About this role
Ready to Build Your Consulting Career at the Forefront of Automotive Innovation? SBD Automotive is a global automotive research and consulting firm, supporting manufacturers, suppliers, and technology companies with strategy, insight, and execution across connected, electric, autonomous, and software-defined vehicles.
As a Senior Consultant within our APAC Consulting team, you will play a key role in delivering high-quality consulting engagements for automotive and technology clients across Japan and the wider APAC region. You will own and shape defined client deliverables and project workstreams, build trusted client relationships, and contribute to the continued growth of SBD's consulting business in the region.
Based in either Japan or China, you will work closely with colleagues across APAC and SBD's wider global consulting organisation. You will increasingly take responsibility for project delivery and direct client engagement, including leading client meetings and workshops. You may also coordinate delivery resources from across APAC and other SBD regions to deliver successful client outcomes.
A Day in the Life
Your day will balance project delivery, client interaction, knowledge development, team contribution, and commercial activity.
You might start the day shaping a client deliverable, progressing a project workstream, or reviewing analysis ahead of an important milestone. Later, you could lead or join a client workshop, present findings, follow up on client needs, or work with colleagues to identify where SBD can add further value.
You may spend part of the day working directly with clients in Japan or elsewhere in APAC, coordinating colleagues across Japan, China, and SBD's wider global team, contributing to a Centre of Excellence, developing industry expertise, supporting a proposal, providing feedback to a colleague, or helping a more junior team member progress their work.
Regular travel within APAC, including travel between China and Japan where required, will form part of the role based on client and project needs.
No two days are identical, but the focus remains the same: delivering high-quality work, building credibility with clients, increasing your ownership and impact, and continuously developing your consulting and domain expertise.
Your Key Responsibilities Include:
1. Client Delivery • Shape and sometimes own high-quality client deliverables and defined project workstreams. • Manage your time effectively to ensure assigned work is completed on time and to a consistently high standard. • Support project leads in planning and delivering successful client outcomes, while taking increasing ownership of workstreams and smaller consulting engagements where appropriate. • Lead client meetings, presentations, and workshops where appropriate, including direct engagement with Japanese clients and stakeholders. • Work with and help coordinate colleagues across APAC and SBD's wider global team where engagements require expertise or capacity from multiple locations. • Apply structured problem solving and analytical thinking to complex client challenges and translate findings into clear outputs.
2. Client Relationships and Value Creation
• Build trusted relationships with clients, third parties, and project stakeholders. • Develop an in-depth understanding of client organisations, their competitors, priorities, and business context. • Build effective relationships across Japanese and wider APAC client organisations and adapt your communication and engagement approach appropriately to different client and cultural environments. • Proactively identify opportunities to add value beyond immediate project requirements and take appropriate action. • Follow up with clients during and after delivery to understand whether their needs have been met and identify any further requirements. • Use AI and other productivity tools appropriately to improve individual productivity, delivery quality, and client value and, where acting as project lead, to improve project cost, speed, and quality.
3. Commercial Contribution • Act in the long-term interests of clients and understand how strong delivery and relationships support repeat business and growth. • Build and maintain your internal and external network and use it to connect clients with relevant SBD expertise. • Develop an understanding of what is happening within client organisations and the wider industry, and use this insight to support market and business development activity. • Support proposals and opportunity development and contribute to the growth of existing and prospective client accounts by identifying follow-on needs, sharing relevant insight, and helping develop practical consulting solutions.
4. Domain Expertise and Knowledge Development • Build expertise within relevant automotive and mobility domains while maintaining awareness of the wider market and client landscape. • Actively participate in SBD's Centres of Excellence, building your knowledge, internal network, and contribution to insight delivery. • Develop and share new ideas, propositions, reusable insight, methodologies, and best practices. • Stay informed on changes in the client, industry, and market and identify areas where you or others need to deepen knowledge. • Share knowledge and lessons learned across teams, projects, and knowledge-sharing platforms.
5. Professional Contribution • Champion SBD's brand, purpose, values, and professional standards in all internal and external interactions. • Take ownership of your development and actively support the development of more junior colleagues through coaching, project guidance, and timely feedback. Where you have direct reports, run regular formal feedback sessions that give them a consolidated view of performance and development priorities. • Support the team with delivery, performance, and wellbeing while demonstrating strong operational hygiene, including timely time-off booking, timesheet completion, project planning, appropriate use of project commercial tools, and maintaining project outputs in agreed systems. • Manage your time proactively across client delivery, network building, learning, and internal contribution. Identify and escalate risks and issues appropriately and develop practical mitigating actions.
About you You are a motivated and increasingly experienced consultant who combines strong analytical capability with confidence in client-facing delivery. You enjoy taking ownership of client work, building trusted relationships, supporting colleagues, and working across cultures and geographies. You are comfortable operating in an international consulting environment and can engage credibly with Japanese clients and stakeholders.
You bring: • Relevant consulting experience with evidence of increasing responsibility for client delivery, project workstreams and stakeholder engagement. • Strong analytical, structured problem-solving, and delivery skills. • Experience owning high-quality written deliverables, presentations, analysis, and defined consulting workstreams. • Experience contributing to and increasingly leading client-facing meetings, presentations and workshops. • The ability to work effectively across different cultures, geographies, and multidisciplinary teams. • The ability to manage multiple priorities, take ownership of your time, and deliver reliably in a fast-paced consulting environment. • A proactive approach to learning, feedback, collaboration, and continuous improvement. • Professional/business English. • For candidates based in Japan: native or business-level fluency in Japanese. • For candidates based in China: business-level fluency in Japanese, with the confidence and capability to work directly with Japanese clients. • Willingness to travel regularly within APAC as required by client and project needs. Ideally you also have: • Automotive, mobility, technology, research or related industry experience. • Experience working with Japanese clients or within Japanese business environments. • Experience taking ownership of smaller consulting projects or substantial workstreams. • Experience supporting proposals, opportunity development or follow-on client work. • Experience using research, data and productivity tools to support consulting delivery.
Why SBD Automotive At SBD Automotive, you will work with leading automotive and technology clients on some of the industry's most important challenges.
We offer: • A clear progression path into Manager, Senior Manager, and Director roles. • Exposure to cutting-edge mobility technologies and strategies. • A collaborative, international team environment. • The opportunity to work across Japan, China, and the wider APAC region while collaborating with colleagues globally. • The opportunity to build trusted client relationships, take increasing ownership of delivery, and contribute to business growth. • Competitive salary and benefits.
Interested? If you are ready to accelerate your consulting career, take greater ownership of client delivery, and work directly with clients across Japan and the wider APAC region, we would like to hear from you.
Apply now to join SBD Automotive and work with some of the world's leading automotive and technology organisations.