Senior Manager, Customer Success (R5273)

The Senior Manager, Customer Success will establish, lead, and scale the Aircraft Division Customer Success function for V-BAT and X-BAT customers. This role involves managing a team of Customer Success Managers, defining strategy and operating models, and leading the Critical Accounts Program to manage escalated accounts. The manager will serve as a senior customer advocate, ensuring customers achieve sustained mission value and operational readiness.

Responsibilities

• Establish and lead the Aircraft Division Customer Success function supporting V-BAT and X-BAT customers across U.S. government, allied defense, and strategic commercial accounts.
• Manage, coach, and develop a team of Customer Success Managers responsible for customer adoption, operational readiness, mission value, and long-term account success.
• Define team structure, roles, responsibilities, account assignments, performance expectations, and career development plans.
• Recruit and onboard Customer Success talent as the customer base and Aircraft Division continue to grow.
• Set team priorities and allocate resources based on customer risk, strategic importance, operational activity, and business needs.
• Establish measurable team and individual goals and conduct regular performance evaluations, coaching, and development discussions.
• Build a culture of urgency, accountability, professionalism, transparency, operational excellence, and customer advocacy.
• Develop and operate a scalable Customer Success model that includes account segmentation, customer health scoring, success plans, engagement cadence, executive business reviews, and lifecycle governance.
• Ensure priority customers have documented success plans tied to mission outcomes, readiness objectives, adoption milestones, training requirements, sustainment needs, and executive stakeholder alignment.
• Establish standards for customer onboarding, operational transition, training coordination, sustainment handoffs, adoption management, and recurring mission-value reviews.
• Create repeatable processes, templates, playbooks, and governance mechanisms that allow the Customer Success organization to scale.
• Define clear ownership and operating rhythms across Customer Success, Deployment Operations, Flight Operations, Training, Sustainment, Program Management, Sales, Product, Engineering, Quality, Supply Chain, and Mission Operations.
• Partner with Aircraft Operations leadership to establish organizational priorities, resource requirements, operating plans, and functional performance goals.
• Own and operate the Aircraft Division Critical Accounts Program for escalated, at-risk, high-priority, or strategically sensitive customers.
• Define Critical Accounts Program entry criteria, severity levels, account-health triggers, escalation paths, executive engagement requirements, and exit criteria.
• Lead cross-functional critical-account reviews with clear owners, recovery plans, decision logs, customer communication strategies, risk-reduction actions, and measurable closure criteria.
• Assign and hold internal owners accountable for recovery actions, commitments, and due dates.
• Ensure the appropriate technical, operational, sustainment, supply, quality, program, and executive resources are engaged based on the severity and mission impact of each account.
• Provide senior leadership with concise, action-oriented visibility into customer risk, mission impact, customer sentiment, commercial exposure, and recovery status.
• Personally support customer engagements involving significant operational risk, executive attention, or strategic importance.
• Conduct post-recovery reviews to ensure root causes are addressed and lessons learned are incorporated into products, processes, training, sustainment, and support.
• Serve as a senior customer advocate for V-BAT and X-BAT customers and ensure Shield AI understands their missions, operating environments, readiness expectations, adoption barriers, and long-term objectives.
• Build trusted relationships with senior military, government, operational, and enterprise stakeholders.
• Translate customer feedback into clear product, support, training, documentation, sustainment, and operational requirements.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Operations, Quality, Supply Chain, Training, Sustainment, and Business Development to resolve customer issues and implement permanent corrective actions.
• Ensure customer feedback, operational lessons, and recurring issues are incorporated into product and service improvement priorities.
• Support strategic customer engagements, demonstrations, exercises, operational deployments, executive briefings, and business reviews as needed.
• Identify risks and opportunities that could affect customer retention, mission success, future adoption, or account growth.
• Own Customer Success dashboards, account-health assessments, risk registers, success plans, Critical Accounts Program reporting, and executive operating reviews.
• Define and track indicators including mission readiness, product adoption, training progress, fleet availability, support responsiveness, issue aging, customer sentiment, renewal or expansion risk, and executive engagement.
• Establish regular reporting cadences that clearly communicate customer outcomes, emerging risks, functional performance, resource constraints, and required leadership decisions.
• Use customer and operational data to identify trends, recurring problems, systemic risks, and opportunities to improve the customer experience.
• Measure the effectiveness of the Customer Success organization and continuously improve team processes, tools, and operating rhythms.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in customer success, customer operations, account management, program management, field operations, professional services, aviation operations, defense technology, aerospace, or mission-critical enterprise technology.
• 5+ years of experience leading customer-facing, account management, support, field operations, program management, or Customer Success teams.
• Demonstrated experience hiring, managing, coaching, and developing high-performing teams.
• Experience building or scaling a Customer Success, customer operations, account management, or similar customer-facing function.
• Demonstrated success managing escalated, at-risk, executive-level, or mission-critical customer accounts.
• Experience operating structured escalation, customer-health, critical-account, executive-governance, or customer-recovery processes.
• Strong executive presence and the ability to communicate effectively with senior military, government, enterprise, and internal executive stakeholders.
• Ability to establish strategy while remaining actively engaged in customer execution and issue resolution.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams through ambiguity, urgency, conflict, and high operational stakes.
• Strong understanding of customer lifecycle management, adoption, operational readiness, sustainment, support, renewals, and expansion.
• Experience defining performance metrics, operating cadences, team objectives, and executive reporting.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including executive briefings, account plans, recovery plans, and leadership updates.
• Ability to travel up to 15% and work effectively with customers and teams in operational, field, and headquarters environments.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance.

Nice to have

• Experience in defense, aerospace, autonomous systems, aviation, unmanned aircraft systems, software-defined systems, military operations, or operational technology deployed in austere environments.
• Experience supporting the Department of Defense, U.S. military services, allied defense organizations, or government customers.
• Experience with vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aircraft systems, aviation operations, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, mission systems, autonomy, deployed operations, aircraft sustainment, or mission-critical field operations.
• Prior military service or direct experience working with operational military units.
• Experience designing or operating Critical Accounts Programs, enterprise escalation frameworks, technical account management programs, Customer Success operations, or executive sponsor programs.
• Experience managing customer-facing organizations supporting both hardware and software products.
• Experience with Salesforce, Gainsight, Jira, Confluence, Tableau, Power BI, or similar customer success, support, and reporting systems.
• Active Secret or Top Secret security clearance.

Benefits

• Full-time regular employee offer package:
• Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity
• Temporary employee offer package:
• Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)
• Salary compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.