Associate Director / Senior Managing Consultant Pod Lead - Financial Services Operations & Technology

BRG; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 150,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

BRG is building a new Financial Institution Operations & Technology practice. We are seeking an Associate Director or Senior Managing Consultant to lead delivery across engagements, shaping scope, architecture, and outcomes.

You will partner with technical leads, manage multidisciplinary pods, and ensure client value while maintaining governance and risk controls. You will guide teams through discovery, requirements, build, testing, and deployment, while evolving offerings and supporting

Qualifications

• 10+ years of prior applicable work experience for Associate Director.
• 7+ years of experience for Senior Managing Consultant level.
• Experience owning consulting engagements and leading delivery teams.
• Relevant financial services experience in consumer/commercial lending or payments.
• Experience with mortgage, credit cards, personal loans, or auto lending is valuable.
• Ability to lead multidisciplinary teams and deliver outcomes.
• Strong written and verbal communication to influence senior stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Own client pursuits, proposals, scope, pricing, and delivery plans; translate business problems into outcomes.
• Lead discovery and solution shaping with client stakeholders, analysts, and technical leads.
• Assemble and mobilize the pod around funded engagement needs and define roles.
• Own backlog priorities with client and team, balancing value and feasibility.
• Manage delivery across discovery, build, testing, and release with quality controls.
• Build trusted client relationships and oversee engagement governance.

Skills

Delivery leadership

Client relationship management

Team leadership

Strategic thinking

Communication

AI-enabled delivery

Job description

We Do Consulting Differently

Preferred locations: New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Dallas, and Boston. Strong candidates in other locations may be considered on a case‑by‑case basis.

About the Practice

Berkeley Research Group is building a new Financial Institution Operations & Technology practice, with an initial focus on Commercial and Consumer Banking. We combine deep banking expertise, technology, and AI-enabled delivery to help financial institutions turn complex business challenges into measurable operational improvements. Our delivery model centers on small, multidisciplinary pods that work closely with clients and take shared responsibility from discovery through implementation. Pod leaders, hybrid business and technology analysts, technical architects, and engineers work against a prioritized backlog, bringing in domain, risk, design, and quality specialists as needed. This is an opportunity to help build a practice within an established consulting firm by delivering client results, developing reusable offerings, recruiting talent, and improving how we work.

The Role

We are considering candidates at the Associate Director and Senior Managing Consultant levels. This person will be the accountable delivery leader who brings together client priorities, business expertise, and technical execution. You own engagements from proposal and scoping through implementation, adoption, and handover, with responsibility for client outcomes, delivery quality, team performance, and engagement economics. This is a senior, hands‑on leadership role—not solely a relationship‑management or PMO position. You shape the work, lead a multidisciplinary team, resolve delivery obstacles, and stay close to what is being built and how it will be used. You partner with the technical lead on architecture, feasibility, engineering quality, and technical risks; you are not expected to replace that specialist or be the pod’s primary software engineer. You retain overall delivery accountability while giving analysts and engineers clear ownership of their work.

What You’ll Do

• Own client pursuits, proposals, scope, pricing, and delivery plans; translate business problems into clear outcomes, success measures, and realistic implementation commitments.
• Lead discovery and solution shaping with client stakeholders, analysts, and technical leads; connect operational priorities to practical technology and AI-enabled improvements.
• Assembly and mobilize the pod around funded engagement needs, working with practice leadership to secure internal talent and specialist resources and define clear roles and decision rights.
• Own backlog priorities with the client and team, balancing business value, feasibility, dependencies, risk, and delivery capacity; lead planning, demonstrations, and feedback-driven iteration.
• Manage delivery across discovery, requirements, build, testing, and release; ensure that business analysis, technical implementation, and client decisions remain aligned.
• Track scope, milestones, staffing, budget, and engagement economics; manage changes, resolve impediments, and escape risks early with clear options and recommendations.
• Build trusted senior client relationships and lead engagement governance; communicate progress, trade‑offs, and decisions clearly and hold both the team and stakeholders to agreed commitments.
• Ensure appropriate quality assurance, operational controls, and risk and compliance input, including evaluation and human oversight of AI-enabled workflows where needed.
• Lead business readiness, adoption, training, and handover; validate results against agreed success measures and ensure solutions can be sustained beyond the engagement.
• Oversee concurrent engagements or pods as assigned, maintaining clear accountable leadership for each; identify opportunities to expand client relationships and support practice growth.

How You’ll Lead the Pod

• Set direction and operating cadence, delegate workstream ownership, review critical deliverables, and coach colleagues.
• Create a team environment where issues surface early and business and technical specialists solve problems together.
• Promote responsible use of approved AI tools to improve analysis and delivery.
• Require validation of outputs, protection of client information, and judgment about where automation is appropriate.
• Develop delivery talent, support recruiting, and capture reusable assets and lessons learned; contribute to new offerings, proposals, thought leadership, and continuous improvement of the practice’s delivery model.

Qualifications Required

• A minimum of 10 years of prior applicable work experience is required to be considered for the Associate Director. To be considered at the Sr. Managing Consultant level, a minimum of 7 years of experience is required.
• Experience owning consulting engagements and supporting business development, including scoping work, leading delivery teams, and managing client expectations and engagement economics.
• Demonstrated ability to lead multidisciplinary business and technology teams through implementation, with clear workstream ownership, delivery discipline, and accountability for outcomes.
• Relevant financial services experience in consumer lending, commercial lending, or payments.
• Experience in mortgage, credit card, personal loan, or auto lending, including servicing, collections, and default, is valuable; adjacent banking or wealth and asset management experience is a plus.
• Experience leading complex transformation programs in regulated financial institutions, including but not limited to regulatory change, compliance, operational improvement, or regulatory remediation.
• Ability to work effectively across business, operations, technology, legal, compliance, and risk; sound judgment in resolving trade‑offs, managing dependencies, and escalating issues.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders, facilitate decisions, and coach and develop team members.
• Curiosity about AI-enabled delivery, willingness to learn and use approved tools responsibly, and ability to travel to client sites as needed.

Preferred

• Deep experience in retail banking, consumer lending, or credit cards, including relevant servicing, collections, or default operations.
• Experience leading agile, product-oriented, or pod-based delivery, including prioritized backlogs, iterative releases, and adoption of technology-enabled workflows.
• Technical fluency in applications, data flows, APIs, integrations, and AI-enabled solutions sufficient to challenge assumptions and evaluate delivery options with technical specialists.
• Experience using AI tools such as Claude or ChatGPT to improve analysis and delivery, or leading implementation of AI-enabled workflows, automation, or digital solutions.
• Success in this role means a well‑led pod, strong client relationships, disciplined engagement economics, and working solutions that deliver measurable business improvement—not simply recommendations, activity reports, or demonstrations.

Candidates must be able to verify their legal right to work in the United States without employer sponsorship now or in the future.

About BRG

BRG combines world‑leading academic credentials with world‑tested business expertise and purpose‑built emerging technologies. Our culture centers on agility and connectivity which sets us apart and gets you ahead. At BRG, our professionals include specialist consultants, industry experts, renowned academics, and leading‑edge data scientists. Together, they bring a diversity of real‑world experience, data, and human and artificial intelligence, to economics, disputes, and investigations; corporate finance; and performance improvement services that address the most complex challenges facing organizations across the globe. Our unique structure nurtures the interdisciplinary relationships that give us the edge, laying the groundwork for more informed insights and more original, incisive thinking. When paired with our global reach and resources, our diverse perspectives and technical capabilities make us uniquely capable to address our clients’ challenges. We get results because we know how to apply our thinking to your world. At BRG, we don’t just show you what’s possible. We’re built to help you make it happen.

BRG is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. Our hiring practices provide equal opportunity for employment without regard to race, religion, color, sex, gender, national origin, age, United States military veteran status, ancestry, sexual orientation, marital status, family structure, medical condition including genetic characteristics or information, veteran status, or mental or physical disability so long as the essential functions of the job can be performed with or without reasonable accommodation, or any other protected category under federal, state, or local law.

Associate Director Salary range: $180,000 - $250,000. Senior Managing Consultant salary range: $150,000 - $175,000. Job title and level will be determined based on qualifications and experience. Candidates must be able to verify their legal right to work in the United States without employer sponsorship now or in the future.

We do Consulting Differently. It takes more than top‑tier people. It takes top‑tier people grounded in real‑world expertise, working together in the right ways. This is BRG. Purpose‑built for the agility and connectivity that sets us apart— we bring the best data, brightest talent, and boldest thinking to all that we do. With the crucial added ingredient of our real‑world business acumen, we translate insights into action.

BRG is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. Our hiring practices provide equal opportunity for employment without regard to race, religion, color, sex, gender, national origin, age, United States military veteran status, ancestry, sexual orientation, marital status, family structure, medical condition including genetic characteristics or information, veteran status, or mental or physical disability so long as the essential functions of the job can be performed with or without reasonable accommodation, or any other protected category under federal, state, or local law.

If you need reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please contact us by email at [e-mail] and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information. Requests for Website Accessibility and Required Information for Online Applicant Tracking Systems accommodation will be considered on a case‑by‑case basis. Please note that only inquiries concerning a request for reasonable accommodation will be responded to from this email address.