Senior Employer Engagement Manager

GOODWILL OF SILICON VALLEY • San Jose, CA

3d • $100,000 - $110,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

At Mission Services of Silicon Valley, our purpose is simple and powerful: to help people build skills, find meaningful work, and thrive in our community. For nearly 100 years, we’ve been a trusted partner in connecting opportunity with people’s potential. By working hand in hand with local experts, employers, and community members, we create pathways to education, employment, and lasting economic mobility. As a team, we are committed to: Empowering one another to do our best work and grow together. Building strong partnerships and serving as a driving force for economic opportunity in Silicon Valley. Modeling teamwork, integrity, and cultural intelligence in everything we do. Acting with mutual respect—for each other, our community, and the environment we share. The Senior Employer Engagement Manager leads Mission Service’s newly consolidated Employer Engagement Team – a cross-organizational function responsible for building and managing the employer relationships that drive job placement outcomes across all of Mission Service’s workforce programs, and delivering internal job readiness services aligned to labor market outcomes to program teams by driving a singular purpose through individualized interaction and a unified coordinated effort. This is a data-driven, high-relationship role combining the rigor of a sophisticated business development function with the mission orientation of workforce development. The Manager supervises a team of Employer Engagement Specialists embedded across Mission Service’s program areas, including CTE/Skilled Trades, Veterans Services, STRIVE, and NOW, who develop sector expertise aligned with their program populations and provide targeted job readiness training to participants in conjunction with program teams. The Manager sets strategy, builds systems, uses market intelligence to anticipate employer demand, and ensures that Mission Service’s employer relationships compound over time into a durable institutional asset. This role is central to Mission Service's ability to meet its performance commitments, including nearly 1,000 job placements annually, and to the organization’s broader goal of becoming the region’s most effective and trusted workforce development partner.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in business, workforce development, public administration, or a related field, OR equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Minimum five years of experience in employer engagement, business development, outside sales, or account management, with demonstrated success building and managing a portfolio of organizational relationships.
• Experience using data and labor market intelligence to inform strategy and decision-making.
• Demonstrated ability to manage and develop a team.
• Strong written and oral communication skills, including the ability to present compellingly to employer audiences.
• Proficiency in CRM systems and willingness to configure and manage monday.com, or similar tool, as the team’s employer tracking platform.
• Valid California driver’s license, and reliable personal vehicle.
• Willingness to travel up to 50% of time for employer meetings and community engagement.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in workforce development, economic development, or a related sector with knowledge of employer-facing talent pipeline programs.
• Familiarity with labor market intelligence tools such as Lightcast, EMSI, or equivalent.
• Knowledge of Santa Clara County’s clean energy, construction trades, or advanced manufacturing employer landscape.
• Experience managing grant-funded programs with performance-based reporting requirements.
• Spanish language proficiency a plus.

Responsibilities

• Use labor market intelligence tools – like Lightcast, publicly available sector data fed through AI, industry reports, and California workforce policy documents – to identify employer demand trends, forecast hiring volume, and align Mission Service program offerings with market need.
• Develop and execute a multi-sector employer engagement strategy targeting clean energy, skilled trades, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, and digital/tech-enabled industries.
• Maintain a current, evidence-based understanding of employer hiring needs, credential requirements, and wage trajectories in Santa Clara County’s key growth sectors.
• Advise the Senior Director of Workforce and Partnerships and the Mission Services senior leadership team on labor market trends with implications for program design, curriculum, and scale.
• Build and manage a portfolio of 100+ active employer relationships across Mission Services’ priority sectors, with a goal of securing placement commitments sufficient to meet 80% placement rates for program graduates.
• Develop and implement a structured employer outreach process – from initial prospecting through relationship cultivation, placement agreements, and long-term retention – using defined activity standards and systematic follow-up. Including developing a formalized employer partner agreement process with target sign-ons in each priority sector.
• Represent Mission Services compellingly to employers, articulating the value of our graduate talent pipeline and the quality of our training programs.
• Convene one or more semi-annual Employer Advisory Council to solicit industry feedback on training program alignment, emerging credential needs, and talent demand signals.
• Lead or support Industry Panels and Career Connection Day events for cohorts and equivalent placement events across other programs.
• Design, configure, and manage an employer CRM in monday.com, capturing all employer outreach activity, relationship history, placement outcomes, employer feedback, and sector intelligence across all program areas.
• In partnership with other Mission Services departments, design and implement a pathway and assessment processes and tools within the CRM to systematically map participant competencies and technical skill sets against real-time employer performance requirements.
• Establish data standards and workflow protocols that ensure consistent, high-quality data entry across the Employer Engagement Specialist team.
• Produce regular reports on employer engagement activity, placement pipeline, and outcome performance for the Senior Director of Workforce Development and Partnerships and Mission Services senior leadership.
• Ensure all employer-side documentation required for funding sources, including offer letters, employer verification, and post-placement surveys is systematically collected and maintained.
• Design and oversee EES facilitation of standardized employability workshops that address participants’ specific labor market barriers.
• Use program-specific insights to deliver tailored coaching and workforce development interventions that reliably move participants toward increasing levels of job readiness.
• Implement a continuous improvement model to assess participants’ workforce development needs, using quarterly placement data to proactively adapt workshops and 1:1 coaching to enhance job readiness and job placement.
• Design and implement a dual-faceted 1:1 engagement strategy to maintain consistent high-touch coaching and proactively calibrate support throughout participants’ workforce development journey.
• Collaborate with Employer Engagement Specialists(EES) to conduct granular talent assessments for each cohort, mapping participants’ unique competencies to strategic employer partnerships and engineering individualized placement pathways.
• Directly supervise a team of four to seven Employer Engagement Specialists deployed across Mission Services’ program areas, providing coaching, goal-setting, performance management, and professional development.
• Develop and maintain a sector expertise model in which each specialist builds deep knowledge of their assigned industry – including key employers, credential standards, hiring cycles, and wage norms – serving as the organizational expert for that sector.
• Facilitate regular team meetings and coordination with program managers to ensure employer engagement activity is aligned with cohort schedules, graduate readiness, and enrollment timelines.
• Build a team culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and high-quality employer relationships.
• Partner closely with the Senior Director of Workforce and Partnerships, Program Managers, and the Community Outreach Manager to align employer engagement strategy with participant flow, cohort scheduling, and program capacity.
• Collaborate with Career Coaches and Career Navigators to ensure graduates receive the front-loaded job readiness and job search support needed to succeed in employer interviews.
• Serve as the primary liaison between Mission Services and employer partners, communicating graduate readiness, cohort timelines, and placement opportunities in a timely, professional, and data-informed manner.
• Use participant and programmatic data to ensure programs work together to drive increases in Job Readiness Assessment-driven benchmarks that accelerate the participants’ employability.
• Responsibilities may be added, deleted or changed at any time at the discretion of management, formally or informally either orally or in writing.

Benefits

• Empowering one another to do our best work and grow together.
• Building strong partnerships and serving as a driving force for economic opportunity in Silicon Valley.
• Modeling teamwork, integrity, and cultural intelligence in everything we do.
• Acting with mutual respect—for each other, our community, and the environment we share.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior