Consulting Engagement Lead

Toffler Associates, Inc; Arlington (VA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Toffler Associates seeks an Engagement Lead to own the delivery of complex client work across DoW mission environments, ensuring quality outcomes and strong client relationships.

You will guide strategic engagements, manage engagement economics, and lead teams to turn ambiguous problems into actionable plans with measurable impact.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 5 years in management consulting with executive-level client engagement.
• Proven ability to translate strategy into practical workplans and cross-functional delivery.
• Strong systems thinking, analytical judgment, facilitation, executive communication.
• Experience leading multiple workstreams while managing scope, budget, schedule, quality.
• Ability to work with quantitative and qualitative data to deliver executive-ready outputs.
• Experience using AI tools like Copilot, ChatGPT, or Gemini to accelerate analysis.

Responsibilities

• Lead complex engagements from kickoff through close, with clear outcomes and high-quality deliverables.
• Turn ambiguous questions into problem statements, hypotheses, analysis, decisions, and next steps.
• Set direction, assign ownership, coach practitioners, review work, and support team success.
• Build trusted relationships, run effective meetings, manage expectations with clients.
• Know scope, schedule, staffing, burn, profitability, risks, and forecast; address problems early.

Skills

Systems thinking

Analytical judgment

Facilitation

Executive communication

Relationship-building

Leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Copilot

ChatGPT

Gemini

Job description

Toffler Associates

The role.

Engagement Leads own the delivery of complex client work. You are accountable for the quality of the work, the health of the engagement, the performance of the team, and the strength of the client relationship. You will lead strategic engagements across Department of War (DoW) mission environments, make sense of ambiguous problems, guide teams and senior clients, manage engagement economics, and turn strong delivery into follow-on opportunities.

How we expect you to show up

These behaviors are foundational to how we recruit, select, develop, and evaluate every practitioner at Toffler. Experience matters; how you use it matters more.

Team Before Self - Put

team success ahead of individual recognition. Share knowledge, relationships, credit, and opportunities freely. Ask for help, offer it freely, and make the people around you better. Make choices that strengthen the team.

Quiet Professional

- Lead through sound judgment, preparation, and performance. Earn credibility through the quality, not title, résumé, or personal visibility.

Humility

- Remain curious and teachable regardless of experience. Seek and apply feedback, recognize blind spots and missteps, and adapt with openness and self-awareness.

Reliability

- Consistently earn the trust of clients and teammates. Do what you say you will do. Communicate early, surface risks before they become problems, and make sure clients and teammates are never surprised.

Stewardship

- Take responsibility for leaving the client, team, and firm stronger than you found them. Build relationships, capacity, and knowledge that last beyond the engagement.

What you will own

Deliver the work

Lead complex engagements from kickoff through close, with clear outcomes, a strong workplan, high-quality deliverables, and no surprises for the client.

Make sense of the problem

Turn ambiguous questions and incomplete information into a clear problem statement, hypotheses, analysis, decisions, and next steps.

Lead the team.

Set direction, assign clear ownership, coach practitioners, review the work, address performance issues, and create the conditions for people to succeed.

Lead the client day to day

Build trusted relationships, run effective meetings, facilitate difficult conversations, manage expectations, and know what matters to the client beyond the immediate scope.

Run a healthy engagement.

Know the scope, schedule, staffing, burn, profitability, risks, and forecast; address problems early and elevate when needed.

What you'll bring

• A minimum of 5 years of management consulting experience, including executive-level client engagement and leadership of teams.
• Proven ability to turn strategy into a practical workplan and move work across functions and levels of an organization.
• Strong systems thinking, analytical judgment, facilitation, executive communication, and relationship-building skills.
• Experience leading multiple workstreams and teams while managing scope, budget, schedule, quality, and client expectations.
• Ability to work effectively with quantitative and qualitative data to create clear, executive-ready deliverables.
• Working proficiency with modern AI tools such as Copilot, ChatGPT, or Gemini to accelerate analysis, workflows, prototypes, and deliverables.
• Bachelor's degree; U.S. citizenship; ability to obtain and maintain up to a Top-Secret security clearance.
• Reside in and be willing to commute regularly within the Washington, DC metropolitan area in a hybrid work environment.

What will differentiate you

• You get to the heart of a problem quickly, challenge assumptions, and see connections others miss.
• You can command a room without needing to be the center of it.
• You can work across strategy, operations, people, technology, and AI without treating them as separate problems.
• You build relationships beyond the immediate project, recognize unmet client needs, and know how to turn those needs into follow-on work.
• You leave behind stronger clients, stronger teammates, stronger systems, and not just completed deliverables.

Why Toffler

We are thinkers and doers.

For more than 30 years, Toffler Associates has helped leaders navigate consequential moments when the path forward is not obvious. Drawing from the legacy of Alvin and Heidi Toffler, we help clients see what is changing, understand what it means, and decide what to do about it.

Our work begins where the answer is not already known. We take on complex problems such as cross strategy, technology, organizations, operations, and people. We ask hard questions, challenge assumptions, bring different perspectives together, and work alongside our clients to turn ideas into action.

How we work matters. Toffler is collaborative, candid, and low-ego. We share what we know, remain open to being wrong, and take responsibility for the success of the whole team. We expect people to contribute beyond their individual role and to leave their clients, teammates, and the firm stronger because they were here.

We are looking for people who think deeply, act decisively, and make the people around them better. They are comfortable when the answer is not obvious, generous with what they know, and confident without needing recognition. Most importantly, they want to do meaningful work and leave something stronger behind.

Toffler Associates, Inc. complies with all applicable federal, state, and local laws regarding recruitment and hiring. All qualified applicants are considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, age, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.