Founding Customer Success Manager

Arphie, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive base salary

Meaningful equity

Health, dental, and vision insurance

Job summary

A fast-growing AI company in San Francisco seeks a Customer Success Manager to shape the post-sale customer experience. This role involves onboarding customers, managing support, and collaborating with internal teams. Ideal candidates have 1-2 years in a customer success role at a B2B SaaS company and thrive in startup environments. Competitive salary and equity options are offered, along with comprehensive health benefits.

Qualifications

• 1-2+ years in Customer Success or a related generalist role at a B2B SaaS company.
• Experience in fast-paced startup environments.
• Ability to translate technical concepts for non-technical customers.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end onboarding process for new customers.
• Act as the conduit between customers and internal teams.
• Monitor health scores and prevent churn.

Skills

Customer empathy

Self-starter

Communication skills

Analytical skills

Job description

Arphie is building AI knowledge agents that transform how companies complete their most painful workflows, starting with RFP and questionnaire response. Our platform connects to customers' existing knowledge bases — Google Drive, Confluence, SharePoint, Notion, and more — and uses a proprietary agent-based approach to generate first-draft responses in a fraction of the time, reducing a typical 25-hour process to roughly 6 hours of high-value review.

Backed by General Catalyst and trusted by leading AI labs, high-growth companies, and publicly-traded firms alike, we're a tight-knit team with strong traction and full runway. This is a rare opportunity to be a foundational hire and help shape how Arphie operates at scale.

The Opportunity

We're hiring our first ever Customer Success Manager. You won't be stepping into a playbook — you'll be writing it. You'll help design and own the full post-sale customer experience: from onboarding brand-new accounts, to managing day-to-day support tickets, to running QBRs. As we grow, you'll also have the opportunity to hire and lead a CS team you help design.

This role sits at the intersection of relationship management, product expertise, and operational hustle. You'll work directly with the founders and the engineering team, reporting into the Chief of Staff, giving you outsized visibility and influence over the product roadmap from day one.

What You'll Do

Customer Lifecycle Management

• Onboarding, Training & Enablement
  • Own the end-to-end onboarding process for every new customer — from environment setup, to kickoff, to first value milestone
  • Build and maintain enablement materials: setup guides, training decks, walkthroughs, and other creative ideas
  • Create scalable customer education programs — webinars, workshops, and written content — to keep customers current as the product evolves
• Product & Cross-Functional Collaboration
  • Act as the conduit between customers and internal teams — gather feedback, document feature requests, and share insights to Engineering and Product
  • Design and run QBRs (Quarterly Business Reviews) to capture strategic feedback that directly feeds into product planning
  • Become the internal expert on Arphie's products — you'll be the go-to voice for what customers need next and shape the product roadmap
• Customer Health, Retention & Growth
  • Own your book of business end-to-end — the primary point of contact, trusted advisor, and go-to product expert for every account
  • Monitor health scores, adoption metrics, and usage trends; proactively prevent churn and surface expansion opportunities
  • Lead QBRs with customer leadership, presenting ROI data and a roadmap for deeper adoption

Support & Ticket Management

• Arphie is known for exceptional customer support – continue to raise the bar by providing world-class support by taking ownership on customer issues - triage, respond to, and resolve inbound tickets with urgency, working closely with Engineering and Product to close issues quickly
• Build and grow documentation that enables self-service and reduces ticket volume over time
• Identify patterns across tickets that signal product gaps or onboarding friction and surface them to the team

Building the CS Function

• Define the processes, tooling, and playbooks that will scale — from onboarding flows to renewal motions
• Partner with founders to establish customer success OKRs, KPIs, and reporting cadences
• Hire, mentor, and eventually lead a growing CSM team — you're building this function from scratch
• Champion the voice of the customer internally — in product reviews, roadmap sessions, and company all-hands

What We're Looking For

• 1-2+ years in Customer Success or a related generalist role at a B2B SaaS company; early or founding startup experience is a strong plus
• Based in San Francisco (or willing to relocate) — excited to work in-person
• Deep customer empathy and high ownership — you invest in understanding customers' use cases and treat their problems as your own
• Self-starter who thrives in fast-paced, zero-to-one environments — you prioritize well, move quickly, and get things done without needing a playbook (because you'll be helping to define it!)
• Equally comfortable triaging a support ticket and leading an executive QBR; excited by wearing multiple hats in a fast-paced environment
• Clear, confident written and verbal communicator — able to translate technical concepts for non-technical customers
• Genuine curiosity about AI and enterprise workflows; bonus if you're already using AI tools daily

Nice to Have

• Background in enterprise or mid-market SaaS with deal sizes of $20K–$100K+ ARR
• Track record owning the full customer lifecycle: onboarding, adoption, support, renewals, and expansion
• Data-driven: comfortable in spreadsheets, familiar with health-score frameworks, and able to tell a compelling story from customer data

What You'll Get

• Competitive base salary + meaningful equity
• Direct access to and collaboration with the founding team from day one
• The opportunity to build and eventually lead the CS function at a fast-growing AI company
• A culture built on transparency, customer obsession, genuine teamwork, and pride in what we ship
• Fully covered health, dental, and vision insurance

Ready to onboard your team's own Arphie AI agent? Reach out to learn more.