Lead, Major Accounts

About the position

People are the heart of our business. As an American Water employee, you will be offered a competitive salary and health benefits package, along with opportunities to develop, grow, and evolve your career. Our benefits packages focus on key areas such as health & wellness, emotional & well-being, and savings for current & future goals. We are Beautifully Different . We strongly believe having diversity across our company makes us more successful and helps us provide essential services to our customers. We are stronger because we embrace different ideas, viewpoints, experiences, and backgrounds. American Water is the best choice for your next role! About American Water American Water (NYSE: AWK) is the largest regulated water and wastewater utility company in the United States. With a history dating back to 1886 and celebrating 140 years in 2026, We Keep Life Flowing® by providing safe, clean, reliable and affordable drinking water and wastewater services to approximately 14 million people with regulated operations in 14 states and on 18 military installations. American Water’s approximately 7,000 talented professionals leverage their significant expertise and the company’s national size and scale to achieve excellent outcomes for the benefit of customers, employees, investors and other stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Serves as the primary point of contact between American Water and assigned major non-residential customers from the commercial, industrial, public authority, and sale for resale customer classifications.
• Build and maintain positive relationships with customers and ensure their needs are met timely.
• Establish and maintain relationships with Major Account customers.
• Serve as a goodwill ambassador for the company and appropriately balances the interests of the customer, regulatory agencies and the Company.
• Serve customers with a level of excellence that generates customer support and advocacy for the Company.
• Serves as the first point of contact by the customer regarding any questions or needs related to water and the water industry.
• Establishes, builds and own relationships with major customers through ongoing, regular personal interaction, including but is not limited to personal meetings (including annual visits that provide a comprehensive customer activity report and future water demand projection)
• Conduct customer site visits and facility tours, regular proactive company email /newsletter communications, email or phone communications as needed
• Identify strategic opportunities to work with customers on significant water infrastructure projects such as facility expansions, coordinating company or customer-initiated main replacement projects and future alignments, water conservation opportunities, geothermal projects, etc.
• Represents the company by engaging in community business and civic associations through attending meetings, providing presentations on the company, supporting initiatives that align with the company’s goals, serving as a resource.
• Ensures that company operations and production leads and field teams are periodically updated on major accounts including who they are, where they are physically located, and the need to proactively work through the major account manager on operational items that may affect major customers such as main breaks, planned outages, annual or ad-hoc system flushing, changes in water chemistry, etc.
• Advises major customers regarding company billing, including presentation of enhanced billing options, coordinating efforts to correctly set up collective billing, gaining access to major account billing portal, provision of electronic billing data, escalated billing inquiries and corrections / adjustments, etc.
• Provide information and understanding of company rates, tariff regulatory requirements, appropriate advance notification of planned rate cases / timing, etc.
• Provide regular report on major accounts to state company management, advising of activities / issues encountered, project updates, solutions provided, future strategic opportunities for cooperation, etc.
• Work with the company (state and corporate) communications leads to tell customer success stories / outcomes
• Highlight individual major customers through internal communications to make employees aware of the important work being done by our major customers

Requirements

• Strong knowledge of, or ability to quickly learn, water infrastructure and delivery systems, including production and operational practices, water quality, conservation, environmental compliance, customer metering, etc.
• Strong knowledge of, or ability to quickly learn, state regulatory commission provisions, including company rate structure, and the company tariff, programs and services
• Strong knowledge of, or ability to quickly learn, company billing practices, and the ability to interpret and understand customer billing anomalies in order to ensure proper follow-up to customer concerns
• Skilled at developing effective solutions that often include leveraging and leading internal resources / teams, analyzing and interpreting situations, engaging in proactive customer communications, and recognizing strategic opportunities to partner with customers on matters of mutual interest and benefit
• Proficiency with MS Office Suite, SAP, CRM database or similar business applications
• Demonstrates the functional and technical knowledge and skills to do the job at a high level of accomplishment
• Experience delivering client-focused solutions to customer needs
• Proven ability to juggle multiple account management projects at a time, while maintaining sharp attention to detail
• Demonstrates the ability to learn quickly when facing new problems, organizational agility, strong problem-solving skills, the ability to use his/her time effectively and efficiently, and the ability to maintain open lines of communication
• Skilled at accurately setting objectives and goals, inspiring others, maneuvering through complex political situations effectively and quietly
• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Accounting, Communications, Engineering or Economics; or an Associate's degree with a minimum of 6 years of commercial customer service experience
• Minimum 2 years' experience working in the commercial customer service Field
• Valid Driver's License required as you will be required to drive to various sites

Nice-to-haves

• 2 years of experience in large utility account management and 1year of SAPCRM experience is preferred
• Water Utility Management Certification and/or National Rural Water Association preferred

Benefits

• competitive salary
• health benefits package
• opportunities to develop, grow, and evolve your career
• benefits packages focus on key areas such as health & wellness, emotional & well-being, and savings for current & future goals