Customer Success Program Manager

NOKIA; Richardson (TX); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Nokia in Richardson, TX, seeks a Customer Success Program Manager to own end-to-end customer programs, coordinating global cross-functional teams and aligning objectives with Nokia strategy. You will lead escalations, manage scope, cost, schedule, and risk, and partner with R&D, Product, Quality, Supply Chain, and Sales to deliver value and exceptional outcomes for customers.

This role requires 10+ years in telecom and 5+ years in customer-facing leadership, with strong communication and

Qualifications

• 10+ years in telecommunications, IP networking, cloud infrastructure, or related technology fields.
• 5+ years in customer-facing leadership roles such as Customer Success, Technical Account Management, or Program Management.
• Strong knowledge of IP networking, optical transport, DWDM, Ethernet, and Layer 2/3 technologies.

Responsibilities

• Act as primary customer advocate and executive-facing representative for hyperscale customers.
• Lead complex, high-severity escalations across software, hardware, and network domains.
• Coordinate R&D, Product Line Management, Quality, and Support to drive root-cause analyses and improvements.
• Manage concurrent deployments, upgrades, and service improvement projects with governance and status reporting.
• Control scope, schedule, cost, quality, and contractual commitments; identify renewal opportunities.
• Lead geographically dispersed teams without direct authority; drive accountability and urgency.
• Provide concise incident updates and executive-level communications to customers.

Skills

Customer leadership

Program management

Escalation management

Cross-functional leadership

Executive communication

Job description

The Customer Success Program Manager is accountable for the end-to-end success of assigned customer programs, operational services, and support engagements across a defined product and service scope. The role leads cross-functional and geographically dispersed teams from initiation through completion; establishes program goals aligned with customer objectives and Nokia strategy; manages scope, cost, schedule, quality, risk, opportunities, and contractual commitments; and ensures exceptional customer satisfaction, financial performance, health and safety, and operational delivery. The successful candidate acts as the customer's trusted advisor and coordinates R&D, Product Line Management, Technical Support, Quality, Supply Chain, Logistics, Professional Services, Sales, and Account Management to achieve rapid issue resolution, proactive risk mitigation, and continuous improvement.

• Strategic Customer Leadership: Serve as the primary advocate, executive-facing representative, trusted advisor, and single point of accountability for the hyperscale customer; build relationships across operational, engineering, architecture, procurement, and executive organizations; understand customer objectives and drive a proactive white-glove experience.
• Technical Leadership and Escalation Management: Lead complex, high-severity escalations across software, hardware, IP networking, optical transport, cloud infrastructure, network management, logistics, and operational processes; coordinate investigation and resolution, challenge assumptions, close technical gaps, and maintain ownership through completion.
• Root Cause, Quality, and Engineering Engagement: Connect customer engineering teams with Nokia R&D, Product Line Management, Quality, and Technical Support; drive root cause analysis, corrective actions, lab replication, defect validation, feature prioritization, reliability improvements, and incorporation of field experience into product and service plans.
• Program and Project Management: Manage concurrent deployments, upgrades, hardware replacement programs, quality initiatives, reliability programs, and service improvement projects; maintain integrated plans, milestones, action registers, resources, dependencies, risks, communications, and executive status reporting.
• Contract, Financial, and Delivery Performance: Control scope, schedule, cost, quality, profitability, forecasts, contractual commitments, acceptance, claims, changes, handovers, and closure; align delivery with Nokia governance and identify appropriate renewal or expansion opportunities.
• Cross-Functional and Virtual Team Leadership: Lead geographically dispersed teams without direct authority; align engineering, support, operations, quality, supply chain, logistics, professional services, sales, and account management; assign and track actions, resolve conflicts, remove barriers, and drive accountability and urgency.
• Operational Excellence and Governance: Conduct operational reviews, business reviews, governance meetings, and program checkpoints; monitor contractual KPIs, service performance, case trends, escalation metrics, customer satisfaction, and corrective-action effectiveness; ensure program data, risks, opportunities, and decisions remain current.
• Risk Management and Continuous Improvement: Identify delivery, technical, operational, commercial, and customer-experience risks; implement mitigation plans, address recurring issues, apply lessons learned and best practices, and develop customer success plans that improve reliability, efficiency, quality, and measurable business outcomes.
• Executive and Customer Communications: Deliver concise, actionable incident updates, executive briefings, status reports, operational and business reviews, and customer-facing presentations; translate complex technical issues, progress, decisions, risks, and mitigation strategies for technical and non-technical audiences while maintaining credibility and transparency.

You have:

• Industry Experience: 10+ years in telecommunications, IP networking, cloud infrastructure, optical networking, or a related technology field.
• Customer-Facing Leadership: 5+ years in Customer Success, Technical Account Management, Program Management, Escalation Management, Support Leadership, or a comparable role supporting hyperscale cloud providers or large enterprise customers.
• Technical Expertise: Strong knowledge of IP networking, optical transport, DWDM, Ethernet and Layer 2/3 technologies, cloud infrastructure, network management systems, and hardware and software troubleshooting.
• Technical Investigation: Experience engaging software developers, systems architects, support engineers, and product teams, including interpretation of logs, traces, fault-isolation data, defect records, and root cause analyses.
• Program and Commercial Management: Proven ability to manage complex initiatives across scope, schedule, cost, quality, risk, resources, stakeholders, contracts, global dependencies, and competing priorities.
• Escalation and Executive Management: Demonstrated success leading high-severity customer escalations, contractual delivery, corrective actions, and executive-level communications.
• Leadership and Influence: Ability to lead large, global, cross-functional teams without direct authority, build consensus, drive accountability, and influence decisions across matrixed organizations.
• Stakeholder and Conflict Management: Strong negotiation, conflict-resolution, relationship-management, and problem-solving skills across customer and internal leadership levels.
• Communication and Strategic Judgment: Exceptional written, verbal, facilitation, and presentation skills, with the ability to translate complex technical matters for engineers and executives while balancing immediate issue resolution with long-term strategic and commercial objectives.

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