Client Partner – Financial Services

Vertical Relevance•New York, NY

About The Position

The Client Partner (CP) is a strategic, quota-carrying role focused on growing Vertical Relevance’s business in financial services. You will find and close professional services engagements, build trusted relationships with business and technology leaders, and position Vertical Relevance as the partner of choice for AWS cloud and AI transformation. Our model is domain-led, agentic by design, and platform-backed: financial services advisory, agentic AI delivery, and AWS cloud and AI platform engineering. This role requires a proven track record of selling professional services into financial services firms, including cloud services built on AWS. Vertical Relevance is an AWS Premier Tier Partner, and the CP sells across all seven of our AWS practice competencies, from platform foundations, security, and resiliency through application modernization, data, and AI. GenAI and agentic AI, delivered with AWS and our Anthropic partnership, are a growing part of the portfolio, and the CP should be able to hold a credible conversation about them.

Requirements

Minimum of 3 years selling professional services (consulting, systems integration, or technology services) into the financial services industry. Software or product-only sales experience does not meet this requirement.
Demonstrated experience selling AWS cloud services, such as platform foundations, DevOps, security and compliance, resiliency, migration and modernization, data and analytics, or AI engagements.
Track record of leading direct sales with financial services clients as the primary relationship owner, not only through partner-sourced deals
Experience working with AWS partnership teams (account managers, partner development managers, AWS programs and funding)
Proven record of meeting or exceeding quotas for professional services, including scoping engagements, pricing time-and-materials and fixed-fee work, and closing SOWs
Vertical Relevance goes to market as “Domain-led. Agentic by design. Platform-backed.” The Client Partner must be able to explain all three pillars, show how they connect in a single client program, and know when to bring in each practice lead.
Financial Services Advisory (the domain layer): Enough financial services and regulatory fluency to lead the business conversation: AI value and strategy (use-case portfolios, value roadmaps, and operating model change for AI adoption); governance, risk, and regulatory work (GRC and regulatory remediation, model and agent governance frameworks); program leadership (transformation and integration offices, agile requirements and delivery management); and data strategy (data management and architecture for AI).
Agentic AI Delivery (what we build): Enough understanding of production AI to sell it credibly and qualify it honestly: taking agentic pilots to production (for example, a 90-day agentic pilot on Amazon Bedrock); human-in-the-loop design with full audit lineage; financial services domain agents such as trading-desk and RFQ automation, risk and pricing analytics, and risk, surveillance, and regulatory-reporting agents; and vulnerability remediation at scale, including AI-accelerated discovery, triage, and remediation, legacy code remediated with Claude on Amazon Bedrock, and governed post-patch regression testing.
AWS Cloud & AI Platform Engineering (where it runs): Solid working knowledge of AWS in regulated industries, across our seven competencies: AWS cloud transformation (migrations, landing zones and Control Tower, cloud security, compliance, and data-perimeter engineering, data and analytics platforms); modernization and resilience (application modernization to cloud- and AI-native, SRE and resiliency engineering); AI foundations on AWS (Amazon Bedrock and AgentCore architectures, Claude deployed in the client’s own AWS environment); and enablement (AWS- and Anthropic-certified delivery teams, co-funded delivery through AWS partner programs, and agent governance for identity, permissions, and audit).
Bringing it together: Ability to connect the pillars into one story. For example: a regulatory or risk problem (Pillar 1) is solved with a governed agentic workflow (Pillar 2) running on a secure, resilient AWS platform (Pillar 3).
Strong presentation skills and the ability to explain technical concepts in business terms at every level of an organization
Familiarity with business development methods, including technology roadmaps, assessments, and proofs of value
Bachelor’s degree required

Nice To Haves

Active or past responsibility for co-selling with partners such as AWS ProServe or Anthropic is a plus
Advanced degrees or certifications in cloud (e.g., AWS), AI, or related fields are a plus

Responsibilities

Identify and close new professional services opportunities across banks, asset and wealth managers, insurers, and payments firms
Build pipeline across all seven AWS competencies, and connect opportunities across them (for example, a migration that leads to security, resiliency, and data work)
Use personal networks, AWS account teams, and internal relationships to generate qualified pipeline
Run the pursuit from first meeting through executive briefings, assessments, proofs of value, and SOW
Lead direct sales: Own and lead direct sales with financial services clients: originate opportunities, run the pursuit, build the relationship with the economic buyer, and close the SOW. Direct selling is the core of this role and the primary measure of success.
Work the AWS partnership: Work closely with AWS account managers, partner development managers, and AWS field teams. Build joint account plans, use AWS funding and buying programs such as MAP, proof-of-concept funding, and AWS Marketplace, and position Vertical Relevance’s AWS Premier Tier status and competencies (Financial Services, Security, DevOps, Resilience, and GenAI).
Run co-sell motions with partners, including AWS ProServe engagements and staffing requests through the AWS partner delivery process, and joint pursuits with Anthropic and other technology partners.
Identify where GenAI and agentic AI create value for clients, such as operations, reconciliation, vulnerability management, software engineering productivity, and client service
Position our GenAI Center of Excellence, agentic reconciliation, and AI-driven vulnerability management (Mythos/Glasswing) offerings, delivered with AWS and Anthropic
Address the questions financial services buyers ask about AI: model risk, data privacy, security, controls, and regulatory expectations
Build and maintain relationships with decision-makers at target accounts, including CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, Chief Data and AI Officers, and business line heads
Position Vertical Relevance as a strategic partner for business and technology consulting
Manage client relationships through the full sales cycle and into delivery
Work with delivery teams to build competitive proposals, estimates, and SOWs
Build joint go-to-market plans with our technology partners, including AWS, Anthropic (Claude), and ServiceNow
Bring in competency leads and solution architects at the right moment to shape solutions, demos, and proposals
Drive account planning to expand within existing clients and win new logos
Manage multiple deal cycles at once while keeping pipeline and forecast data accurate in the CRM
Meet or exceed quarterly sales quotas through strategic, outcome-based engagements
Grow accounts through a steady series of follow-on SOWs and change requests, using each delivered engagement to open the next
Restructure scope and pricing when a client’s budget or priorities shift, so the deal stays alive without giving up agreed principles
Own the full commercial lifecycle past signature: client procurement and vendor risk steps, resource requests, onboarding, billing start, milestone invoicing, and collections
Act as a trusted advisor who understands each client’s business challenges and offers tailored solutions
Represent Vertical Relevance at industry events, executive roundtables, and partner forums to build brand awareness and thought leadership in financial services cloud and AI