Director of Customer Experience

Lightning AI; United States; Hybrid; USD 155,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Equity

401(k) matching

Unlimited PTO

Winter break

Parental leave

Development allowance

Wellness stipend

Sabbatical

Hybrid work

In-office meals

Job summary

Lightning AI is seeking a Director of Customer Experience in New York City to lead the organization that helps customers realize value from our platform. You will own strategy, operating model, and execution for onboarding, migration, adoption, and expansion, guiding a team of Technical Account Managers and Customer Experience Managers across the AI lifecycle.

You will bridge customers, engineering, product, and sales, ensuring credible guidance, fast responses, and strong account health.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience across customer experience, customer success, technical account management, solutions architecture, professional services, or a related customer-facing function.
• Growth-stage, enterprise SaaS, developer platform, cloud infrastructure, or AI infrastructure environment preferred, but not required.
• Proven track record of building or scaling customer experience organizations supporting technically complex products.
• Strong technical fluency and the ability to engage credibly with engineering leaders, ML engineers, AI researchers, infrastructure teams, and enterprise platform organizations.
• A record of improving customer adoption, retention, account health, and operational execution through clear systems and measurable goals.
• Strong judgment during high‑pressure customer escalations, including the ability to create clarity, align internal teams, and communicate directly with senior stakeholders.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills. You can move comfortably between a technical incident review, an executive customer conversation, an internal product discussion, and a team operating review.
• Strong cross‑functional influence, particularly with Product, Engineering, Infrastructure, Sales, and Finance.
• A high bias for action and comfort operating in an ambiguous, fast‑moving environment with limited process and significant ownership.
• The ability to think strategically while remaining close to customers, team execution, and operational details.

Responsibilities

• Define and own Lightning AI’s customer experience strategy across onboarding, implementation, adoption, technical success, support coordination, retention, and expansion.
• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing global team of Technical Account Managers and Support Engineers.
• Establish account‑health frameworks that combine product usage, platform reliability, workload performance, customer sentiment, support activity, and commercial risk.
• Create clear escalation and incident‑management processes that provide customers with fast response times, strong ownership, seamless internal coordination, and proactive communication.
• Define and track the metrics that matter, including time to value, activation, platform adoption, workload growth, retention, expansion, customer health, resolution time, and customer satisfaction.
• Turn customer conversations and usage patterns into actionable insights for product and engineering.
• Scale the function thoughtfully, balancing high‑touch customer engagement with automation, self‑service resources, and repeatable programs.

Skills

Customer experience

Customer success

Technical account management

Solutions architecture

Professional services

Job description

Lightning AI is the company behind PyTorch Lightning. Founded in 2019, we build an end-to-end platform for developing, training, and deploying AI systems—designed to take ideas from research to production with less friction.

Through our merger with Voltage Park, a neocloud and AI Factory, Lightning AI combines developer-first software with cost-efficient, large-scale compute. Teams get the tools they need for experimentation, training, and production inference, with security, observability, and control built in.

We serve solo researchers, startups, and large enterprises. Lightning AI operates globally with offices in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and London, and is backed by Coatue, Index Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and Firstminute.

The Way We Work

The people who thrive here are builders who move fast, communicate openly, take ownership, and continuously improve themselves, their teams, and our company. Here's what that looks like in practice:

• Move with Urgency: We move quickly, make thoughtful decisions, and keep momentum. We value action over perfection and learn by shipping.
• Take Ownership: We own outcomes, not just our individual work. We make decisions that move the company forward and follow through.
• Communicate Openly: We communicate directly, seek to understand, and create clarity for others. Honest conversations help us move faster together.
• Build Great Teams: We lead by example, empower others, and create healthy teams where people can do their best work.
• Raise the Bar: We're always improving ourselves. We learn from feedback, consistently challenge ourselves to grow, and focus on the work that matters most.
• Think Long-Term: We design for what's next. We create scalable systems, simplify complexity, and use AI and automation to amplify our impact.

Who We Look For

The people who thrive at Lightning AI are builders who move with urgency, communicate openly, take ownership, and continuously raise the bar for themselves and their teams.

We value leaders who create clarity in complex environments, stay close to customers and the work, and build systems that scale without introducing unnecessary processes.

About the Role

We are looking for a Director of Customer Experience to build and lead the organization responsible for helping Lightning AI customers realize meaningful value from our platform.

You will own the strategy, operating model, and execution of our customer experience function, leading a team of Technical Account Managers and Customer Experience Managers supporting customers across the AI lifecycle—from initial onboarding and workload migration through production adoption, optimization, and expansion.

This role sits at the intersection of customers, engineering, product, sales, and infrastructure. You will be accountable for ensuring customers can successfully build and operate AI workloads on Lightning AI while receiving clear, proactive, and technically credible guidance throughout the relationship.

The right leader will combine strong customer judgment with technical depth and operational rigor. You should be comfortable getting into the technical details enough so that you understand where customers are blocked, influencing product priorities, and advising executives on retention, risk, adoption, and account health.

This is a highly visible leadership role with the opportunity to define what world‑class customer experience looks like for a developer‑first AI platform and infrastructure company.

What You’ll Do

• Define and own Lightning AI’s customer experience strategy across onboarding, implementation, adoption, technical success, support coordination, retention, and expansion.
• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing global team of Technical Account Managers and Support Engineers.
• Establish account‑health frameworks that combine product usage, platform reliability, workload performance, customer sentiment, support activity, and commercial risk.
• Create clear escalation and incident‑management processes that provide customers with fast response times, strong ownership, seamless internal coordination, and proactive communication.
• Define and track the metrics that matter, including time to value, activation, platform adoption, workload growth, retention, expansion, customer health, resolution time, and customer satisfaction.
• Turn customer conversations and usage patterns into actionable insights for product and engineering.
• Scale the function thoughtfully, balancing high‑touch customer engagement with automation, self‑service resources, and repeatable programs.

What You’ll Need

• 10+ years of experience across customer experience, customer success, technical account management, solutions architecture, professional services, or a related customer-facing function.
• Growth-stage, enterprise SaaS, developer platform, cloud infrastructure, or AI infrastructure environment preferred, but not required
• A proven track record of building or scaling customer experience organizations supporting technically complex products.
• Strong technical fluency and the ability to engage credibly with engineering leaders, ML engineers, AI researchers, infrastructure teams, and enterprise platform organizations.
• A record of improving customer adoption, retention, account health, and operational execution through clear systems and measurable goals.
• Strong judgment during high‑pressure customer escalations, including the ability to create clarity, align internal teams, and communicate directly with senior stakeholders.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills. You can move comfortably between a technical incident review, an executive customer conversation, an internal product discussion, and a team operating review.
• Strong cross‑functional influence, particularly with Product, Engineering, Infrastructure, Sales, and Finance.
• A high bias for action and comfort operating in an ambiguous, fast‑moving environment with limited process and significant ownership.
• The ability to think strategically while remaining close to customers, team execution, and operational details.

Bonus Points

• Familiarity with PyTorch, distributed training, model serving, inference, Kubernetes, Slurm, GPU clusters, or modern AI development workflows.
• Experience supporting both product-led and enterprise sales motions.
• Experience building global or follow‑the‑sun customer coverage models.
• Experience developing AI‑powered customer operations, automation, self‑service tooling, or customer intelligence systems.

Location

This role is based in New York City, with an expectation of working from the office at least two days per week and participating in occasional team and company offsites.

We are committed to offering competitive compensation that reflects the value each team member brings to our mission. Final offers are based on factors such as experience, skills, geographic location, and role expectations. In addition to base salary, our total rewards package for eligible roles includes a discretionary bonus, a meaningful equity component, and comprehensive benefits.

The anticipated annual base salary range for this role is:

$155,000 - $220,000 USD

Benefits and Perks

We offer a comprehensive and competitive benefits package designed to support our employees’ health, well‑being, and long‑term success:

• Comprehensive Health Coverage: Medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and eligible dependents.
• Meaningful Equity: RSUs that give employees a stake in the company's long‑term success.
• Retirement Savings: 401(k) matching (U.S.) and pension contributions (U.K.).
• Flexible Time Off: Unlimited PTO, company holidays, and floating holidays to support work‑life balance.
• Company-Wide Winter Break: Two weeks of company closure each winter to disconnect and recharge.
• Paid Parental & Family Leave: Paid leave to support you and your family through life's important moments.
• Professional Development: Annual learning and development allowance to support your professional growth.
• Wellness Benefits: Wellness and work‑from‑home stipends to support your physical and mental well‑being.
• Sabbatical Program: Four weeks of paid sabbatical leave after four years of service.
• Flexible Work: Flexible schedules and a hybrid work model for our office‑based teams.
• In‑Office Meals: Complimentary meals at our office hubs.

Benefits may vary by location, team, and role.

At Lightning AI, we are committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace. We believe that diverse teams drive innovation and create better products. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic. We are dedicated to building a culture where everyone can thrive and contribute to their fullest potential.