Head of Customer Success

Arkham Talent; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Arkham Talent is seeking a Director/VP of Customer Success to own the post-sale experience for a growing enterprise marketing AI startup in NYC. You will lead a team of 8 CSMs, drive retention and expansion, and partner with Sales to orchestrate upsell and cross-sell opportunities while advancing AI adoption across the customer base.

This is a coach-seat role with real influence on product strategy, playbooks, and renewal outcomes.

Qualifications

• Led CSM teams in B2B SaaS with retention and expansion metrics.
• Director or VP level experience or proven performance above title.
• Startup or scale-up CS leadership experience.
• Background in MarTech/AI-powered marketing tech.
• Experience with enterprise accounts and multi-stakeholder renewals.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a team of 8 CSMs for onboarding, renewal and expansion.
• Own net revenue retention with a plan for gross retention and expansion forecast.
• Build expansion motions across brands and business units with Sales.
• Drive AI adoption to make AI capabilities a growth driver.
• Guide customers through changes in marketing tech stacks to deepen partnerships.
• Develop operating system: health scoring, success plans, QBR/EBR cadence, playbooks, and early-warning metrics.
• Advocate for customers internally by feeding Product and Marketing.
• Own executive relationships with VP/CMO in top accounts and lead renewal conversations.

Skills

CS leadership

Retention & expansion

B2B SaaS

Executive relationships

AI/MarTech familiarity

Job description

About the company

My client is an enterprise marketing ai start up in NYC.

The role

You'll own the post-sale customer experience and lead a team of 8 CSMs, reporting to the Chief Customer Officer. Your mandate is to grow the existing customer base: keep every logo worth keeping, expand across brands, business units and geographies, and turn our AI roadmap into real adoption inside complex enterprise marketing organizations.

This is a coach seat with real influence on the product, the playbook and the numbers. If you're a Director ready for a VP-sized scope, or a VP who'd rather build than babysit, keep reading.

What you'll do

• Lead, coach and level up a team of 8 CSMs, setting the standard for how we run enterprise accounts from onboarding through renewal and expansion.
• Own net revenue retention alongside the CCO, with a clear plan for gross retention, expansion pipeline and renewal forecasting.
• Build the expansion motion: find whitespace across brands and business units, and partner with Sales and Account Management on upsell and cross-sell.
• Drive AI adoption across the customer base so our newest capabilities become the reason customers grow with us.
• Guide customers through changes in their marketing tech stack and turn those moments into deeper partnerships instead of churn risk.
• Build the operating system: health scoring, success plans, QBR/EBR cadence, playbooks, and early-warning metrics for accounts that start drifting.
• Be the voice of the customer internally, feeding Product and Marketing with what enterprise marketing teams actually need.
• Own executive relationships at the VP and CMO level in top accounts and show up personally when it matters.

Who you are

• You've led CSM teams in B2B SaaS and owned retention and expansion numbers, not just activity metrics.
• You've been a Director or VP of Customer Success, or you're a Director who has clearly been operating above your title and can prove it.
• You come from the startup world, or you've led CS at a company of similar size and growth stage, and you know what it takes to scale a customer function while the company scales around you. You want to build the playbook, not maintain someone else's, and you'd take ambiguity and ownership over process and headcount any day. Big-company pace makes you restless.
• You come from MarTech, ideally AI-powered marketing tech, and you understand how marketing ops, creative, brand and legal teams work together.
• You're genuinely excited about AI. You use the tools yourself, you have opinions about agents, and you can explain to a CMO why guardrails are what let their team move faster.
• You've managed complex enterprise accounts with multiple stakeholders, long renewal cycles and a lot of politics.
• You lead by example. You'll get on the calls, write the success plan and walk into the tough renewal conversation yourself.

Why this role, why now

You're joining at an inflection point: leadership with a mandate to scale, a product sitting on top of the biggest shift in marketing in a decade, and a blue-chip customer base ready to do more with us. You'll have a real seat at the table and the chance to build the Customer Success function that defines our next chapter.