Why You'll Love This Role:
We are looking for a Director, Scaled Customer Success to join our Customer Success team. Reporting to the VP, Customer Success, you will be responsible for defining and leading the strategy, execution, and performance of Newsela’s scaled customer segments, including SMB and Schools. You will lead frontline managers, design and optimize our scaled coverage model, and ensure our teams are delivering strong customer outcomes across adoption, retention, renewal readiness, and long-term account health.
This role is focused on building a scalable, data-driven customer experience that combines digital engagement, targeted human touchpoints mixed with heavy automation, and strong cross-functional partnership. You will work closely with CS Operations, Customer Experience, Product, Marketing, Sales, and CS leadership to ensure our scaled customer base receives the right level of support at the right moments in the customer journey.
What You'll Be Doing:
- Define and execute the long-term Scaled Customer Success strategy across Newsela’s SMB and Schools customer segments. This includes determining how we segment customers, where we leverage digital or tech-touch engagement, and where human intervention is most critical to driving adoption, retention, and customer value.
- Lead, coach, and develop frontline managers who are responsible for the day-to-day execution of scaled customer success motions. Ensure managers are equipped to lead their teams effectively, coach toward key business outcomes, and create a culture of accountability, clarity, and growth. Establish strong management rhythms, including regular 1:1s, performance conversations, career development, team health monitoring, and leadership coaching.
- Own the scaled coverage model and partner closely with CS Operations to ensure the model is supported by the right data, systems, workflows, reporting, and capacity planning. Be accountable for identifying what the business needs, defining the desired customer and team experience, and partnering cross-functionally to bring that experience to life.
- Maintain accountability for core business outcomes across the scaled customer segments, including NRR, GRR, product adoption, customer health, renewal readiness, and engagement. Use customer data, team insights, lifecycle trends, and business performance metrics to identify risks and opportunities, make strategic recommendations, and adjust the scaled CS strategy as needed.
- Build the team’s ability to identify and influence growth opportunities across the scaled customer base. This includes coaching managers and CSMs on how to recognize upsell signals, surface customer needs, partner effectively with Sales and SDR teams, and ensure growth opportunities are handled in a way that feels aligned to customer goals and the broader Newsela partnership.
- Design and improve the scaled customer journey, ensuring customers are advancing through the right lifecycle moments from onboarding through adoption, renewal, and expansion readiness. This includes partnering with Customer Experience on scaled onboarding, adoption campaigns, customer education, webinars, playbooks, and digital programs that drive meaningful customer outcomes at scale.
- Build strong cross-functional partnerships with Sales, CS Operations, Product, Marketing, Enablement, and Customer Experience. Advocate for the needs of scaled customers, synthesize feedback and trends from the field, and ensure the voice of the customer is represented in broader business decisions. Create clear feedback loops so that insights from SMB and Schools customers inform product, process, enablement, and go-to-market strategy.
- Serve as a senior leader within the Customer Success organization, helping shape how Newsela continues to evolve its customer coverage model. Identify gaps, propose solutions, influence change, and help managers and teams successfully adopt new processes, systems, and ways of working.
- Bring clarity to what the Scaled CS team owns and how the team operates. This includes defining roles and responsibilities, establishing success metrics, improving team operating rhythms, and ensuring that managers and CSMs understand how their work connects to broader customer and business outcomes.
About You: