Customer Lifecycle Manager

SolarWinds; Austin, Charlotte, Reston (TX, NC, VA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

SolarWinds seeks a lifecycle program leader to own post-sale communications, activation, and the overall digital lifecycle. You will design scalable programs that accelerate value, improve activation rates, and reduce churn, partnering across Customer Success, Renewals, Product, and Sales.

Responsibilities include defining lifecycle stages, creating plays and triggers, and driving renewal readiness with measurable outcomes.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and optimizing customer lifecycle, customer marketing, customer success, growth, retention, or renewal programs.
• Strong understanding of post-sale customer journeys, lifecycle stages, behavioral triggers, and digital engagement programs.
• Analytical depth and ability to interpret CRM data, product telemetry, customer health signals, and program performance.
• Technical fluency to understand product friction, systems dependencies, data quality, and automation requirements.
• Business judgment to prioritize revenue, retention, and customer outcomes over activity metrics.
• Strong cross-functional leadership and ability to mobilize subject-matter experts without direct authority.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with ability to translate complex ideas into clear programs, plays, and recommendations.

Responsibilities

• Own onboarding communications and activation by identifying friction points and building onboarding journeys.
• Define post-sale lifecycle stages and entry/exit criteria for each stage (onboarding, activation, adoption, retention, renewal, expansion, advocacy).
• Create scalable renewal-readiness motions and nurture programs to prevent churn.
• Drive expansion by surfacing opportunities from adoption patterns and customer behavior.
• Coordinate with Renewals, CS, Product, Engineering, and Sales to ensure timely actions on risk, health, and value signals.
• Lead channel strategy for lifecycle communications (email, in-app guidance, chat, automated flows).
• Measure performance with a lifecycle scorecard and continuously improve programs.

Skills

Lifecycle design

Customer success

Growth & retention

Renewals

Cross-functional leadership

Analytical mindset

Effective communication

Program orchestration

Job description

Austin, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; Reston, Virginia

At SolarWinds, we’re a people-first company. Our purpose is to enrich the lives of the people we serve—including our employees, customers, shareholders, partners, and communities. Join us in our mission to help customers accelerate business transformation with simple, powerful, and secure solutions.

About the Role

This is not a campaign-execution role. It is a business-ownership role accountable for outcomes such as gross revenue retention (GRR), net revenue retention (NRR), churn reduction, activation, and customer experience metrics such as net promoter score (NPS). Communications and automation are the means to achieve those outcomes.

You will design, own, and continuously improve scalable post-sale programs that help customers realize value quickly, remain healthy, renew, and grow. The role combines lifecycle strategy, operational execution, customer data analysis, and cross-functional orchestration across Customer Success, Renewals, Product, Product Marketing, Support, and Sales.

In practice, you will serve as the single accountable owner for digital lifecycle performance while leveraging partner teams and subject-matter experts for messaging, systems configuration, product insights, renewal motions, and sales follow-up.

Your Experience

• Experience designing and optimizing customer lifecycle, customer marketing, customer success, growth, retention, or renewal programs.
• A strong understanding of post-sale customer journeys, lifecycle stages, behavioral triggers, and digital engagement programs.
• Analytical depth and the ability to interpret CRM data, product telemetry, customer health signals, and program performance.
• Technical fluency to understand product friction, systems dependencies, data quality, and automation requirements.
• Business judgment to prioritize revenue, retention, and customer outcomes over activity metrics.
• Strong cross-functional leadership skills and the ability to mobilize subject-matter experts without relying on direct authority.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate complex ideas into clear programs, plays, and recommendations.
• A curious, inventive, and improvement-oriented mindset, with the ability to execute with urgency and adapt to changing priorities.

Your Impact

Own Onboarding Communications and Activation

Web and manual onboarding are owned by another function. You will own the communications component of onboarding and activation by:

Identifying where customers get stuck after purchase by analyzing onboarding friction in Pendo, support trends, product usage, and handoff gaps.

Building and improving onboarding communication journeys that reduce time to first value and increase activation rates.

Using behavioral signals to guide customers toward the next best action.

Design the Post-Sale Lifecycle

Define post-sale lifecycle stages and the entry and exit criteria for each stage, typically including onboarding, activation, adoption, retention, expansion, renewal, advocacy, and win-back where relevant.

Translate the lifecycle into clear plays, triggers, events, handoffs, and success criteria for each customer segment.

Tailor lifecycle design to customer archetype, complexity, product line, deployment model, and engagement model rather than relying on one-size-fits-all motions.

Improve Retention and Prevent Churn and Downsell

Monitor lifecycle time-series events to identify churn and downsell risk early.

Trigger the right intervention to correct the customer journey and address emerging risk.

Create scalable nurture and engagement programs that keep customers progressing between renewal events rather than treating renewal as a last-minute transaction.

Coordinate with Customer Success, Technical Support, Onboarding, Product, Engineering, and Renewals to ensure risk, health, and value signals are acted on consistently.

Drive Expansion and Growth

Detect expansion signals from adoption patterns, feature usage, account maturity, and customer behavior.

Drive digital expansion motions directly or surface qualified opportunities to Sales and account teams.

Ensure lifecycle programs support revenue growth from the installed base, not just engagement volume.

Build Renewal Readiness

Own scalable renewal-readiness motions for digitally managed customers.

Build event-based communications and checkpoints that prepare customers for a healthy renewal outcome well before contract end dates.

Partner with Renewals on messaging, timing, segmentation, and escalation paths.

Lead Communication Strategy and Program Execution

Select and orchestrate the right channels for each segment, including email, in-app guidance, chat or Slack-style channels, and automated nurture flows.

Define the program logic, message sequence, and timing for each lifecycle motion, whether or not another team launches the campaign in the relevant tool.

Ensure communications are personalized, behavior-based, and aligned to the customer’s lifecycle stage rather than broadcast generically.

Measure Performance and Continuously Improve

Own the lifecycle time-series event scorecard and regularly review performance across activation, adoption, retention, expansion, downsell, and renewal outcomes.

Use CRM data, product telemetry, and program results to identify leaks, prioritize experiments, and improve lifecycle programs over time.

Update lifecycle event maps and playbooks as products, customer segments, and go-to-market motions evolve.

Success Measures

Net promoter score (NPS)

Churn rate

Renewal rate

Time to first value (TTFV)

Product adoption and usage depth

Expansion pipeline and expansion conversion

Customer health and risk trends

SolarWinds is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. SolarWinds will consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, disability, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.