Principal Consultant – Digital Consulting
Location: Remote / Global Client Delivery
Travel: Up to 50%
Employment Type: Full-Time, Permanent
About the Role
Vaco is seeking a Principal Consultant to serve as a senior business, governance, and client-delivery leader within its Digital Consulting practice.
The Principal Consultant is the highest individual-contributor level within the practice and serves as the business and delivery leader for complex, enterprise-scale client engagements. This role governs major, multi-workstream implementations from presales and discovery through go-live and hypercare, partnering closely with project managers and workstream leaders while retaining accountability for overall client outcomes.
This is a highly visible role requiring strong executive presence, independent judgment, commercial acumen, and the ability to navigate complex client situations. The successful candidate will be comfortable leading executive steering committees, making difficult decisions, resolving delivery risks, and translating business needs into practical, commercially sound solutions.
Typical engagements may be valued at $9M–$10M and generally involve one major client at a time.
Key Responsibilities
- Own governance and delivery outcomes for large, complex, multi-workstream enterprise implementations.
- Serve as the senior client-facing leader and executive point of contact for major engagements.
- Lead executive steering committees and communicate engagement status, strategic direction, risks, decisions, budget, and outcomes clearly and confidently.
- Partner with project managers and workstream leads, delegating day-to-day execution while retaining accountability for overall scope, budget, quality, risk, and client satisfaction.
- Lead discovery, scope definition, effort estimation, budgeting, solution direction, SOW validation, and commercial alignment.
- Lead presales activities, solution discussions, demonstrations, and client discovery sessions.
- Translate complex business requirements into credible delivery approaches and clearly articulate the rationale behind recommendations.
- Proactively identify, manage, and mitigate delivery risks before they require escalation to senior leadership.
- Lead difficult client conversations involving scope changes, timeline risk, budget pressure, quality concerns, and delivery performance.
- Build trusted relationships with C-suite and VP-level stakeholders and drive alignment and timely decision-making.
- Identify appropriate opportunities for account growth and additional consulting services.
- Provide delivery oversight, mentorship, and quality leadership across the consulting practice.
- Contribute to delivery methodology, practice standards, and continuous improvement initiatives.
Required Qualifications
- 10+ years of consulting experience with ownership of complex, full-lifecycle enterprise application implementations.
- Proven experience leading external-client engagements from discovery/presales through implementation, go-live, and hypercare.
- Demonstrated executive presence and experience working with C-suite and VP-level stakeholders.
- Experience leading executive steering committees and driving decisions in complex environments.
- Proven accountability for scope, estimates, budgets, solution direction, risk, quality, and commercial outcomes.
- Experience governing multiple workstreams and partnering effectively with project and delivery managers.
- Strong business judgment and the ability to independently resolve complex client and delivery issues.
- Demonstrated ability to lead challenging conversations around scope, timelines, budgets, quality, and performance.
- PLM/ERP expertise required.
- Manufacturing industry experience strongly preferred; food and beverage manufacturing experience is highly desirable.
- Bachelor’s degree required; graduate degree preferred.
- Ability to travel up to 50% for client engagements.
Preferred Experience
- Oracle Cloud PLM, Oracle ERP/SCM, Oracle Integration Cloud, F4PLM, or comparable enterprise application platforms.
- Oracle Redwood UI, data migration/governance, FBDI/ADFDI, SAP integrations, or Oracle EBS-to-Fusion implementations.
- Experience independently leading demonstrations, presales discovery, solution development, and written implementation estimates.
- Experience mentoring senior consultants and developing consulting talent.
- Experience shaping delivery methodology, practice standards, or consulting strategy.
- Oracle partner certification, Oracle ACE designation, or a relevant engineering/technical degree.
What Success Looks Like
The ideal Principal Consultant is a business-first consulting leader, not simply a technical subject-matter expert. You know how to connect business objectives, technology, delivery strategy, and commercial considerations—and you are comfortable being accountable for the outcome.
You will be successful if you can:
- Establish credibility quickly with executive stakeholders.
- Bring clarity and structure to complex, ambiguous engagements.
- Anticipate delivery and commercial risks and address them proactively.
- Make sound decisions and communicate the why behind those decisions.
- Balance client needs with delivery realities and commercial objectives.
- Lead through influence while maintaining clear accountability.
- Develop trusted, long-term client relationships.
- Mentor other consultants and raise the overall quality of delivery.
Work Environment
- Remote-first / global client delivery model
- No routine office-reporting requirement; onsite presence will vary based on client and engagement needs.
- Senior individual-contributor role with significant governance responsibility across major projects and multiple workstreams.
By submitting to this position, you are agreeing to be included in our talent pool for future hiring for similarly qualified positions.
