Head of Professional Services

Position Title: Head of Professional Services

Reports to: CTO

Direct reports: PS and MS Teams

Location: Brisbane|Sydney|Melbourne

Role Purpose:

This role exists to lead and scale Baidam’s Professional Services function, ensuring operational excellence, delivery consistency, and strong alignment between sales pipeline, delivery capability, and customer outcomes. The Head of Professional Services is responsible for driving workforce utilisation, capacity planning, scheduling efficiency, and delivery governance while supporting business growth through strategic collaboration with Sales, Pre-Sales, and leadership teams.

The role balances commercial awareness with operational leadership, ensuring the business has the right capability, capacity, and delivery readiness to support current and future customer demand. The position is critical in enabling sustainable growth, optimising delivery performance, and building a high-performing professional services organisation.

“Glass Balls”:

When juggling all aspects of your role, “glass balls” need to be kept in the air and cannot be dropped. These are the absolute priorities that define success in your role:

• Ensure seamless delivery of cybersecurity solutions through effective planning, resource management, and the implementation of governance controls.
• Drive high utilisation and workforce efficiency through proactive capacity forecasting, workload balancing, and strategic resource allocation.
• Partner closely with Sales and Pre-Sales teams to maintain visibility across pipeline opportunities, forecast delivery demand, and ensure delivery readiness for upcoming engagements.
• Provide Pre-Sales Support as Head of Professional Services
• Allocate Professional Services Team for Pre-Sales Support in line with existing process
• Develop and execute the Professional Services operational strategy, ensuring scalable delivery processes, workforce capability, and service maturity.
• Develop, implement and deliver on all milestones in line with the Professional Services strategy.
• Support PMO as technical escalation to maintain high-quality project outcomes, delivered with timely execution and optimal profitability.
• Identify operational improvements, new service capabilities, and automation opportunities that improve delivery efficiency, scalability, and customer value.
• Build, mentor, and retain a high-performing technical delivery team while fostering a collaborative, accountable, and learning-focused culture.
• Strengthen client relationships and strategic partnerships to support long-term customer success and contribute to new business growth opportunities.

The “Rubber Balls” - BAU

Business as usual responsibilities mean routine, ongoing tasks and duties that are essential to keeping your core functions and daily operations running smoothly and efficiently. These include the following:

Practice Leadership & Strategy

• Conduct strategic planning sessions with leadership to align Professional Services priorities with organisational objectives and sales pipeline forecasts.
• Develop quarterly operational and workforce plans, including resource forecasting, utilisation targets, hiring requirements, and capability uplift initiatives.
• Review and refine delivery methodologies, including benchmarking service standards against industry best practice and updating collateral such as catalogues and play books.
• Track and report on operational KPIs including utilisation, resource allocation, scheduling efficiency, forecast accuracy, and delivery performance.
• Conduct post project reviews to identify improvement areas.
• Investigate and implement automation tools, resource management platforms, and governance processes that improve operational efficiency and scalability.
• Partner with Sales, Pre Sales and SOC teams including attending client presentations and proposal reviews in order to align capabilities with emerging customer needs.
• Provide leadership with operational recommendations and capability investment insights based on pipeline visibility, utilisation trends, and customer demand forecasting.

Performance Metrics

• % of agreed milestones met
• Utilisation Rate (billable hours vs available hours) and forecasting accuracy
• Capacity forecasting accuracy against pipeline demand
• No. of recommended capability or improvements implemented

Delivery Management

• Review project dashboards and timelines to ensure milestones are on track
• Update project status reports and flag issues/escalate to leadership when required
• Conduct daily meetings and communications with delivery teams to ensure alignment.
• Monitor client communications and respond to queries promptly.
• Allocate resources to active projects based on skill and availability to best optimise workload.
• Liaise with partner vendors for capacity planning and review/confirmation of SLAs
• Establish governance standards such as audit compliance, documentation requirements, templates and checklists.
• Host quality assurance reviews before client deliverables are provided ensuring scope and timelines are adhered to.
• Manage technology escalation and risk mitigation, including coordinating with technical leads to resolve high risk incidents and communicating with impacted stakeholders.

Performance Metrics

• Timesheets approved in full, on time with billing accuracy
• % of projects delivered in full on time, within scope
• QA review completion rate
• Critical issue resolution time

Team Leadership & Development

• Lead, mentor, and develop Professional Services managers, consultants, engineers, architects, and project delivery personnel.
• Set clear operational expectations, workforce priorities, and utilisation objectives across the team.
• Conduct regular coaching sessions, performance reviews, and workforce planning discussions to support individual and team development.
• Foster a culture focused on accountability, operational excellence, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Identify capability gaps and implement targeted training, recruitment, and development initiatives aligned to future pipeline demand.
• Encourage peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, operational best practices, and continuous learning across the broader business.
• Support recruitment, onboarding, retention, succession planning, and workforce scalability initiatives.

Performance Metrics

• Team utilisation and workforce capacity targets achieved
• Number of mentoring/coaching sessions completed
• Team capability uplift initiatives implemented
• Succession planning coverage for key roles
• Employee retention and engagement outcomes

Client Satisfaction & Business Development

• Maintain strong client relationships by regularly monitoring client accounts, responding to queries and scheduling proactive check ins
• Support Sales and Business Development teams through solution planning, delivery estimation, resource planning, proposal reviews, and customer presentations.
• Analyse feedback both internal and external, to identify trends and present these key themes to the leadership team.

Performance Metrics

• 95% of client queries responded to within SLA
• Proposal review completion rate %
• 2 client presentations attended per month
• Quarterly recommendations report submitted for leadership review
• Sales support participation and opportunity contribution
• Customer satisfaction and delivery confidence measure

Expected Behaviours and Competencies:

• Extensive professional services experience, with demonstrated experience leading teams and delivering complex technology projects.
• Deep knowledge of cybersecurity solutions and compliance standards.
• Background in delivering solutions to enterprise and government clients and experience translating goals into actionable plans.
• Outstanding organisational, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
• Natural people person who is a confident communicator with strong interpersonal skills.
• Proven capability in mentoring, motivating, and empowering technical teams.
• Analytic mindset to handle challenges and develop strategies as needed to optimise outcomes.
• Upholds professional standards and acts with integrity, consistently honouring commitments to clients and ensuring outcomes are delivered as agreed.
• Commercial mindset and a comprehensive understanding of the financial drivers that can be leveraged to achieve good business results.
• Demonstrates resilience and proactive leadership in fast-paced settings.
• Industry and vendor certifications highly regarded.
• Proven capability in workforce planning, utilisation management, capacity forecasting, and delivery operations.
• Strong commercial awareness with the ability to align delivery operations to pipeline demands, growth objectives, and customer outcomes.