Senior Client Manager

Koto • New York, NY

4d • Hybrid

About The Position

Koto is seeking a thoughtful, proactive, and commercially minded Senior Client Manager for 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 ensuring work is delivered with care, clarity, and purpose. The Senior Client Manager balances creative ambition with commercial realities, builds meaningful relationships, brings structure to complex projects, and helps teams do their best work.

The position contributes to shaping client relationships, delivering ambitious creative work, and supporting the continued growth of Koto’s New York studio. It involves managing multiple projects and their timelines, budgets, deliverables, stakeholders, resourcing, and financial reporting; collaborating with creative and strategy teams; and supporting new business through proposals, scopes of work, budgets, timelines, and project approaches.

Koto 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 to complete their work. Employees may also apply to work from any of Koto’s four global studios for a set period, with appropriate planning.

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.
• Proactive, organized, and solutions-oriented approach.
• Collaborative, low-ego attitude and genuine desire to help others succeed.
• Genuine passion for great creative work.

Nice To Haves

• Experience managing branding and creative projects within an agency or design studio.

Responsibilities

• Lead day-to-day management of multiple branding and design projects from start to finish, owning timelines, budgets, deliverables, and stakeholder communication.
• Ensure projects are delivered on time, within scope, and to high creative standards.
• Build trusted client partnerships, understand clients’ businesses and challenges, manage expectations, anticipate needs, and balance client priorities with creative-team needs.
• Collaborate with creative and strategy teams to support exceptional work, navigate feedback, protect creative integrity, and ensure work meets the brief.
• Develop project plans, timelines, and resourcing schedules; anticipate challenges; clarify priorities, responsibilities, and next steps; and keep teams aligned.
• Manage project budgets, profitability, resourcing, and financial reporting; navigate scope changes, identify commercial risks, and work with studio leadership and Finance to maintain commercial health.
• Support new business opportunities by developing proposals, scopes of work, budgets, timelines, and project approaches.
• Handle difficult conversations, changing priorities, and unexpected challenges with composure and sound judgment, resolving issues while protecting relationships and work quality.

Benefits

• Meaningful and regular access to a manager to support personal development and career trajectory.
• Performance rewards through promotions, pay increases, and a discretionary annual bonus of up to 10% of salary.
• Equal environment for all employees.
• 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% to the 401(k) plan for employees who contribute.
• 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.
• Opportunity 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.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed