accuracy, and resource productivity.
- Experience driving skill development, certification programs, communities of practice, internal enablement, hackathons, innovation programs, or capability showcases.
- Exposure to IT services / technology services financial governance, resource planning, delivery reviews, pipeline tracking, and practice-level reporting.
- Experience coordinating with L&D, HR, Finance, Delivery, Sales, architects, SMEs, and partner ecosystems is preferred.
Role Expectations
- Operate as the practice nerve center for both business performance and capability maturity.
- Create visible momentum around financial discipline, utilization, margin improvement, certifications, learning, hackathons, reusable assets, and knowledge-sharing.
- Bring proactive visibility to capability gaps, readiness risks, utilization constraints, margin leakage, cost variance, and enablement blockers.
- Balance business rigor with community energy so the practice becomes financially healthy, skilled, credentialed, differentiated, and scalable.
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