Strategic Engagement Lead

At Qualtrics, we create software the world's best brands use to deliver exceptional frontline experiences, build high-performing teams, and design products people love. But we are more than a platform—we are the creators and stewards of the Experience Management category, serving over 18K clients globally. Building a category takes grit, determination, and a disdain for convention—but most of all it requires close-knit, high-functioning teams with an unwavering dedication to serving our customers.

When you join one of our teams, you'll be part of a nimble group that's empowered to set aggressive goals and move fast to achieve them. Strategic risks are encouraged and complex problems are solved together. From retail to government to healthcare, we're on a mission to bring humanity, connection, and empathy back to business. Join over 5,000 people across the globe who think that's work worth doing.

Strategic Engagement Lead

Why We Have This Role

The Incubation Foundry operates at the frontier of what Qualtrics could become. Our most consequential opportunities often begin with a Qualtrician "reading the tea leaves" or a client experimenting with their team, and turning those ideas into validated insights requires someone who can hold executive credibility while driving decisions with analytical rigor.

The Strategic Engagement Lead is that person: the primary manager of Qualtrics' executive co-innovation portfolio—structured partnerships, sourced directly from our leadership, with clients building the future of experience management alongside us—running engagements end-to-end and advising on whether an effort has earned product investment.

You'll also support the operational engine behind the Foundry's commercial motion: tracking portfolio signals, enabling design partner relationships, synthesizing intelligence for leadership, and keeping every initiative commercially rigorous.

You're not simply a project manager with people skills, nor exclusively a strategist working outside the details—both are needed, since in a zero-to-one environment, one doesn't work without the other.

How You'll Find Success

• Own the Leadership-to-Foundry Handoff: When our leadership surfaces a client relationship with co-innovation potential, you scope the engagement to protect both the relationship and the Foundry's bandwidth.

• Run Co-Innovation (COIN) Engagements End-to-End: You oversee execution of the entire COIN portfolio, from initiation to closure.

• Execute the Foundry Commercial Playbook: You are the primary operator of the Foundry's commercial and innovation methodology—intake, validation milestones, and flagging risks before they reach leadership.

• Drive Portfolio Cadence: Own the rhythm of portfolio reporting, turning incubation signals into clear updates for the Lead and stakeholders.

• Be the Market Antenna: Stay close to competitive dynamics, customer feedback, and industry trends, translating what you learn into usable intelligence for the Foundry.

• Accelerate GTM Alignment: Support the Lead in coordinating with Sales, Marketing, and Corporate Strategy—preparing materials and tracking follow-through.

• Maintain the Relationship Regardless of Outcome: Not every engagement becomes a product, but the relationship should benefit either way.

How You'll Grow

• Strategic Co-Authorship: As you master Co-Innovation and Incubation, you'll take on increasing ownership of the Foundry's methodology—moving from running the playbook to shaping it.

• Leadership Pipeline: As the Foundry scales, this role is a direct path to Global Strategy & Commercial leadership.

• Organizational Breadth: You'll build fluency across Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and Corporate Strategy through the role's natural demands.

• C-Suite-Level Proximity: Direct exposure to how Qualtrics' most senior relationships convert into commercial momentum—a rare vantage point built into this role.

Things You'll Do

• Manage Lifecycle of Foundry Portfolio: Receive and qualify co-innovation opportunities, including those surfaced by leadership, and manage scope, risks, escalations, and final recommendations.

• Design Partner Management: Identify, negotiate with, and manage client-side teams in co-innovation engagements as their primary point of contact.

• Portfolio Reporting: Maintain the reporting infrastructure that keeps leadership informed on co-innovation status, commercial signals, and portfolio health.

• Investment Signal Assessment: Synthesize feedback, usage data, and competitive context into a recommendation to advance, pivot, or conclude each engagement.

• Strategic Deliverables: Draft business cases, market assessments, competitive analyses, and stakeholder briefs that turn ambiguity into commercial decision support.

• GTM Coordination: Support the Global Lead in aligning co-innovation and incubation work with Sales, Marketing, and Corporate Strategy.

• Relationship Continuity: Design and execute a stewardship model that preserves client trust across every engagement outcome, including those that don't result in a product.

• Methodology Contribution: Document what's working, flag what isn't, and recommend playbook refinements as the practice matures.

What We're Looking For on Your Resume

• 5-7+ years spanning client-facing, strategy, or product roles, ideally in enterprise SaaS, consulting, or an innovation-adjacent environment requiring rigor and management of client/partner relationships.

• Executive relationship management: you've operated at the C-suite level with credibility, and hold trust through ambiguity.

• Commercial instinct: you can assess whether an idea has merit and explain why, to a client executive or product council alike.

• Product translation: you can hold a substantive conversation across roles and altitudes, from executives to ICs.

• Demonstrated execution discipline: you build the tracker before you need it, and stay reliable when the environment isn't.

• Early-stage exposure: you've worked in or near a zero-to-one environment and treat structure as a tool, not a destination.

• Deep Enterprise Platform Fluency: hands-on familiarity with how experience management platforms are architected, deployed, and used at scale, credible with both product teams and customer executives.

• The Hybrid Pedigree: a track record of building a methodology, executing it, and getting others to adopt it.

What You Should Know About This Team

The Incubation Foundry is a small, high-leverage team with visibility to Qualtrics' CEO and Board that moves fast and holds a high standard of rigor.

• We're driven by a fast pace of learning and real-world impact.

• We believe structure and discipline let us move fast with confidence.

• We believe the best co-innovation is honest—we tell clients what we're learning, even when it doesn't confirm what we hoped.

• We treat every engagement as a data point in a portfolio, not a one-off project.

• We protect our relationships as carefully as our roadmap—both are strategic assets.

• We keep our heads in the clouds and our feet on the ground.

Our Team’s Favorite Perks and Benefits

• Wellness Reimbursement for $300 per quarter for wellness activities including gym memberships, spa massages, workout equipment, meditation apps, and much more.

• $1800 Experience bonus to be used for an “Experience” of your choosing

• Amazing QGroup Communities; MOSAIQ, Green Team, Qualtrics Pride, Q&Able;, Qualtrics Salute, and Women’s Leadership Development, which exist as places for support, allyship, and advocacy.

The Qualtrics Hybrid Work Model: Our hybrid work model is elegantly simple: we all gather in the office three days a week; Mondays and Thursdays, plus one day selected by your organizational leader. These purposeful in-person days in thoughtfully designed offices help us do our best work and harness the power of collaboration and innovation. For the rest of the week, work where you want, owning the integration of work and life. #hybrid

Qualtrics is an equal opportunity employer meaning that all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other protected characteristic.

Applicants in the United States of America have rights under Federal Employment Laws: Family & Medical Leave Act, Equal Opportunity Employment, Employee Polygraph Protection Act

Qualtrics is committed to the inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Qualtrics will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please let your Qualtrics contact/recruiter know.

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#Hybrid 

For full-time positions, this pay range is for base per year; however, base pay offered within this range may vary depending on location, job-related knowledge, education, skills, and experience. A sign-on bonus and restricted stock units may be included in an employment offer. Full-time employees are eligible for medical, dental, vision, life and disability, 401(k) with match, paid time off, a wellness reimbursement, mental health benefits, and an experience bonus. For a detailed look at our benefits, visit Qualtrics US Benefits.

Washington State Base Annual Pay Transparency Range$155,500—$204,000 USD

Department: Core AI