Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Head of Professional Services

🎯 Role Definition

We are seeking an experienced, commercially minded Head of Professional Services to design and execute a scalable services organization that delivers measurable customer outcomes. This leader is accountable for overall service delivery quality, profitability (P&L), resource capacity planning, pricing and packaging strategies, operational KPIs (CSAT, NPS, time-to-value), and go-to-market enablement for implementations, integrations and strategic advisory engagements. Ideal candidates combine domain expertise in enterprise SaaS and systems integration with a proven record of building and coaching cross-functional teams, optimizing delivery processes, and partnering closely with Sales and Product to drive expansion and retention.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Director / VP of Professional Services
Director of Services Delivery or Implementation
Senior Customer Success or Consulting Leader with enterprise services experience

Advancement To:

Chief Customer Officer (CCO)
EVP/GM of Customer Experience, Services & Revenue Operations
Chief Operating Officer (COO) of a services-led SaaS business

Lateral Moves:

VP/Head of Customer Success
VP/Head of Solutions Consulting / Presales
VP/Head of Global Services or Managed Services

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Own end-to-end Professional Services strategy, including service model design, delivery framework, pricing and packaging, and commercialization to maximize customer value and revenue performance.
Lead, hire, coach and scale a high-performing team of implementation managers, consultants, solution architects, project managers and technical leads across multiple geographies and time zones.
Define and manage the services P&L; set pricing strategies, monitor margins, forecast revenue and costs, and implement commercial levers to improve profitability without sacrificing customer outcomes.
Establish, monitor and report on key operational KPIs (e.g., CSAT, NPS, TTV, on-time delivery, utilization, billable ratio) and use data to continuously improve delivery predictability and quality.
Build and institutionalize standardized delivery methodologies, templates, playbooks and service-level agreements (SLAs) to reduce variability, accelerate onboarding and increase repeatability of implementations.
Collaborate closely with Sales and Solutions Consulting to translate customer requirements into deliverables, scope statements, effort estimates and commercial proposals; support complex RFPs and SOW negotiations.
Drive capacity planning, resource allocation and bench management; implement a staffing model (permanent, contractors, partners) that balances utilization and speed-to-deploy.
Own customer escalations and remediation for high-impact or at-risk engagements; lead root-cause analysis and implement corrective actions and governance to prevent recurrence.
Partner with Product, Engineering and Customer Success to influence product roadmap based on customer feedback, identify product-led automation opportunities, and inform prioritization for integrations and enterprise features.
Create and run executive-level business reviews and advisory boards with strategic accounts to surface value, identify expansion opportunities and ensure alignment on outcomes and roadmaps.
Design and implement service delivery tooling and Professional Services Automation (PSA) workflows for time and expense tracking, project governance, resource forecasting and reporting.
Develop and execute enablement programs for Services staff, Sales and Partners, including certifications, training curricula, and knowledge-base content to raise technical and domain competency.
Lead transformation initiatives (process, tooling, org design) to scale the services function to support 2x-5x company growth while protecting quality, margins and customer satisfaction.
Partner with Legal and Finance to define standard SOW templates, risk clauses, change-order processes and billing models to streamline contracting and reduce negotiation cycles.
Create repeatable outcome-based offerings (fixed-price, milestones, outcome guarantees) for common use cases to reduce scope creep and accelerate sales conversions.
Oversee partner and systems integrator relationships — define partner tiers, enablement requirements, governance, and co-delivery models to expand delivery capacity and geographic coverage.
Implement risk management frameworks for delivery including dependency mapping, contingency planning and governance cadences for complex multi-stakeholder projects.
Champion customer success metrics and retention strategies by aligning services deliverables to measurable business outcomes that improve ARR, renewal rates and net retention.
Establish a culture of continuous improvement through retrospectives, quality audits, lessons learned, and reuse libraries to reduce delivery costs and time-to-value.
Own recruitment strategy, diversity and inclusion initiatives, career ladders and performance management for the services organization to attract and retain top talent.
Manage cross-functional launches of new services, go-to-market packages and pricing changes, including comms, training, kit creation and pilot programs to ensure successful adoption.
Forecast long-lead dependencies and capital needs for service operations tooling, hiring and partner investments, and present business cases to executive leadership for approval.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
Represent Professional Services in cross-functional leadership forums and executive steering committees.
Advise marketing on customer case studies, value stories and proof points that highlight services-driven outcomes.
Provide input to product support and bug triage processes when post-implementation defects impact customer SLAs.
Mentor high-potential managers and build succession plans for critical service leadership roles.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Deep domain expertise in Professional Services delivery for enterprise SaaS, cloud platforms and systems integrations.
Proven experience with Professional Services Automation (PSA) tools (e.g., FinancialForce, Mavenlink, Kimble, ConnectWise) and CRM/ERP integration (Salesforce, NetSuite, Workday).
Strong commercial acumen: P&L ownership, pricing strategy, cost modeling and margin expansion tactics.
Advanced project portfolio and program management skills with familiarity with Agile, Scrum, Waterfall and hybrid delivery frameworks.
Ability to scope complex integrations and make effort estimates for technical and advisory work (API integrations, data migrations, custom development).
Proficiency with delivery and analytics tooling (Jira, Smartsheet, MS Project, Tableau, Power BI) to track KPIs and operational health.
Experience drafting, negotiating and managing SOWs, SLAs, change orders and contract amendments.
Knowledge of professional services metrics and frameworks: utilization, billable rate, realization, TTV, CSAT, NPS.
Background in vendor and partner ecosystem management, including SI contracts, enablement and co-delivery governance.
Familiarity with cloud platforms and technologies such as AWS, Azure, REST APIs, data pipelines and ETL concepts for technical advisory credibility.
Experience implementing scalable hiring, training and certification programs for technical delivery teams.

Soft Skills

Strategic thinker able to convert long-term vision into executable operational plans and measurable milestones.
Strong executive presence and stakeholder management — comfortable briefing C-suite customers and internal executives.
Highly developed communication and negotiation skills for SOW discussions, service escalations and cross-functional alignment.
Coaching and people-development focus: builds career paths, fosters feedback-rich culture and drives team engagement.
Problem solver with a bias for action, resilience under pressure and an ability to lead through ambiguity.
Customer-obsessed mindset with excellence in empathy, expectation-setting and outcome-driven delivery.
Influencing skills to drive cross-functional change and secure investment for services initiatives.
Data-informed decision maker who uses metrics and root-cause analysis to improve operational performance.
Collaborative partner who can align Sales, Product, Engineering and Finance to common objectives.
Change management and organizational design experience to scale team structure and processes.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Business, Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems or related field.

Preferred Education:

MBA, Master’s degree in Information Systems, or advanced degree in a related discipline.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Business Administration / Management
Computer Science / Software Engineering
Information Systems / Data Analytics
Project Management / Operations

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 10–20+ years of progressive experience in Professional Services, Consulting, Implementation or Customer Success roles, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership position.

Preferred:

10+ years leading Professional Services or large delivery teams in enterprise SaaS or software companies.
Proven track record of owning P&L, scaling services organizations, improving margins and driving measurable customer outcomes.
Experience working with strategic accounts, global delivery models, and partner ecosystems.
Certifications a plus: PMP, SAFe, ITIL, Scrum Master, Six Sigma, or equivalent professional services certifications.