Practice Manager

Heredia, Costa Rica

As a Practice Manager within Professional Services, you Regional PS Leaders in managing Professional Services. You are accountable for Cornerstone’s growing customer and partner base across the design, implementation, and ongoing support of the full suite of products and services. You manage project and account escalations and provide pre-sales support when needed, while ensuring on-time, high-quality deliverables and high levels of client satisfaction. You mentor project team members across all facets of project governance – including scope, timelines, budgets, and deliverable schedules – and identify opportunities with existing customers for additional services.

What success looks like

• Help build the practice by establishing processes, procedures, and templates spanning the pre-sales through delivery experience.
• Support Service Solution Managers on pursuits, drawing on knowledge from previous project and customer experiences.
• Mentor and coach consultants and project managers.
• Manage and build client relationships with key decision-makers from project inception through post-implementation, ensuring customer satisfaction.
• Manage account and customer escalations, facilitate client meetings where needed, and articulate issues and resolution options clearly and succinctly.
• Monitor on-site and remote day-to-day activities between the client and Cornerstone personnel during projects.
• Interact with account management, sales, support, success, product engineering, and product management to ensure organizational continuity.
• Review status reports and project updates within your portfolio, and communicate escalations or risks that could cause escalations to the Regional PS Leaders.
• Provide pre-sales support to Service Solution Managers and look for opportunities to upsell to existing customers in flight on projects or recurring services.
• Assume areas of responsibility and partner with our Services Engineering team for the internal and external development of staff, processes, procedures, methodologies, and areas of excellence.
• Hire and train staff for project delivery while managing billable and productive utilization KPIs for your team.
• Lead people management – mentoring and coaching a team of direct reports.
• Plan and manage services project and portfolio schedules and budgets.
• Drive best-practice adoption and continuous-improvement initiatives.

AI capabilities and oversight

• Oversee the responsible adoption of approved AI and automation across the practice to improve discovery, requirements synthesis, documentation, testing, status insight, issue investigation, and knowledge reuse.
• Identify and prioritize practical AI-enabled use cases across the portfolio, connecting them to business value, delivery efficiency, adoption, governance, and measurable customer outcomes.
• Ensure teams validate AI outputs for accuracy, bias, confidentiality, security, intellectual property, and customer context, retaining human accountability for delivery decisions.
• Establish standards, enablement, and coaching so consultants and project managers apply AI tools consistently, and convert repeatable delivery activities into automated or reusable practice assets.
• Monitor the effectiveness and compliance of AI-enabled delivery across your portfolio, and surface insights, risks, and enablement needs to Practice Directors and Regional PS Leaders.

Core capabilities

• Portfolio and project leadership across scope, timelines, budgets, deliverable schedules, and quality gates for concurrent engagements.
• People management – hiring, training, mentoring, and coaching consultants and project managers, with ownership of billable and productive utilization KPIs.
• Client relationship management with key decision-makers from inception through post-implementation.
• Escalation management and risk mitigation, with clear and succinct articulation of issues and resolution options.
• Cross-functional collaboration with account management, sales, support, success, product engineering, and product management.
• Pre-sales support and services expansion with existing customers.
• Practice building through processes, procedures, templates, methodologies, and continuous-improvement initiatives.

Experience and qualifications

• A minimum of 3-5 years’ experience managing Software as a Service (SaaS) implementation and deployment in a portfolio leadership role.
• Proven track record of developing and maintaining profitable and referenceable customer relationships.
• Confirmed experience proactively identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks during project execution; managing delivery of projects; and identifying, developing, and closing services engagements.
• Ability to demonstrate and ensure timely, thorough communication of strategy, deliverable status, and results.
• Experience measuring the progress of projects against established objectives such as revenue, expense management, utilization metrics, delivery quality, and customer satisfaction.
• Exposure to monitoring results and taking corrective action to ensure the achievement of objectives within budget.
• Experience serving as an escalation contact for implementation issues, working with the customer decision-maker toward resolution.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, with strong presentation and facilitation ability.

Preferred qualifications

• Strong understanding of HR processes and talent management practices.
• Technical degree preferred; Computer Science degree a plus.
• Project Management Professional (PMP) certification a plus, or willingness to work toward it.
• Experience with Salesforce (SFDC), MS Project, Smartsheet, Kantata, or another PSA tool.
• Pre-sales support experience.

Measures of success

• On-time, high-quality delivery and strong customer satisfaction across the assigned portfolio.
• Achievement of revenue, margin, and expense targets, with billable and productive utilization KPIs met for the team.
• Effective risk and escalation management, with issues resolved before they impact delivery or the customer relationship.
• Services growth through referenceable relationships, pre-sales support, and expansion with existing customers.
• A capable, engaged team and a maturing practice, including stronger processes, methodologies, and responsible, measurable adoption of AI-enabled delivery.