Senior Client Manager
About The Position
Koto is seeking a thoughtful, proactive, and commercially minded Senior Client Manager to join its Client Services team in New York. The role partners with clients and creative teams, leading branding and design projects from kickoff through delivery and helping ensure high-quality work is delivered with care, clarity, and purpose. The Senior Client Manager balances creative ambition with commercial realities, structures complex projects, builds client relationships, anticipates challenges, and helps teams do their best work. The position contributes to client relationships, ambitious creative work, and the growth of Koto’s New York studio. It also supports new business opportunities through proposals, scopes, budgets, timelines, and project approaches. Koto describes its culture as rationally optimistic and focused on pursuing strong briefs and meaningful work. The team works in person, with an optional work-from-home day on Friday and an additional two weeks of remote work per year. Team members are encouraged to manage their time, hours, and personal commitments autonomously.
Requirements
- At least 5 years of experience managing branding and creative projects, ideally within an agency or design studio.
- Strong understanding of brand strategy, creative development, and design processes.
- Ability to manage complex projects while balancing timelines, budgets, stakeholders, and competing priorities.
- Commercial awareness and comfort managing scope, resourcing, and project profitability.
- Strong relationship-building and communication skills, including confidence, empathy, and sound judgment in client conversations and challenging situations.
- Proactive, organized, and solutions-oriented approach.
- Collaborative, low-ego approach and genuine desire to help others succeed.
- Genuine passion for great creative work.
Responsibilities
- Lead day-to-day management of multiple branding and design projects from start to finish, managing timelines, budgets, deliverables, and stakeholder communication to deliver on time, within scope, and to high creative standards.
- Build trusted client partnerships by understanding clients’ businesses, ambitions, and challenges; serve as a confident point of contact; manage expectations; and balance client priorities with the needs of creative teams.
- Collaborate with creative and strategy teams to support exceptional work, navigate feedback, protect creative integrity, and ensure work meets the brief.
- Create project plans, timelines, and resourcing schedules; anticipate challenges; clarify priorities, responsibilities, and next steps; and keep teams aligned.
- Manage project budgets, monitor profitability, track resourcing, maintain accurate financial reporting, navigate scope changes, and work with studio leadership and Finance to manage commercial risks.
- Support new business opportunities by developing proposals, scopes of work, budgets, timelines, and project approaches.
- Handle difficult conversations, shifting priorities, and unexpected challenges with composure and sound judgment; manage feedback, negotiate scope, and resolve project issues while protecting relationships and work quality.
Benefits
- Regular access to a manager to support personal development and career progression.
- Promotions and pay increases, plus a discretionary annual bonus of up to 10% of salary for all employees.
- Paid family leave, including significant paid maternity and paternity leave.
- 25 days of annual vacation, in addition to US bank holidays and a studio closure over the December holidays.
- Employer contribution of up to 4% for employees contributing to the 401(k) plan.
- Monthly employee wellness benefits package via Juno worth $100 per month.
- Access to YCN and funding for relevant training opportunities.
- Five-year service reward of $5,000 and five additional vacation days; ten-year service reward of $10,000 and four weeks of holiday.
- Option to work from any of Koto’s four global studios for a set period, with appropriate planning and application.
- Optional work-from-home day on Friday and an additional two weeks of remote work per year.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
