Senior Manager of Customer Success

About CoLab

At CoLab, we help engineering teams bring life-changing products to the world years sooner. Our platform is the world's first Design Engagement System (DES) - a category defining product that Engineering teams use to engage in meaningful, productive design conversations, catch preventable mistakes, and get to market faster. Our customers include the largest engineering organizations in the world spanning from industrial equipment, consumer products, automotive, aerospace & defense, and shipbuilding industries.

About the Role

As a key leadership hire at CoLab, you will lead and scale a high-performing team of CSMs focused on driving product adoption, delivering measurable value, and achieving industry-leading gross retention and net revenue retention across our Fortune 1000 customers.

You'll foster team excellence, build scalable systems, and collaborate cross-functionally—representing the voice of the customer to ensure a consistent, impactful experience throughout the entire post-sale journey. Your team will own account strategy, drive license adoption, quantify business outcomes, and communicate impact effectively to stakeholders at all levels—from managers to executives.

In this role, you'll align customer outcomes with CoLab's strategic goals, champion operational excellence, and cultivate a culture rooted in accountability, coaching, and performance. As a senior leader, you'll also take ownership of team operations across multiple customer segments and play a key role in shaping Customer Success strategy, enabling scalable growth through process, insights, and cross-functional collaboration.

This is an ideal opportunity for an industry leader who thrives in technical SaaS environments, has led teams through high-growth phases, and is passionate about developing top-tier talent. Your ability to lead through complexity—guiding your team as they consult on change management within large, global organizations—will be a significant asset.

You will report to the Director of Customer Success. As CoLab scales, this role offers a clear path to senior leadership within our growing global Customer Success organization.

In-person customer engagement is a key part of this role's success. On-site visits have consistently driven higher adoption, deeper relationships, and better business outcomes for our customers. We recognize personal travel constraints may arise and we expect Strategic CSMs to proactively plan for and prioritize in-person opportunities.

Twice annually we bring together all CoLabers at our HQ in St. John's, Newfoundland (typically in June and December), to participate in company Team Week.

What You'll Do

Team Leadership & Coaching

Inspire and develop a high-performing, impact-driven team of CSMs

• Hire, coach, and grow a team of CSMs focused on adoption, customer value realization, retention, and expansion.
• Set and uphold high performance standards aligned with CoLab's CSM career path and culture of accountability.
• Own performance management and career development for direct reports.
• Foster a culture of coaching, peer learning, and knowledge sharing
• Serve as the first point of escalation for team support and strategic decision-making
  
  

Customer & Business Outcomes

Deliver measurable customer impact and drive retention and growth

• Ensure consistent execution across account strategy, success planning, business reviews, and stakeholder engagement
• Leverage data to drive team accountability and results across core metrics (time to value, license adoption, gross retention, net revenue retention)
• Act as a strategic escalation point to resolve customer risks and ensure successful long-term outcomes.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Customer Solutions Engineering, Sales, Product, RevOps, and Enablement to streamline workflows, reduce friction and achieve business goals.
• Guide the team in delivering measurable value tied to key outcomes: time-to-market acceleration, rework reduction, and ROI realization.
  
  

Execution & Operational Excellence

Build scalable systems to drive consistency, impact, and efficiency

• Lead hiring and support onboarding and enablement for new team members to ensure 1) fast time to ramp 2) they meet and/or exceed expectations when exiting onboarding.
• Implement and maintain inspection rhythms to track both leading and lagging indicators for team and customer performance.
• Champion the use of data, automation, and AI tools to increase scale and operational consistency.
• Partner with CS Enablement to build repeatable, scalable playbooks that map to the customer value journey—from adoption through GRR and NRR outcomes.
• Build and evolve scalable processes and playbooks that align to customer segment needs and drive consistent outcomes across the CS team.
• Identify and implement proactive interventions across the customer lifecycle in partnership with CS leadership.
  
  

Strategic Collaboration & Communication

Shape CoLab's customer strategy and represent the customer voice internally

• Act as a strategic advisor to CS leadership—surfacing insights and solutions that accelerate value realization, mitigate risk, and drive growth.
• Serve as a senior voice in strategic planning conversations, helping shape CS priorities and championing customer needs in company-wide initiatives.
• Regularly communicate performance against goals, key blockers, and strategic recommendations to senior leadership.
• Partner with Customer Solutions Engineering to ensure seamless onboarding, technical alignment, and embedded product usage.
• Elevate the voice of the customer (VOC) to influence Product, Marketing, and GTM strategies.
• Collaborate closely with GTM, RevOps, and Product teams to influence roadmap priorities, shape expansion plays, and enhance the end-to-end customer journey.
• Model leadership maturity, strategic decision-making, and cross-functional alignment across the GTM org.
  
  

What We're Looking For

Leadership & Team Management

• 2+ years of experience managing or leading high-performing Customer Success or post-sale teams.
• Proven track record of building and scaling outcome-driven CS teams in fast-paced, high-growth environments.
• Experience developing team structures, career paths, and performance systems that support scale.
• Strong coaching mindset with a demonstrated ability to elevate individual and team performance.
  
  

Customer Impact & Strategic Execution

• 5+ years in Customer Success, Account Management, or Post-Sales roles in B2B SaaS.
• Demonstrated success driving customer value realization, adoption, retention, and expansion.
• Experience increasing ACV through structured execution and strategic engagement models.
• Skilled at leading teams through ambiguity and coaching them to navigate complex, enterprise accounts.
  
  

Technical & Enterprise Experience

• Experience supporting large, global enterprise customers with complex stakeholder orgs and high ARR potential.
• Comfort operating in technical SaaS environments and partnering with product, solutions engineering, and technical stakeholders.
• Familiarity with enterprise change management and strategic account planning.
  
  

Data, Process, & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Strong data fluency: able to interpret leading and lagging indicators, uncover risk/opportunity signals, and drive accountability.
• Experience scaling CS functions through process design, automation, and enablement.
• Effective cross-functional collaborator—especially with Sales, Product, RevOps, and Enablement—to drive customer and business outcomes.
• Strong executive presence, structured thinking, and strategic communication skills.
• Highly organized, proactive, and outcome-oriented with a continuous improvement mindset.
  
  

Willingness to travel up to 20% for customer engagements and team offsites.

Nice to Have

• Experience working with technical, specialized customer personas in vertical SaaS (engineering, manufacturing, and R&D a plus)
• Experience managing through SaaS transformation motions (land & expand, multi-threaded accounts, CS platforms).
• Experience helping build or scale CS processes in a high-growth environment
• Familiarity with coaching frameworks, team enablement programs, and operational playbook development.
  
  

You'll Thrive at CoLab If You:

• Lead with empathy, clarity, and accountability
• Excel at building trusted relationships across all levels of the organization
• Champion excellence in others and raise the bar for team performance
• Navigate ambiguity with a solutions-first mindset and drive change through influence
• Embrace continuous feedback and see every challenge as an opportunity to learn and grow
  
  

Why Join CoLab

• A passionate team building something industry-defining
• Direct impact on product innovation and customer success
• Twice-annual team offsites in St. John's, Newfoundland
• Culture rooted in kindness, grit, and ownership
  
  

Frequently cited statistics show that people who identify with historically marginalized groups are likely to apply to jobs only if they meet 100% of the qualifications. We encourage you to help us break that statistic and apply even if you don't meet every single qualification—your potential is what matters most to us.