Client Services Team Lead

Description

The Client Services Team Lead is a hands-on people and operations leader responsible for the day-to-day effectiveness of the US Client Services Manager team. The Client Services Team Lead provides Client Services Managers with accessible leadership, coaching, decision support, and escalation guidance while maintaining clear individual accountability for client and operational responsibilities.

Operating as a player-coach, the Client Services Team Lead remains close enough to the work to understand emerging issues, provide informed guidance, remove barriers, and support timely decision-making without assuming ownership of the Client Services Managers' day-to-day responsibilities. The role helps ensure consistency in service delivery, strengthens team capability, and reinforces accountability while preserving appropriate autonomy across the team.

The Client Services Team Lead role monitors team capacity, service delivery, quality, and operational risk; resolves matters within established authority; recommends action on more complex concerns; and escalates situations requiring senior leadership or cross-functional decisions.

The role also translates Client Services strategy and organizational priorities into practical team plans, operating expectations, and measurable actions. Through disciplined people leadership, operational oversight, change leadership, and continuous improvement, this role strengthens employee development, operational consistency, scalability, and the overall client experience.

Key Responsibilities

People Leadership and Team Development

• Provide direct leadership, coaching, feedback, and development support to the US Client Services Manager team.
• Establish clear performance and operating expectations while reinforcing individual ownership, accountability, and appropriate autonomy.
• Conduct meaningful one-to-one meetings, team operating meetings, performance discussions, and career-development conversations.
• Support Client Services Managers in evaluating complex situations, considering available options, and making timely, well-reasoned decisions.
• Identify individual and team capability needs and coordinate appropriate coaching, training, or development actions.
• Delegate effectively, maintaining appropriate visibility and oversight without unnecessarily taking ownership away from team members.
• Recognize strong performance, reinforce effective behaviors, and create opportunities for employees to grow their capabilities and contributions.
• Address employee performance or conduct matters promptly, fairly, and compassionately in partnership with Client Services leadership and appropriate People team resources.
• Promote an environment of clear communication, collaboration, sound judgment, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Operational Leadership and Escalation Management

• Serve as the primary day-to-day leadership and escalation point for the US Client Services Manager team.
• Monitor team health, capacity, service delivery, quality, and operational risks, proactively identifying concerns and recommending appropriate mitigation actions.
• Resolve routine team, delivery, capacity, and operational matters within established parameters.
• Evaluate higher-risk situations and escalate matters requiring senior leadership, financial, client, employee-relations, or cross-functional decisions with a clearly articulated recommendation.
• Guide Client Services Managers through complex client, field, vendor, and internal stakeholder issues while reinforcing accountability for effective resolution.
• Facilitate timely closure of issues by clarifying ownership, required actions, decision points, escalation paths, and follow-up expectations.
• Reinforce consistent application of Client Services processes, operating expectations, service standards, and best practices.
• Balance the need for consistency and scalability with appropriate consideration for business, client, and departmental differences.
• Coordinate and communicate with internal departments, vendors, clients, and field personnel when cross-functional alignment or action is required.
• Maintain appropriate visibility into team priorities and workloads to support effective resource decisions and reduce avoidable operational risk.

Strategy Activation and Change Leadership

• Translate organizational goals and Client Services priorities into clear team-level plans, operating expectations, and measurable actions.
• Serve as a liaison between Client Services leadership and the US Client Services Manager team, ensuring alignment on priorities, expectations, decisions, and strategic initiatives.
• Lead implementation and adoption of new processes, systems, tools, operating practices, and organizational initiatives affecting the Client Services team.
• Communicate the purpose and expected outcomes of changes, identify adoption risks, and help team members understand what will be different and what actions are required.
• Use operational data, employee feedback, client insight, and trend information to identify risks, inform decisions, and recommend improvement opportunities.
• Lead or sponsor initiatives that improve operational efficiency, quality, consistency, scalability, and the client experience.
• Contribute the perspective of the US Client Services team to departmental leadership discussions, organizational planning, and continuous improvement efforts.
• Convert leadership direction into practical workplans, timelines, communications, and follow-up actions that support effective execution.
• Monitor the effectiveness of implemented changes and recommend adjustments when intended outcomes are not being achieved.

Leadership Partnership

• Partner closely with Client Services leadership to maintain alignment on team performance, capacity, organizational risks, employee development, and operational priorities.
• Surface emerging issues early and provide leadership with relevant context, options, and a recommended course of action.
• Provide appropriate leadership coverage for day-to-day team needs, allowing senior Client Services leadership to maintain focus on broader departmental strategy, organizational design, client priorities, and cross-functional leadership.
• Participate as an active contributor in Client Services leadership discussions and planning activities.
• Model sound judgment, integrity, accountability, transparency, and a solutions-oriented approach.

Decision Scope

This role is expected to independently resolve routine team, service-delivery, capacity, and operational issues within established policies and operating parameters.

The role is also responsible for determining when an issue requires broader consultation or escalation.

What Success Looks Like

Success in this role means:

• Client Services Managers have accessible day-to-day leadership, clear expectations, and timely coaching.
• Employees understand their responsibilities, decision authority, and escalation expectations.
• Client Services Managers retain appropriate ownership of their work while receiving support when complexity, risk, or ambiguity increases.
• Operational, capacity, delivery, quality, and employee risks are identified early and addressed proactively.
• Routine issues are resolved at the appropriate organizational level, reducing unnecessary escalation to senior leadership.
• Matters requiring senior leadership attention are presented with sufficient context, options, and a recommended path forward.
• Performance expectations are consistently reinforced, and employee concerns are addressed in a timely, fair, and constructive manner.
• Organizational and departmental priorities are translated into practical actions that the team understands and executes.
• New processes, tools, and organizational initiatives are implemented with clear expectations and sustained adoption.
• Standard processes are applied consistently while allowing for appropriate business and client-specific considerations.
• The US Client Services team demonstrates strong collaboration, accountability, operational discipline, and continuous improvement.
• Senior Client Services leadership has increased capacity to focus on strategy, organizational design, client oversight, and cross-functional priorities.

Education

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of relevant education and professional experience.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office applications, including Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and SharePoint.

Required Experience and Capabilities

The ideal candidate will demonstrate:

• Progressive experience in client services, account operations, commercial operations, field operations, or another complex service-delivery environment.
• Formal experience directly leading, coaching, and developing employees.
• Demonstrated ability to lead experienced professionals while balancing support, empowerment, autonomy, and accountability.
• Experience establishing expectations, providing feedback, conducting development conversations, and addressing performance concerns.
• Strong operational judgment and demonstrated experience managing client, employee, delivery, or cross-functional escalations.
• Ability to make timely decisions with incomplete information and maintain effectiveness in ambiguous or changing situations.
• A player-coach leadership style, with the ability to remain connected to operational details without becoming the owner of every issue.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills across employee, peer, leadership, and cross-functional audiences.
• Ability to translate complex information into clear decisions, expectations, recommendations, workplans, timelines, and follow-up actions.
• Strong meeting leadership and facilitation skills, including the ability to drive alignment, clarify decisions, and establish accountability for next steps.
• Experience translating organizational or departmental strategy into practical team-level actions.
• Demonstrated success leading teams through process, technology, operating-model, or organizational change.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities, with the ability to use operational information and data to evaluate capacity, service, quality, risk, and performance.
• Ability to identify when direct intervention is required and when coaching or guidance is the more appropriate leadership response.
• Experience influencing and coordinating across a matrixed organization.
• Strong internal and external customer-service orientation.
• Demonstrated initiative, sound judgment, integrity, professionalism, and a purposeful, solutions-oriented mindset.
• Comfort using and learning automated systems that support business operations, reporting, learning, expense management, travel administration, or comparable activities.

Preferred Experience

• Experience in the pharmaceutical, biotech, healthcare, or life sciences industry.
• Experience in field sales administration, field operations, commercial operations, account management, or client-service delivery.
• Experience leading geographically distributed, remote, or hybrid teams.
• Experience supporting experienced employees who independently manage complex client or operational responsibilities.
• Experience designing, implementing, or improving scalable operating practices.
• Experience using service, quality, workload, capacity, or performance information to guide team and resource decisions.

Leadership Characteristics

The strongest candidate will be someone who:

• Enjoys coaching and developing people, not simply directing work.
• Can move comfortably between employee leadership, operational execution, and strategic thinking.
• Remains calm and structured when an issue is complex, sensitive, or ambiguous.
• Knows how to ask the right questions before recommending a solution.
• Provides clear direction while encouraging employees to exercise judgment and ownership.
• Is willing to engage in operational details but does not become a bottleneck or take over work unnecessarily.
• Can respectfully challenge assumptions, identify risks, and recommend practical alternatives.
• Builds credibility through consistency, sound judgment, follow-through, and transparent communication.
• Understands that effective leadership includes setting expectations, recognizing contributions, addressing concerns, and holding people accountable.
• Can standardize core operating practices while recognizing legitimate business, departmental, and client-specific needs.

Additional Information

• Overnight travel: 0 to 10%.
• Responsibilities may evolve based on departmental priorities, organizational needs, and assigned initiatives.
• Additional responsibilities and annual objectives will be established through the organization's goal-setting and performance-management processes.

The annual base salary for this position ranges from $99,733 to $119,667. The base salary range represents the anticipated low and high of the Syneos Health range for this position. Actual salary will vary based on various factors such as the candidate's qualifications, skills, competencies, and proficiency for the role. In addition, some positions may include eligibility to earn commissions/bonus based on company and / or individual performance.

At Syneos Health, we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace. If your past experience doesn't align perfectly, we encourage you to apply anyway. At times, we will consider transferable skills from previous roles. We also encourage you to join our Talent Network to stay connected to additional career opportunities.

Why Syneos Health? We partner with industry experts to solve and execute against today's toughest commercialization challenges facing the world's leading healthcare companies. The diversification and breadth of our new and existing partnerships create a multitude of career paths and employment opportunities on our Commercial Operations and Leadership teams. Join our game-changing, global company dedicated to creating better, smarter, faster ways to get biopharmaceutical therapies to patients. Experience the thrill of knowing that your everyday efforts are contributing to improving patients' lives around the world.

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