Senior Customer Success Manager (French Speaking)

Handshake; City of Westminster; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading career platform is seeking a Senior Customer Success Manager in the City of Westminster. This role involves managing relationships with strategic partners, driving product adoption, and ensuring customer success. Candidates should have over 5 years of experience in Customer Success, ideally within the SaaS industry. Excellent communication skills and the ability to handle high-pressure situations are essential. The company offers a flexible working environment and a range of benefits for their employees.

Benefits

16 weeks paid parental leave

Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision policies

$500 home-office stipend

$2,000 annual skills stipend

Monthly internet stipend

Free lunch twice a week

401k match

Flexible time-off policy

Up to 25 days vacation

Qualifications

• Experience in helping partners achieve their goals.
• Proven track record in high-pressure situations.
• Experience in running presentations for key decision makers.

Responsibilities

• Manage core relationships with strategic partners.
• Drive renewals and expansions for key accounts.
• Act as the main contact for the partner lifecycle.
• Collaborate with internal teams for product knowledge.
• Expand product adoption and drive partner success.

Skills

Customer Success Management

SaaS experience

Communication skills

Data reporting

Adaptability

Fluent in English and French

Critical thinking

Education

5+ years of experience in Customer Success

Job description

Overview

As a Senior Customer Success Manager at Handshake, you are responsible for ensuring our education partners are healthy, happy, successful, and retained. You will create repeatable and reusable tactics for driving engagement across our university partners' teams. In this critical role, we are seeking an individual with a wealth of experience as a customer success manager to manage our most strategic partnerships. Given the rapid pace of our expansion, we require someone who not only possesses a deep understanding of how to create and maintain strong partnerships but has a proven track record of successful market growth in tech. To succeed in this role, you must be prepared to set a high bar for yourself and those around you. There is always a way to contribute: Acting with autonomy on the opportunities you come across, having accountability and being open to new challenges are essential to our continued success. There is an opportunity to make a real impact here! If you are driven and hungry for a challenge to help us on our mission to help students fulfil their career dreams, then we can’t wait to meet you.

Responsibilities

• Relationship Management – Owning the core and executive relationships for our key strategic partners. Having a proactive approach with partners and regularly meeting them to understand their current state and how to help them achieve their goals through Handshake – you are willing to try new and innovative ways in order to achieve this.
• Renewals and expansions – Building trust and advocacy with partners which ultimately leads to driving retention. Driving the plan of action internally and externally for key partners.
• Owning Customer Journey – act as the main point of contact for your partners, which means you will be accountable for the entire partner lifecycle, from onboarding and implementation to adoption and optimization – knowing when to bring other team members in and working with the support team on improving processes for day‑to‑day questions.
• Internal Collaboration – Communicate key updates to the wider team, secure opportunities for success stories, and collaborate with sales and product teams for effective partnership differentiation and enhancement.
• Product Knowledge – Demonstrate a deep understanding of the Handshake product and the ability to consult using best practices and learnings from managing university partners. Expand product adoption, and drive value for university partners. Stay on top of the roadmap and identify opportunities to excite partners about our vision.
• Product Adoption and Best Practices – Expand and deepen product adoption, creating strong action plans with university partners on leveraging our platform to drive student and employer engagement. Actively learn and understand the career services space as well as awareness of student and employer priorities, consulting with partners on adapting workflows to achieve success with the Handshake product.
• Partner Success, Health, and Retention – Track subjective health assessments and collaborate with Handshake's Product Teams to address partner needs promptly and to escalate key product developments. Utilize data reporting and dashboards to understand trends and take appropriate actions for maintaining account health. Ownership of a region – Acting as the primary liaison between the company and partners in that region by providing crucial insights to internal teams. As we are scaling and learning while growing in these regions, you will be responsible for sharing insights through managing your partners to ensure the success of the region.
• Mentorship – Provide coaching and guidance to junior colleagues and act as a role model to the team. As the senior CSM in the team, you will be the one who demonstrates what “exceptional” looks like and serves as the go‑to person when support is needed on escalations and pushing internal initiatives.
• Customer On‑sites – You will be traveling to universities and thus must be comfortable running partner on‑sites to hold key milestone meetings and build relationships with the wider team. This is also a good opportunity to engage with students to see the impact Handshake is having.

Qualifications

• An established Customer Success professional (5+ years of experience) who finds satisfaction in helping your partners achieve their goals and helps your team grow.
• Proven experience with SaaS – It is a bonus if you know the startup space and can pre‑empt the bumps in the road ahead as we scale.
• Excellent communicator – written and verbal and also experience with running presentations to key decision makers.
• Ability to thrive in high‑pressure situations and fast growth, building repeatable, scalable processes.
• Ability to prioritise workload while maintaining high attention to detail.
• Confident with data reporting and analysing to tell stories and spot trends.
• Highly curious with a high level of intellectual curiosity – you see an opportunity and you act on it.
• Ability to think critically and empathetically about the customer’s needs.
• Add value to a team environment by demonstrating enthusiasm and a collaborative spirit.
• Adaptable to evolving business needs and willing to contribute to process improvement.
• Fluent in written and spoken French and English (German is a big plus).

Compensation

For cash compensation, we set standard ranges for all U.S.‑based roles based on function, level, and geographic location, benchmarked against similar stage‑growth companies. In order to be compliant with local legislation, as well as to provide greater transparency to candidates, we share salary ranges on all job postings regardless of desired hiring location. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including geographic location as well as candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Company Overview

Handshake is the #1 place to launch a career with no connections, experience, or luck required. The platform connects up‑and‑coming talent with 750,000+ employers – from Fortune 500 companies like Google, Nike, and Target to thousands of public school districts, healthcare systems, and nonprofits. This Series F fundraise and valuation of $3.5B will fuel Handshake’s next phase of growth and propel our mission to help more people start, restart, and jump‑start their careers. When it comes to our workforce strategy, we’ve thought deeply about how work‑life should look here at Handshake. With our hub‑based remote working strategy, employees can enjoy the flexibility of remote work, whilst ensuring collaboration and team experiences in a shared space remain possible. Handshake is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Denver, New York, London, and Berlin and teammates working globally. Check out our careers site to find a hub near you!

Benefits

• 16 weeks of paid parental leave for birth‑giving parents & 10 weeks of paid parental leave for non‑birth‑giving parents.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision policies including LGBTQ+ coverage. We also provide resources for mental health assistance, employee assistance programs, and counseling support.
• Handshake offers $500/£360 home‑office stipend for you to spend during your first 3 months to create a productive and comfortable workspace at home.
• Generous learning & development opportunities and an annual $2 000/£1 500/€1 850 stipend for you to grow your skills and career.
• Financial coaching through Origin to help you through your financial journey.
• Monthly internet stipend and a brand‑new MacBook to allow you to do your best work.
• Monthly commuter stipend for you to expense your travel to the office (for office‑based employees).
• Free lunch provided twice a week across all offices.
• Referral bonus to reward you when you bring great talent to Handshake.
• 401k match – dollar‑for‑dollar on 1% of deferred salary, up to a maximum of $1 200 per year.
• All full‑time U.S.‑based Handshakers are eligible for our flexible time‑off policy, 8 standard holidays, and 2 additional days of flexible holiday time off, plus a Winter #ShakeBreak, a one‑week period of collective time off.
• Lactation support – Handshake partners with Milk Stork to provide comprehensive 100% employer‑sponsored lactation support to traveling parents and guardians.
• Pension scheme – Handshake will provide a workplace pension, where you contribute 5% of your salary and Handshake pays 3% toward your pension plan, subject to qualifying earnings limits.
• Up to 25 days of vacation, 8 bank holidays throughout the year, and regular off‑sites each year to bring the team together, with the opportunity to travel to our HQ in San Francisco.
• Discounts across various high‑street retailers, cinemas, and other social activities exclusively for Handshake UK and Germany employees.
• 25 days of annual leave in Germany, plus a Winter #ShakeBreak, a one‑week period of collective time off.
• Urban sports club membership offering access to a diverse network of fitness and wellness facilities (Germany).
• For roles based in Romania – please ask your recruiter about region‑specific benefits.