Job Description:

dentsu is one of the world’s largest media and marketing services organizations. Our North America media practice partners with some of the most sophisticated advertisers in the market, and the way media is planned, bought and measured is evolving quickly. The agencies that win will be the ones that pair outstanding thinking with outstanding execution.

The Chief Client Solutions Officer is a senior executive role responsible for how we deliver for our clients. This leader builds the client operations discipline across our North America media agencies, designs custom operational solutions for our most complex client businesses, and brings AI, data and technology into everyday ways of working so teams move faster and spend more of their time on strategy and ideas.

The work is both standard and bespoke: establishing consistent operating rigor across the practice, and diagnosing what an individual client needs and building the operational framework that delivers it. Reporting to the Chief Operations Officer of Media for North America, this is a build-and-run role for an operator who wants to shape how a major media practice works.

Client operations and solutions

• Build and lead the client operations discipline across our North America media agencies, embedding operations and solutions leadership within key client teams.

• Define the operating standards that guide account teams: ways of working, decision rights, briefing and approval workflows, and reporting cadence.

• Design and implement custom operational frameworks for clients whose scale, structure or category calls for a purpose-built approach.

• Streamline workflows across planning, activation, ad operations, finance and reporting to remove duplication and manual effort.

• Set delivery quality standards, including QA protocols across planning, buying, trafficking and reporting.

• Build and develop a high-performing client operations team, and grow the leadership bench to scale the discipline.

Client partnership, performance and growth

• Establish a consistent framework for understanding client health across the practice, spanning partnership strength, delivery quality, commercial performance and growth potential.

• Build dashboards and reporting that give leadership and client teams clear, timely visibility into how each relationship is performing.

• Partner with agency CEOs and client leads on action plans that turn insight into prioritized, owned and time-bound work.

• Identify the operational solution a given client situation calls for and lead its implementation end to end.

• Work with Finance and Commercial teams on scope, pricing and resourcing models that support sustainable, high-quality delivery.

• Codify successful client solutions into repeatable frameworks the wider practice can adopt.

• Bring the breadth of dentsu — data and identity, creative, CXM, commerce and technology — into client plans where it strengthens the partnership.

• Contribute operating model and solution design to client renewals and new business pursuits.

AI, data and operational innovation

• Set the applied AI and automation agenda across briefing, planning, activation, QA, analysis and reporting.

• Shift repetitive, labor-intensive processes toward AI-augmented workflows with appropriate human oversight, creating capacity for higher-value work.

• Scale adoption of AI tools and agents across teams, with the investment, governance and enablement required to make them stick.

• Embed dentsu’s data and identity capabilities into everyday planning and activation workflows, and into custom client solutions where the category warrants it.

• Measure the impact of these investments on speed, quality, capacity and client outcomes.

• 15+ years of progressive leadership across media, marketing services or management consulting, including experience inside a media agency or marketing services organization.

• Demonstrated ownership of operating model design and implementation at scale.

• A track record of designing custom operational solutions for enterprise clients — diagnosing what a specific client needs and building the framework that delivers it.

• Senior relationships with large advertisers, including CMO, procurement and marketing operations stakeholders.

• Strong command of media agency economics: fee models, scope, resourcing and delivery costs.

• Experience building and executing resourcing plans across onshore, nearshore and offshore delivery models.

• Practical, current experience applying AI and automation to professional services delivery.

• Proven change leadership in complex, matrixed organizations.

• Based in Chicago or willing to relocate, with regular in-office presence and travel across North America.

• Diagnostic rigor. Gets to the real cause quickly, and builds the solution that addresses it.

• A clear point of view. Delivers it with credibility to clients and colleagues alike.

• Influence across a matrix. Aligns people and teams who do not report to them.

• A bias toward implementation. Measured on adoption and outcomes, not on the design.

• Commercial judgment. Understands how operational choices show up in the numbers.

• A magnet for talent. Attracts, develops and retains strong operators.

The annual base salary range for this position is $236,900 - $316,250. Placement within the salary range is based on a variety of factors, including relevant experience, knowledge, skills, and other factors permitted by law.  Additionally, this position is eligible for discretionary incentive compensation.  

Benefits available with this position include:  

• Medical, vision, and dental insurance, 

• Life insurance,  

• Short-term and long-term disability insurance, 

• 401k,  

• Flexible paid time off, 

• At least 15 paid holidays per year, 

• Paid sick and safe leave, and 

• Paid parental leave. 

Dentsu also complies with applicable state and local laws regarding employee leave benefits, including, but not limited to providing time off pursuant to the Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act, in accordance with its plans and policies.  For more information regarding dentsu benefits, please visit www.dentsubenefitsplus.com. 

To begin the application process, please click on the “Apply” button at the top of this job posting. Applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis, and qualified candidates will be contacted for next steps. 

#LI-hybrid

#LI-CK1

Location:

Brand:

Time Type:

Contract Type: