Strategic Customer Success Manager

bland; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote friendly

Levi's Plaza office

OTE compensation

Job summary

Bland AI in San Francisco is building human-like AI phone agents and seeks a Customer Success Manager to own post-sales outcomes. You will drive onboarding, usage, and measurable ROI, collaborating with engineers and sales to expand adoption and reduce churn.

Join a fast-moving startup with ownership, impact, and the chance to shape strategic customer playbooks, dashboards, and executive communications while delivering tangible business value.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in technical customer-facing roles (CSM/TAM/Deployment Strategist).
• Experience interpreting logs and understanding API integrations in production.
• Proven escalation and incident-management capabilities under pressure.
• Strong ability to translate complex AI concepts for executives and practitioners.
• High emotional intelligence and customer advocacy with structured touchpoints (MBR/QBR).
• Excellent cross-functional collaboration with Sales and Engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Own the post-sales journey end-to-end to ensure quick deployment and measurable ROI.
• Partner with engineers to troubleshoot and accelerate resolutions.
• Educate customers on best practices, new features, and optimization strategies.
• Identify expansion opportunities and map actionable growth plans.
• Communicate with stakeholders at all levels to drive adoption and outcomes.
• Maintain a high-velocity, ownership-driven approach in a fast-moving startup.
• Drive customer outcomes using Bland's AI voice agents.

Skills

Technical CS experience

API & SQL

Escalation Management

Communication skills

EQ & Advocacy

Cross-Functional collaboration

Fast-paced startup

Tools

SQL

Voice systems

Job description

About Bland AI

At Bland, we’re building the most human AI phone agents in the world.

We’re a Series C startup backed by Emergence Capital, Y Combinator, and the founders of PayPal and Twilio, and we’ve raised $100M to reimagine the future of customer communication. Today, we’re a 60 person team powering voice automation for companies like Better.com, helping them deliver friendly, helpful, and human‑like conversations at massive scale.

Why this role exists

We need someone who will take control of post‑sales, enforce clarity, and drive customers to value fast. Someone who doesn’t wait for direction, they build the plan, run the room, unblock deployments, collapse timelines, and turn customer confusion into clean, repeatable execution. Someone who can stabilize accounts, surface real risks, tighten the feedback loop, and aggressively identify expansion opportunities.

That’s the founding Customer Success Manager: the person who owns outcomes, commands the customer relationship, and turns our product into an undeniable business impact at speed.

What you'll do

• Drive Customer Outcomes - You’ll own the post‑sales journey end‑to‑end, ensuring every customer launches quickly, hits quantifiable KPIs, and sees unmistakable ROI from our agents. That means diagnosing blockers before they become problems, pushing customers toward high‑value use cases, and turning every deployment into a measurable win for both their business and ours.
• Cross‑Functional Problem Solving - Partner with forward deployed engineers to troubleshoot issues, accelerate resolutions, and ensure customers stay successful in production.
• Proactive Technical Guidance - Educate customers on best practices, new features, and optimization strategies, helping them get more value from Bland with every interaction.
• Customer Growth & Expansion - Work closely with customers to uncover new use cases, map expansion opportunities, and translate insights into actionable growth plans.
• Executive & Technical Communication - Engage confidently with stakeholders at every level, simplifying complex AI behavior into clear recommendations that drive adoption and outcomes.
• High‑Ownership, High‑Velocity Mindset - Operate with positivity, pace, and accountability in a fast‑moving startup environment where speed, precision, and customer obsession matter.
• Driver of Customer Outcomes - Help customers achieve measurable business results with the most friendly, helpful, and human‑like AI phone agents in the world.

Qualifications

• 5+ Years in Technical Customer‑Facing Roles - Experience as a TAM, CSM, Deployment Strategist or similar role owning post‑sales success and enterprise customer outcomes.
• API & Integration Exposure - Interpreting logs, querying data with SQL and understanding how systems integrate in production.
• Escalation & Incident Management - Skilled in resolving complex issues, guiding senior stakeholders, and driving clarity during high‑pressure situations.
• Strong Communication Skills - Able to simplify technical concepts for executives and dive deep with practitioners.
• High EQ & Customer Advocacy - Builds trust quickly, navigates competing priorities, and proactively guides customers towards best practices through structured touchpoints such as MBR/QBRs.
• Cross‑Functional Collaboration - Proven success partnering with Sales, and Engineering, to drive adoption and growth.
• Thrives in Fast‑Paced Environments - High‑ownership operator who excels in rapid, high‑impact cultures.

Nice to haves

• Startup experience or early‑stage CSM experience
• Experience with AI/ML, conversational AI, or telephony systems
• Familiarity with debugging distributed systems, logs, or APIs beyond REST/JSON
• Background working with voice workflows, call flows, or contact center tech
• Experience building CSM playbooks or customer onboarding frameworks

Why You’ll Love This Role

You get to build real AI systems that talk, reason, and help humans at scale and you’re the one bringing that magic into production for customers across entire industries.

You’ll be part of a small, elite team at the frontier of voice AI, with massive ownership and the chance to define what best‑in‑class technical account management means in the age of LLMs.

And if we do this right? You will have a measurable, outsized impact on Bland’s growth curve.

Compensation & Perks

Salary: $180k – $230k OTE + meaningful equity + benefits.

Gorgeous office in Levi's Plaza, San Francisco

We are open to remote for this position

Additional Information

Bland is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to proving equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants and employees and do not discriminate based on any legally protected characteristic.

Bland participates in the E-Verify employment verification program. All new hires are required to complete the Form I-9, and employment will be verified though E-Verify as part of the onboarding process.