Account Lead

GDP is a creative marketing agency that combines the best of strategy, design, and journalism to help brands clarify complexity, and we’re looking for an Account Lead (Engagement Lead) to join our team.

We’re looking for a strong client partner and engagement leader who can help steward some of GDP’s most important client relationships. This person will lead a complex set of engagements for a major enterprise technology client, partnering across multiple business units, stakeholder groups, and workstreams. They may also support other key accounts across the agency.

This role requires someone who can operate with sound engagement judgment: building trust with clients, guiding internal teams through ambiguity, identifying opportunities for growth, and ensuring the work we deliver is strategically sharp, operationally sound, and aligned with GDP’s quality bar. The right candidate will be comfortable managing senior client relationships, partnering with internal discipline leads, maintaining engagement health and economics, and mentoring more junior Engagement Team members.

This is a hybrid role (in-office Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays) in San Francisco.

Client & engagement leadership:

• Lead multiple complex client engagements, with a primary focus on a major enterprise technology account.
• Build and maintain trusted relationships with senior clients across a matrixed organization, including multiple business units, teams, stakeholder groups, and decision-makers.
• Translate ambiguity into clear direction for GDP teams, ensuring the work remains relevant, actionable, and aligned to client priorities.
• Manage client expectations through shifting priorities, evolving scopes, high-stakes feedback, and complex decision-making.
• Maintain a strong understanding of clients’ industries, organizations, priorities, and pressures to strengthen the impact of GDP’s work.

Organic growth development

• Partner with the Engagement Director and GDP leadership to identify opportunities to expand, deepen, or evolve existing client relationships.
• Identify organic growth opportunities across business units, teams, and workstreams, connecting client needs to GDP’s capabilities in strategy, design, journalism, content, campaigns, and brand storytelling.
• Lead or support scoping, pricing, proposal development, and senior client conversations for extensions, renewals, and new opportunities within existing accounts.
• Help articulate GDP’s value through the work, the engagement approach, and the client experience.
• Use HubSpot and internal account planning tools to support visibility into client activity, growth opportunities, and relationship health.

Operational & program leadership:

• Shape engagement strategy across multiple workstreams, aligning client goals, creative ambition, team capacity, timelines, and budgets.
• Partner closely with Strategy, Design, Editorial, Production, Growth, Operations, and Finance leads to ensure teams have the clarity, context, and support needed to do excellent work.
• Manage engagement health across budgets, burn, scope, staffing, timelines, resourcing, utilization, and margin. 
• Use Float and other internal tools to inform staffing decisions, anticipate capacity constraints, and support resourcing conversations.
• Translate senior client input, stakeholder feedback, and shifting priorities into clear, actionable direction for internal teams.

Team leadership & development:

• Lead engagement teams with clarity, accountability, and calm, especially through complexity or change.
• Manage, mentor, and develop more junior Engagement Team members, providing direction, feedback, and growth opportunities.
• Help team members build judgment across client communication, project leadership, operational management, and escalation.
• Foster a healthy, high-performing team culture grounded in collaboration, trust, and shared ownership.
• Model strong engagement leadership across disciplines, including clear communication, thoughtful decision-making, and high standards for delivery.

• BA or equivalent experience required.
• 8–12+ years of relevant experience in an agency, creative consultancy, professional services firm, or client-side marketing, brand, or communications organization; 10+ years preferred for Senior Engagement Lead candidates.
• Significant experience managing senior client relationships within complex B2B, enterprise technology, or matrixed multi-stakeholder environments.
• Proven ability to lead complex client engagements across multiple workstreams, teams, or business units.
• Strong understanding of how strategy, design, content, brand, campaigns, and communications work together to solve business challenges; experience working with journalists, strategists, copywriters, video production teams, and graphic designers is an asset.
• Experience identifying organic growth opportunities and supporting scoping, pricing, proposals, renewals, or expansions.
• Demonstrated ability to manage engagement health, including budgets, scope, staffing, timelines, resourcing, and trade-offs.
• Experience mentoring, managing, or developing junior team members.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to synthesize complexity, influence senior stakeholders, and shape client-ready communications.
• Highly organized, proactive, and comfortable operating across multiple accounts, workstreams, and priorities in fast-paced, ambiguous environments.
• Comfortable working across modern agency tools and client-facing platforms, including Float, HubSpot, Google Suite, Keynote, Google Slides, and Figma.

The rise of AI. Turbulent financial markets. An erosion of trust. We are living in deeply complex times, and our creative marketing agency is purpose-built for this moment. Organizations need to know who they are, what they stand for, and what they’re here to do. They need to communicate their ideas and ideals in clear and compelling ways. That’s where GDP comes in. Our team of journalists, strategists, and designers helps brands turn complexity into clarity. Because the best ideas fail if no one understands them.

The salary range for this role is $118,000 - $135,000.

Our salary offers take into consideration the skills and experience a candidate brings, pay equity across similar roles within GDP, and the market rate for similar roles outside of GDP. Consistent with applicable law, compensation will be determined based on the skills, qualifications, and experience of the applicant, along with the requirements of the position. The company reserves the right to modify this pay range at any time. GDP is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment, and also offers comprehensive health and wellbeing benefits, personal and professional development, and career growth opportunities.