Consulting Manager - Education Practice (Associate Manager to Senior Manager)

Location: Ho Chi Minh City

Practice: Education

Reporting to: Head of Practice

About Decision Lab

Decision Lab is an insights-driven consulting firm helping organisations succeed in Southeast Asia's next decade of growth. As consumer behaviour, media, and technology change faster than most organisations can adapt, we believe growth only succeeds when decision-making evolves as fast as the market itself.

We turn research into business decisions — not just findings. Our recommendations help clients decide who to target, what to launch, what to fix, how to position, and where to invest. We are curious by design and deliberate in how we use technology, including AI, to reach better answers faster.

We believe the region grows faster when good information is shared. So we make much of our research public and work to inspire students, government, and executives to act on it — because the truth matters.

Why this practice

We are building Decision Lab into the evidence-led authority on education in Vietnam, with the foundation to expand across ASEAN. It is a space no one else can credibly own: global agencies lack deep education expertise, and academic researchers lack commercial framing. We sit in between — deep sector knowledge translated into decisions institutions can act on. Our work answers the questions that keep education leaders up at night: what actually drives enrolment, how to prove value to families before they sign, and what employers really think of graduates.

About the role

You will lead projects that help universities, schools, and education institutions make better decisions on enrolment, programme design, brand, and employability. You own the work end-to-end: how the problem is structured, how insight becomes a recommendation, and how the client acts on it. The practice is built to run more, without losing the senior judgement that defines our work — so you will carry real delivery ownership from the start.

What you will do

▸ Lead education research and consulting projects end-to-end, from problem definition to final recommendation

▸ Own client communication and guide institutions towards clear decisions

▸ Translate insight into enrolment, programme, brand, and employability strategy

▸ Design and deliver brand tracking, demand and market-sizing studies, and employability research

▸ Use AI tools fluently to sharpen analysis and accelerate delivery — and raise the standard for how your team does the same

▸ Ensure recommendations are grounded in commercial and institutional reality

▸ Manage and coach team members at execution level

▸ Handle multi-stakeholder relationships across institutions, faculties, and partners

▸ Increasingly lead proposals and commercial discussions, and take on larger engagements

What we're looking for

▸ 4–8+ years of experience, including at least 3 years with a leading market research agency

▸ Experience across consulting, research, or the education sector

▸ Rigorous thinking — well-structured, evidence-based, and honest about what the data does and does not show

▸ Ambitious about impact, not activity — you take ownership of outcomes and push for decisions that drive growth

▸ The ability to frame insight around decisions, not just data — ideally with some client-side or institutional experience

▸ Experience with brand tracking, customer insight, or market-sizing work

▸ High AI fluency: you already use AI tools in your day-to-day analytical and consulting work — for desk research, synthesis, drafting, and quality-checking — and can show how it has made your output faster or sharper

▸ Comfort with ambiguity and the ability to own a project from brief to delivery without daily supervision

▸ Confidence leading projects and presenting to senior stakeholders

▸ Structured thinking, clear communication, and experience developing junior team members

How this role grows

This is a banded role — Associate Manager to Senior Manager — and we will place you at the level your experience supports. The path upward is explicit: you move from leading defined projects to owning client relationships and commercial outcomes as your scope and judgement grow. We will be clear with you from day one about what each level requires and what it pays.

What you'll get

▸ Real commercial involvement early — you lead client work and shape decisions years sooner than you would at a large global firm

▸ A modern, AI-native way of working, built for speed and sharpness rather than process for its own sake

▸ Direct exposure to senior stakeholders across leading universities and institutions

▸ Sector breadth — you work across institutions and business problems, not one organisation's internal function

▸ A steep learning curve in a high-standard, feedback-driven environment, with ambitious colleagues who challenge each other to improve

▸ Local and regional grounding — we are here for Vietnam and Southeast Asia, with the balance that comes from building close to home

▸ A flexible, semi-hybrid working model and a collaborative workspace in Ho Chi Minh City

▸ Compensation benchmarked competitively, with clear performance-based upside through quarterly bonuses

This is not a role built around structure and hand-holding. It is built around responsibility, feedback, and progress.