Senior Ran Engineer Jobs in Houston, TX (NOW HIRING)

We make teams AI-native. Most clients have bought the tools. They have not deployed them. We embed AI-native practitioners who close that gap: real workflows, real data sources, production work in week one. The problem is not the technology. It is the deployment. That is the wedge we built Elios around, and it is why our clients keep expanding with us. A few things to know about us:

• Built by operators. We have run engineering teams, managed P&Ls, and felt what it costs when AI adoption stalls.
• Technologists evaluating technologists. Not recruiters reading from a script. Our screeners have done the work.
• Deployment practitioners. We have deployed AI across engineering, finance, marketing, and operations. We know what sticks and what does not.

The Portfolio Engagement Director is the operator who owns a portfolio of Elios accounts and makes them grow. You are accountable for retention, expansion, and outcomes across an existing book of business, anchored in Houston and the broader Texas market. You support new business when our pursuit team is closing the kind of work you will ultimately run.

You bring consulting rigor to a deployment motion: diagnosing problems, scoping engagements, and showing up as a peer to engineering and data leaders rolling out frontier AI inside their workflows. This is not a quota-carrying hunter role and it is not a passive farmer role. It is a portfolio-ownership role. You will be measured on the health, growth, and reputation of your accounts, and on whether the next logo wants to work with us because of how you ran the last one.

• Own a portfolio of named accounts in the Houston and Texas market. Build a relationship map across each: buyer, champion, blocker, end user.
• Run quarterly business reviews. Translate engagement metrics into business outcomes the client's CFO would actually care about.
• Identify and close expansion across our three engagement models: Talent on Demand, Embedded Teams, and Co-Managed Resources.
• Stay close to every active engagement in your portfolio. You do not manage the work day to day, but you know what is shipping, what is slipping, and why.
• Be the escalation path. When something is off, the client calls you first and we resolve it before it becomes a churn risk.

• Partner with the pursuit team on net-new opportunities in your market, particularly accounts deploying AI Deployment Engineers, AI Deployment Specialists, agentic systems, custom AI connectors, or modern data infrastructure.
• Show up to discovery and scoping calls as the technical and operational credibility in the room. Translate vague asks into scoped engagements.
• Co-author proposals, statements of work, and pricing strategy with sales leadership.
• Hand off cleanly to delivery, then own the relationship once the engagement is live.

• Develop a point of view on your market: the clients, the talent pool, the deals worth chasing. Represent Elios in our platform partnerships across the AI and data ecosystem.
• Contribute to Elios IP: case studies, playbooks, and frameworks for how we scope and price the work you run.
• Mentor delivery specialists and represent Elios at the events, dinners, and rooms where Texas AI and data leaders gather.

You probably came up at a top-tier strategy firm or a Big 4 advisory practice. You ran client engagements, owned a workstream, and got close to the buyer. You are at the Manager or Senior Manager level (or the equivalent Director title in industry), and the next move up at your firm is starting to feel slower and less interesting than what you could be building here. We are hiring for instincts, not a credential. The best fit will be someone who:

• Has 6 to 10 years in management consulting, Big 4 advisory, or a comparable client-facing role in professional services.
• Has worked on engagements involving AI, data, or analytics, especially around AI deployment, frontier LLMs, agentic systems, or modern data platforms.
• Has sold into or served Professional Services firms, Private Equity portfolio companies, or middle-market commercial clients ($250M to $2B revenue).
• Has carried account expansion responsibility and grown a relationship from $200K to $2M or more.
• Can sit across the table from a VP of Engineering, a CDO, or a Chief AI Officer and hold your own, technically and commercially.
• Writes well. Builds clean decks. Scopes ambiguous problems into something a team can actually deliver.
• Is comfortable in the gray space between sales and delivery, and does not need a quota or a project plan to know what to do next.
• Wants to operate, not just advise. Wants to own a book, not a workstream.

• You have personally deployed or worked alongside teams deploying frontier AI tools, agentic systems, or custom AI connectors into production workflows.
• You have sold or scoped staffing, consulting, or managed services engagements in the $250K to $5M range.
• You have an existing network of engineering, data, or AI leaders in the Houston or Texas market.
• You have worked in or alongside forward deployed engineering teams at a frontier AI lab or modern data platform.
• You have a vertical thesis (energy, financial services, healthcare, federal, PE portfolio) and want to build a practice around it.

Headquarters are in Houston, TX. This role is hybrid, with roughly 25% travel to client sites across Texas and to strategic accounts in our priority markets. Expect on-site presence with anchor clients, quarterly leadership offsites, and the occasional conference or partner event.

• AI-native by default. Every Elios employee works inside the same AI tools we deploy for clients, including our Elios Insights platform powered by Prism and FitScore.
• Outcome-oriented. We do not measure hours. We measure whether the account is healthier than it was last quarter.
• Operator-led. Our leadership has run engineering teams, hired at scale, and shipped product. Decisions are fast, opinionated, and made close to the work.
• Transparent. About comp, about pipeline, about what is working and what is not.
• Competitive base salary, calibrated to market and experience.
• Variable compensation tied to portfolio growth, retention, and new business contribution.
• Equity participation for the right candidate.
• Full health, dental, and vision coverage.
• Flexible PTO and a culture that actually uses it.
• Budget for the tools, conferences, and certifications that make you better at this job.