Staffing Operations Manager

Keystone is a premier economics, technology, and strategy consulting firm built to help companies lead through transformation. As breakthrough innovations reshape industries, redefine competition and change our society, complex and highly competitive ecosystems emerge. Keystone advises technology leaders, Fortune 100 companies, their legal counsel, and governments on business, economic, litigation, and regulatory strategy in relation to these innovations and competitive eco-systems.

We operate globally from offices in New York City, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, London, Dubai, and Washington, D.C.

We’re growing quickly and looking for a Staffing Operations Manager to support the operational and strategic success of our Staffing & Workforce Deployment function.

The Staffing Operations Manager oversees the firm’s Staffing & Workforce Deployment function — reviewing and validating deployment decisions, resolving complex or contested staffing requests, and setting the strategic direction for how talent flows across the firm. Day-to-day staffing decisions and execution sit with the Staffing & Workforce Associate; the Manager's role is to review those decisions, navigate difficult calls, and communicate clearly with practice leadership when situations require escalation.

Beyond oversight, the Manager leads the function’s longer-horizon work: staffing technology evaluation and implementation, the firm’s talent skills database, staffing analytics, utilization reporting, and monthly project balancing.

• Review staffing placement decisions made by the Associate and approve, redirect, or escape as appropriate
• Resolve contested or complex staffing requests — cross-practice conflicts, competing priorities, specialized skill requirements
• Navigate decision path and communication with practice leadership on difficult or sensitive staffing calls
• Own the federated staffing governance model — the process by which requests escape from CoE-level to the central function

• Drive and report on staffing analytics for Rev Ops and firm leadership — utilization, bench time, deployment patterns, CoE-level variances
• Raise utilization concerns proactively to Rev Ops leadership with recommended corrective actions
• Own monthly project balancing across the firm — ensuring equitable and optimal deployment firmwide

• Monitor pacing by engagement throughout the month, tracking utilization against the staffed plan and identifying staffing deviation
• Assess whether each engagement is trending to meet the month’s demand target; escape pacing risks proactively to Rev Ops leadership
• Report pacing status by engagement, CoE, and geography on a regular cadence

The Staffing Operations Manager works across multiple functions to ensure staffing decisions connect to the firm’s financial, operational, and talent infrastructure.

• Pipeline & Revenue Intelligence — Receive demand forecasts and pipeline signals and translate into near‑term staffing projections and deployment plans; coordinate proactively when Revenue Intelligence surfaces demand cliffs, engagement extensions, or pipeline acceleration; feed in‑month pacing data back to Revenue Intelligence to inform revenue forecast updates and flag where utilization deviation is creating revenue risk
• Billing Operations — Surface staffing deviation and pacing gaps when utilization shortfalls create at‑risk billing; coordinate on redeployment scenarios where over pacing creates uncaptured demand that can be converted to billable…