Client Partner – Financial Services

Client Partner – Financial Services
Vertical Relevance  |  Business Development  |  2026
Job Summary The Client Partner (CP) is a strategic, quota-carrying role focused on growing Vertical Relevance’s business in financial services. You will find and close professional services engagements, build trusted relationships with business and technology leaders, and position Vertical Relevance as the partner of choice for AWS cloud and AI transformation. Our model is domain-led, agentic by design, and platform-backed: financial services advisory, agentic AI delivery, and AWS cloud and AI platform engineering.
This role requires a proven track record of selling professional services into financial services firms, including cloud services built on AWS. Vertical Relevance is an AWS Premier Tier Partner, and the CP sells across all seven of our AWS practice competencies, from platform foundations, security, and resiliency through application modernization, data, and AI. GenAI and agentic AI, delivered with AWS and our Anthropic partnership, are a growing part of the portfolio, and the CP should be able to hold a credible conversation about them. Our Seven AWS Competencies The Client Partner is expected to understand each competency well enough to find the opportunity, frame the business case, and bring in the competency lead to shape the solution.
- Enterprise Program Governance / PMO: Program and engagement management, IT transformation, mergers and acquisitions, and integration offices for large cloud programs
- DevOps: DevOps platforms that deliver infrastructure and deployment pipelines through automation, including account, network, pipeline, and container foundations
- Security & Compliance: SecOps platforms that deliver security and compliance policies as code, including identity and control foundations, policy as code, and our Control Broker asset
- SRE & Resiliency: Monitoring, observability, and automated resiliency testing, including game days, chaos experiments, and performance testing for critical workloads
- App Modernization: Re-designing, re-factoring, and re-platforming applications to run AWS-native, including monolith-to-microservices and migration programs
- Data & Analytics: DataOps platforms for data ingestion, governance, and analytics, including lakehouse, data mesh, data marketplace, and catalog work
- AI: Designing, building, and tuning AI, GenAI, and agentic AI solutions on AWS (Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker) and with Anthropic Claude
Each competency is backed by 35+ AWS reusable solution accelerators (playbooks, blueprints, modules, and libraries) that shorten timelines and reduce risk. The CP uses these assets to differentiate Vertical Relevance in every pursuit. Key Responsibilities Business Development
- Identify and close new professional services opportunities across banks, asset and wealth managers, insurers, and payments firms
- Build pipeline across all seven AWS competencies, and connect opportunities across them (for example, a migration that leads to security, resiliency, and data work)
- Use personal networks, AWS account teams, and internal relationships to generate qualified pipeline
- Run the pursuit from first meeting through executive briefings, assessments, proofs of value, and SOW
Direct Sales, AWS Partnership & Co-Sell (in priority order)
- 1. Lead direct sales: Own and lead direct sales with financial services clients: originate opportunities, run the pursuit, build the relationship with the economic buyer, and close the SOW. Direct selling is the core of this role and the primary measure of success.
- 2. Work the AWS partnership: Work closely with AWS account managers, partner development managers, and AWS field teams. Build joint account plans, use AWS funding and buying programs such as MAP, proof-of-concept funding, and AWS Marketplace, and position Vertical Relevance’s AWS Premier Tier status and competencies (Financial Services, Security, DevOps, Resilience, and GenAI).
- 3. Co-sell with partners: Run co-sell motions with partners, including AWS ProServe engagements and staffing requests through the AWS partner delivery process, and joint pursuits with Anthropic and other technology partners.
GenAI & Agentic AI
- Identify where GenAI and agentic AI create value for clients, such as operations, reconciliation, vulnerability management, software engineering productivity, and client service
- Position our GenAI Center of Excellence, agentic reconciliation, and AI-driven vulnerability management (Mythos/Glasswing) offerings, delivered with AWS and Anthropic
- Address the questions financial services buyers ask about AI: model risk, data privacy, security, controls, and regulatory expectations
Client Relationship Management
- Build and maintain relationships with decision-makers at target accounts, including CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, Chief Data and AI Officers, and business line heads
- Position Vertical Relevance as a strategic partner for business and technology consulting
- Manage client relationships through the full sales cycle and into delivery
Collaboration & Strategy
- Work with delivery teams to build competitive proposals, estimates, and SOWs
- Build joint go-to-market plans with our technology partners, including AWS, Anthropic (Claude), and ServiceNow
- Bring in competency leads and solution architects at the right moment to shape solutions, demos, and proposals
- Drive account planning to expand within existing clients and win new logos
Sales Execution
- Manage multiple deal cycles at once while keeping pipeline and forecast data accurate in the CRM
- Meet or exceed quarterly sales quotas through strategic, outcome-based engagements
- Grow accounts through a steady series of follow-on SOWs and change requests, using each delivered engagement to open the next
- Restructure scope and pricing when a client’s budget or priorities shift, so the deal stays alive without giving up agreed principles
- Own the full commercial lifecycle past signature: client procurement and vendor risk steps, resource requests, onboarding, billing start, milestone invoicing, and collections
Leadership & Advocacy
- Act as a trusted advisor who understands each client’s business challenges and offers tailored solutions
- Represent Vertical Relevance at industry events, executive roundtables, and partner forums to build brand awareness and thought leadership in financial services cloud and AI
What Great Looks Like Day to Day Our best Client Partners share a set of daily habits. We are looking for someone who already works this way.
- Runs every meeting with purpose. Every client meeting has a written agenda sent in advance and an internal prep session. Within hours of the call, a recap goes out with decisions, owners, and target dates.
- Keeps a steady executive cadence. Sends a weekly executive status report to the client sponsor ahead of the standing call, and sets up short, frequent touchpoints to drive contracts and onboarding through to closure.
- Captures and shares account intelligence. Writes up what was heard, the business problem behind it, the opportunity for Vertical Relevance, and specific next steps. Turns a single conversation into a working account plan.
- Multi-threads every account. Builds relationships across the CIO, CTO, CISO, Chief Data Officer, head of cloud, and business sponsors, and tracks reorganizations, budget changes, and who influences each decision.
- Leads with the client’s problem. Frames the opportunity as an end-to-end business outcome, not another tool or dashboard, and points to where agentic AI removes manual work.
- Invests in face time. Plans onsite working sessions that pair tactical delivery support with strategic planning for the next phase, such as agentic process transformation.
- Brings the right people in. Pulls in solution architects and security or AI experts to debrief and shape the pursuit, and brings in Vertical Relevance founders for senior client conversations.
- Follows through relentlessly. Chases the open item personally, whether it’s a signature, a start date, a background check, or an overdue invoice, and doesn’t let it sit.
- Uses judgment and discretion. Knows when to respond and when to let the client sponsor handle an internal issue, and protects confidential information about client people and politics.
- Credits the team. Recognizes the delivery team’s work with clients and internally, and treats delivery as part of the sale.
Skills & Qualifications Experience
- Required: Minimum of 3 years selling professional services (consulting, systems integration, or technology services) into the financial services industry. Software or product-only sales experience does not meet this requirement.
- Required: Demonstrated experience selling AWS cloud services, such as platform foundations, DevOps, security and compliance, resiliency, migration and modernization, data and analytics, or AI engagements.
- Required: Track record of leading direct sales with financial services clients as the primary relationship owner, not only through partner-sourced deals
- Experience working with AWS partnership teams (account managers, partner development managers, AWS programs and funding)
- Active or past responsibility for co-selling with partners such as AWS ProServe or Anthropic is a plus
- Proven record of meeting or exceeding quotas for professional services, including scoping engagements, pricing time-and-materials and fixed-fee work, and closing SOWs
Knowledge Required: Our Three Practice Pillars
Vertical Relevance goes to market as “Domain-led. Agentic by design. Platform-backed.” The Client Partner must be able to explain all three pillars, show how they connect in a single client program, and know when to bring in each practice lead.
- 1. Financial Services Advisory (the domain layer): Enough financial services and regulatory fluency to lead the business conversation: AI value and strategy (use-case portfolios, value roadmaps, and operating model change for AI adoption); governance, risk, and regulatory work (GRC and regulatory remediation, model and agent governance frameworks); program leadership (transformation and integration offices, agile requirements and delivery management); and data strategy (data management and architecture for AI).
- 2. Agentic AI Delivery (what we build): Enough understanding of production AI to sell it credibly and qualify it honestly: taking agentic pilots to production (for example, a 90-day agentic pilot on Amazon Bedrock); human-in-the-loop design with full audit lineage; financial services domain agents such as trading-desk and RFQ automation, risk and pricing analytics, and risk, surveillance, and regulatory-reporting agents; and vulnerability remediation at scale, including AI-accelerated discovery, triage, and remediation, legacy code remediated with Claude on Amazon Bedrock, and governed post-patch regression testing.
- 3. AWS Cloud & AI Platform Engineering (where it runs): Solid working knowledge of AWS in regulated industries, across our seven competencies: AWS cloud transformation (migrations, landing zones and Control Tower, cloud security, compliance, and data-perimeter engineering, data and analytics platforms); modernization and resilience (application modernization to cloud- and AI-native, SRE and resiliency engineering); AI foundations on AWS (Amazon Bedrock and AgentCore architectures, Claude deployed in the client’s own AWS environment); and enablement (AWS- and Anthropic-certified delivery teams, co-funded delivery through AWS partner programs, and agent governance for identity, permissions, and audit).
- Bringing it together: Ability to connect the pillars into one story. For example: a regulatory or risk problem (Pillar 1) is solved with a governed agentic workflow (Pillar 2) running on a secure, resilient AWS platform (Pillar 3).
- Differentiators: Ability to position our differentiators: 20+ years leading tier-1 financial services transformation, AWS Premier Tier Services Partner status with co-funded solutions, agentic AI in production on Amazon Bedrock and Anthropic Claude, proprietary reusable solution accelerators (RSAs), and human-in-the-loop design with audit lineage a regulator can follow.
Other Qualifications
- Strong presentation skills and the ability to explain technical concepts in business terms at every level of an organization
- Familiarity with business development methods, including technology roadmaps, assessments, and proofs of value
- Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degrees or certifications in cloud (e.g., AWS), AI, or related fields are a plus
Industry & Solution Focus
- Financial Services: Wealth Management, Asset Management, Insurance, Banking, Cards / Payments
- AWS Cloud Transformation: Enterprise Program Governance / PMO, DevOps, Security & Compliance, SRE & Resiliency, App Modernization, Data & Analytics, and AI
- Artificial Intelligence: GenAI and agentic AI with Amazon Bedrock and Anthropic Claude
- Client Solutions: ServiceNow
Why Join Vertical Relevance?
At Vertical Relevance, you’ll work alongside industry experts who average more than 20 years of financial services experience, and alongside AWS practitioners who build cloud platforms, modernize applications, and deploy GenAI and agentic AI for some of the largest firms in the industry. We offer a collaborative environment focused on delivering meaningful results for clients while fostering professional growth for our people.
Vertical Relevance is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law.