VP of Professional Services

Certa is the AI-first third-party operating system, serving enterprises from Fortune 500 to fast-growing startups with a no-code platform for vendor onboarding, assessment, and monitoring across risk, compliance, and ESG. They’ve processed over 10 million entities for 100,000+ users across 120+ countries.

Certa is hiring a VP of Professional Services, reporting directly to the CEO, to lead delivery end-to-end. The Professional Services (PS) team is growing rapidly but lacks a unified structure. This role will consolidate delivery, engagement management, and AI-enabled implementation into a cohesive operating model. The ideal candidate will oversee scope, quality, timelines, margin, and the people executing the work—this is a hands-on, delivery-focused leadership position, not a Chief Customer Officer or sales-carrying role.

What You'll Do

• Build a unified delivery model: Establish a single PS operating model with repeatable methodologies, resourcing, utilization and margin discipline, quality gates, and clear ownership across delivery, engagement management, and AI-enabled implementation. Unify EMEA and US regions under one framework while preserving regional accountability.

• Own escalations & commercial discipline: Serve as the senior, decisive presence on escalation calls, alleviating pressure on individual contributors (ICs). Ensure commercial backbone in delivery by appropriately scoping and charging for changes without damaging relationships.

• Build engagement management (EM) excellence: Provide engagement managers with the leadership layer they lack—standardization, coaching cadences, and durable EM operating standards that outlast previous part-time efforts.

• Formalize partner delivery: Define how Certa delivers with partners (e.g., Sayari) by clarifying ownership, scope of work agreements (SOWs), change orders, and new-business tracking. Ensure quality across every partner-led engagement while maintaining relationship ownership.

• Govern the Managed Services transition: Collaborate with the Managed Services operational owner to govern the PS-to-MS handoff post-go-live. Implement pricing discipline, clear handoff protocols, and safeguards against Managed Services being offered as a concession on distressed accounts.

• Surface expansion & design with data: Establish a light-touch process for identifying expansion signals early and routing them to Sales/CSM. Use real delivery data (including utilization) to drive organizational design, SOW recalibration, and decisions on team growth or efficiency.

What Success Looks Like

• By 90 days: Become the recognized escalation owner the team routes hard calls to. Publish a first draft of the PS operating model and a partner delivery framework, starting with Sayari.

• By 6 months: EM coaching cadences and standards are operational, partner SOW/change-order/new-business tracking is live, delivery is appropriately scoped and charged, and margin and utilization are visible and improving.

• By 12 months: PS operates as one unified function under a single model, escalations are rarer and cleaner, partner delivery is a reliable tracked channel, and engagement managers are visibly stronger.

What You'll Need

• Delivery leadership: Seasoned PS/delivery leader from complex enterprise B2B SaaS, ideally with experience selling into the Global 2000 in risk, compliance, procurement, or an adjacent regulated domain.

• P&L ownership: Proven track record of owning delivery P&L levers, including methodology, resourcing, utilization, margin, and scope-to-charge discipline.

• Escalation presence: Calm, credible, and firm under pressure—someone a Global 2000 executive would want on a difficult escalation call.

• People leadership: A genuine people leader who coaches (not just directs) senior delivery professionals, including regional delivery directors and engagement managers, building standards that outlast their tenure.

• Partner fluency: Experience with partner-delivered engagements, including SOWs, change orders, and clear scope boundaries.

• Commercially sharp, not upsell-driven: Focus on protecting margin and surfacing opportunities, collaborating with Sales/CSM rather than competing with them.

• AI-native mindset: Comfortable in an AI-native delivery organization and motivated to push automation deeper into PS operations.

• Culture fit: Embodies connectedness, truth-seeking, learning, and high standards held with genuine care for people—raising the bar authentically and making the team better, not just busier.