Client & Project Manager

Client \& Projects Manager

*The person who keeps our clients close and our projects moving.*

ABOUT ALKEMISTA

We're a premium liquid development company. We create award\-winning drinks for some of the UK and US's most ambitious brand founders and global drinks companies \- Moth, Pathfinder, Served, Goodrays, Aplos, and major corporates alike. Our work has contributed to over £850M in founder exit value and delivered multiple top\-5 NPD launches in the UK.

We run complex development projects simultaneously \- spirits, RTDs, cocktails, alcohol\-free \- from first brief through to first production. The technical work is world\-class. What we need now is someone to make sure the client experience matches it.

THE ROLE

Ant Wilson, our founder and Technical Director, is one of the most experienced liquid developers in the industry. His job is to be in the lab, in the brief, in the creative problem. Your job is to understand that work well enough to hold the timeline around it \- knowing what’s coming, what’s at risk, and what the client needs to hear.

You won’t own the technical work \- that sits firmly with our liquid developers. What you will own is the rhythm. You’ll work hand in glove with the development team to understand what’s happening at each stage, what the next deliverable is, and where pressure is building. Then you’ll translate that outward \- to clients, clearly and confidently \- and inward, holding the timeline with the developers in a way that’s direct but never disruptive to the craft.

The relationship with our developers is everything in this role. You’ll need to earn their trust quickly \- understanding how they work, what they need, and when to push and when to wait. That internal dynamic is what makes the external promise to clients deliverable. We’ve learned the hard way that over\-engineered project management tools choke the creative and technical work. What we need is someone who can hold multiple complex projects in their head, communicate clearly in both directions, and build the kind of internal relationships that make the whole machine run \- without burying the team in frameworks nobody uses.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Client relationship management

• Be the primary day\-to\-day contact for 8\-10 client accounts across active development projects


• Keep clients genuinely informed and involved \- not just copied in on emails, but actively engaged in the journey from brief to bottle


• Manage expectations clearly and confidently around timelines, decisions, and scope \- including the difficult conversations


• Maintain client enthusiasm through the messy middle of development, where progress feels slower than it is


• Escalate only the right things to Ant \- bringing context and a proposed path, not just problems

• Work closely with our liquid developers to understand the development workflow at each stage \- what’s been done, what’s next, and where the pressure points are


• Steer project timelines and overall deliverables \- you don’t own the technical work, but you hold the tension around it, making sure the development team have what they need and clients receive what was promised


• Build genuine hand\-in\-glove relationships with the development team \- understanding how they think, earning their trust, and creating an internal dynamic that makes the pipeline move


• Translate technical progress into clear client communication \- so clients always know where they are, what’s coming, and why it matters


• Hold the overall project picture across multiple concurrent briefs \- knowing what’s due, what’s at risk, and surfacing it early rather than chasing from behind

• Understand the commercial shape of each project \- stage payments, phase boundaries, and what's included


• Spot opportunities to develop retained client relationships and flag them to Ant


• Support new client onboarding, ensuring the client experience from first brief is consistent and confidence\-building


• Represent Alkemista at client meetings and industry events as required

You’ve managed client relationships and complex projects before \- probably in an agency, FMCG, brand services, or creative environment. You know what it means to sit between a technical team and a client and make both feel confident. You’re the kind of person developers want to work with \- because you ask good questions, learn their process, and never drop a timeline on them without understanding what it takes to meet it.

You don't need to be a drinks industry expert on day one. But you need to get up to speed quickly, ask good questions, and know when to push and when to hold back.

• Genuinely organised \- juggling 10 active accounts without things slipping is your normal


• A clear, confident communicator \- you can translate technical complexity into plain language, and vice versa


• Commercially aware \- you understand budgets, project scope, and what profitability means for a small business


• Emotionally intelligent \- you manage founder personalities and expectations with care and directness in equal measure


• A pragmatist about process \- you'll build structure that fits how the team actually works, not how a software demo says it should


• Self\-starting \- you see what needs doing and do it without waiting to be directed


• 3\+ years of B2B account management or project coordination experience, ideally in a services environment


• Experience in drinks, food, FMCG, or creative industries is an advantage \- not a hard requirement

Full time, Monday to Friday

*Hatfield Broad Oak with flexibility*

SALARY

£35,000 – £41,000

*Dependent on experience*

Performance bonus \+ pension

WHY ALKEMISTA?

The brands we work on are the ones that end up on the shelves you notice, in the press you read, and at the exits that make headlines. Our clients are ambitious, smart, and genuinely building something.

You'll have direct access to Ant and real ownership of your client portfolio from day one. No layers, no bureaucracy. When something goes well, you'll know exactly why. When something needs fixing, you'll have the authority to fix it.

There's room to grow here too \- as Alkemista scales, the client services function will scale with it. The person who builds it well will lead it.

HOW TO APPLY

Send your CV to admin@alkemista.co.uk with a short note on why this role fits where you are right now. We're not looking for a cover letter \- just a paragraph that tells us something your CV doesn't.

We move quickly when we find the right person.

Job Type: Full\-time

Pay: £35,000\.00\-£40,850\.00 per year

Benefits:

• Company pension


• Flexitime


• Health \& wellbeing programme


• On\-site parking


• Profit sharing

• What experience do you have working with creative and technical teams who think differently?


• Do you have experience in FMCG or drinks or a strong brand background?


• Are you comfortable with being on site in the office for your contract hours?


• Can you demonstrate experience managing multiple project timelines and deadlines?

• client management B2B: 3 years (required)

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