Customer Success Lead

Strella co; New York, Northern (NY, KY); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Strella is hiring a Customer Success Lead to own and grow strategic relationships with key accounts in a fast-growing AI-powered research platform. You will drive renewals, identify expansion opportunities, and develop repeatable CS playbooks across onboarding, adoption, and value realization.

You will manage and coach a CS team, align with Sales, Product, and Marketing, and push for high retention and net revenue outcomes while shaping Strella's customer success function from the ground up.

Qualifications

• 8-10+ years in customer success, account management or related role.
• Experience owning renewals and expansion revenue.
• Experience mentoring direct reports or readiness for people leadership.

Responsibilities

• Own the Customer Relationship with Strella's key accounts and executives.
• Drive renewals and growth by forecasting risk and executing upsell opportunities.
• Build repeatable onboarding, adoption, QBRs, renewals and expansion playbooks.
• Lead and coach a CS team, set goals and provide feedback, supporting career growth.
• Partner cross-functionally with Sales, Product, Engineering and Marketing.

Skills

Customer Success

Account Management

Renewals

Upsell

Leadership

Job description

About Strella

Strella is an AI-powered platform revolutionizing qualitative research with real-time, AI-moderated interviews and automated synthesis. We're a fast-growing, venture-backed startup working with leading teams in product, marketing and consumer insights. We're scaling quickly and looking for a driven Customer Success Lead to own and grow our customer relationships as we enter our next stage of growth.

This is an extremely high impact role. You will have the opportunity to build our Customer Success function from the ground up - including owning our customer retention and upsells, nurturing customer relationships, developing playbooks, and more.

What You'll Do

Own the Customer Relationship

• Serve as the senior point of contact for Strella's key accounts, building trusted, long-term relationships with champions and executive stakeholders.

• Develop and maintain a deep understanding of each customer's research goals, use cases, and success criteria.

• Nurture accounts proactively rather than reactively — regular check-ins, business reviews, and value-recap touchpoints throughout the customer lifecycle.

Drive Renewals & Growth

• Own renewal outcomes across the book of business, forecasting risk early and building mitigation plans.

• Identify and execute on upsell and expansion opportunities, partnering with Sales where needed.

• Own retention and net revenue retention targets for your accounts.

Build the Playbook

• Develop repeatable playbooks for onboarding, adoption, QBRs, renewals, and expansion — turning what works into process the whole team can run.

• Establish the metrics and health scores that define what a "healthy" account looks like at each stage and build dashboards to track these continuously.

• Continuously refine playbooks based on what's working (and what isn't) across the book of business.

Lead the Team

• Manage and coach a team of Customer Ops Associates and CSMs, setting clear goals and providing regular feedback.

• Support their day-to-day account work, unblock escalations, and help them grow into more senior CS roles.

• Partner with leadership on team structure, capacity planning, and hiring as the customer base scales.

Partner Cross-Functionally

• Work closely with Sales to ensure a seamless handoff from close to onboarding.

• Share customer insights and product feedback with Product and Engineering to influence the roadmap.

• Partner with Marketing on customer stories, case studies, and reference programs.

Who You Are

High Impact Attributes

• People-centric: You’re energized by working with others, and enabling customers to achieve their goals

• Hungry: Strong will to win; track record of exceeding retention and growth goals.

• Builder: You should be comfortable with creating onboarding, QBR, and renewal processes from scratch, rather than waiting for structure to be handed to you.

• Humble: Self-aware, team-first, open to feedback, and authentic in how you show up.

• Smart: Excellent writing and verbal communication, curiosity, and business acumen.

• Growth Mindset: Invests in personal development and takes initiative to upskill yourself and your team.

• Commercially minded: Treats renewals and upsells as an owned outcome, and comfortable making asks directly

• Customer-first mindset: Willing to go above and beyond for the customer

Experience

• 8-10+ years in customer success, account management, or a related customer-facing role, with prior experience owning renewals and expansion revenue.

• Experience managing or mentoring direct reports, or clear readiness to step into people leadership.

• Thrives in high-pressure or fast-paced environments; early-stage startup experience a plus.

• Has worked with minimal oversight and shown strong ownership.

• Bonus: familiarity with research, insights, or B2B SaaS industries.

Why Join Strella

• Opportunity to help define and scale the customer success function at a fast-growing startup, with a clear path to grow into a broader CS leadership role.

• Work directly with founders and GTM leaders; your impact will be visible and measurable.

• Build the playbooks and team structure from the ground up in a culture of curiosity, speed, and ownership.

• Competitive compensation with meaningful equity, benefits, and career growth potential.

If you're ambitious, curious, and ready to help build a category-defining company, we'd love to meet you!