Head of Customer Success

Head Of Customer Success Axion helps the world's leading manufacturers identify, investigate, and resolve product quality issues before they become warranty claims, recalls, or customer disruptions. Axion is entering a new stage of scale: more of the world's leading manufacturers are starting deployments and moving from initial deployments to production, and Customer Success is becoming a core growth lever. We're hiring our first Head of Customer Success to turn exceptional customer outcomes into a repeatable operating system - and build the team that will scale it. This is a true Head of / executive leadership role focused on building the team, systems, and operating model for Customer Success. You'll define how we approach the customer lifecycle from onboarding and adoption through renewal and expansion, while establishing the metrics, health frameworks, segmentation, and playbooks that will allow the organization to scale. Your mission is to build the customer operating system that takes complex enterprise deployments from first value through adoption, executive value proof, production, and expansion - with clear ownership, measurable outcomes, and a model Axion can scale. During your first year, you'll: Turn Axion's existing ability to create extraordinary customer outcomes through talented people and heroic effort into a repeatable customer-success machine. Define one end-to-end customer lifecycle with explicit ownership and handoffs across Sales, Engagement, Solutions, Product, Engineering, and Customer Success Establish the operating metrics and executive scorecard for activation, time-to-value, adoption, realized business value, retention, renewal forecasting, and expansion Build customer segmentation, service tiers, coverage models, and operating rhythms that scale without reducing the quality of the customer experience Build an early-warning customer health and risk system that gives teams and executives clear actions - not just scores Create a repeatable executive value-realization motion - Mutual Success Plans, value readouts, and QBRs - that connects Axion usage to measurable business outcomes and commercial decisions Create a predictable path from initial deployment to production and expansion, in close partnership with Sales Hire, coach, and develop a high-performing Customer Success organization that can scale alongside Axion's growth while maintaining a hands-on, player-coach culture Axion already knows how to make customers wildly successful. The opportunity is to make that success systematic and scalable. You'll help define how some of the world's leading manufacturers adopt AI in production - not in a lab or a proof of concept, but in workflows tied to product quality, reliability, cost, and customer outcomes. This is not a role where you'll inherit a mature Customer Success playbook and optimize around the edges. You'll work directly with Axion's leadership team to build the model: how we activate customers faster, prove measurable value, navigate complex enterprise deployments, retain and expand strategic accounts, and feed what we learn back into the product. The systems you build will become a core part of how Axion scales. Build & Scale Customer Success Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing Customer Success organization as a hands-on player-coach Codify a repeatable customer journey from onboarding and first value through production, renewal, and expansion Design customer segmentation, service tiers, coverage models, playbooks, and operating rhythms that evolve with Axion's scale Establish hiring standards, onboarding programs, and coaching frameworks for the Customer Success team Drive Customer Outcomes Personally partner with a small portfolio of Axion's most strategic enterprise customers; this role is expected to stay close to the work, not manage from a distance Build trusted executive relationships that create conviction, accelerate adoption, and tie Axion to the customer's highest-priority business outcomes Step into high-priority customer situations, diagnose what is blocking value, and mobilize the right cross-functional team to unblock them Build a culture centered on measurable customer outcomes - business value realized, behaviors changed, and expansion earned - rather than activity Partner Across the Business Partner with Sales on account strategy, renewal, and expansion, with explicit ownership and handoffs across the customer lifecycle Partner with Engagement and Solutions to make the transition from deployment to activation and value realization seamless Turn patterns from customer deployments into crisp Product and Engineering priorities, while distinguishing scalable product needs from one-off requests Create one integrated customer journey across Axion, so customers experience a single team rather than internal functions Build Operational Excellence Build a clear operating cadence around activation, time-to-value, customer health, adoption, realized value, renewals, retention, and expansion forecasting Use customer data to identify risk, prioritize resources, and improve customer outcomes Build the systems, tooling, automation, and executive reporting required to scale Customer Success with rigor What We're Looking For 10+ years of Customer Success, Solutions, Services, or post-sale leadership experience in enterprise SaaS, AI, or other complex enterprise technology, including meaningful leadership responsibility You've built and led high-performing enterprise Customer Success teams and can credibly operate as both an executive leader and a hands-on player-coach Track record of moving complex enterprise customers from initial deployment to adoption, measurable business value, production or renewal, and expansion Experience designing and scaling Customer Success organizations - including segmentation, lifecycle design, health, renewal forecasting, and playbooks - through a meaningful growth inflection, ideally from roughly $10-30M ARR through $50-100M+ Exceptional executive presence: you can build trust with Fortune 500 executives, technical leaders, and frontline operators - and move between those levels fluently Systems thinker with strong operating rigor; you use data to diagnose problems, make tradeoffs, and drive accountability Proven ability to define ownership and drive outcomes across Sales, Product, Engineering, Solutions, and other customer-facing teams without relying on organizational boundaries Experience in manufacturing, industrial technology, automotive, aerospace, or another complex operational environment is a strong plus, especially where software adoption changes real-world operations Builder mentality: you thrive in ambiguity, prefer creating the playbook to inheriting one, and are energized by staying close to customers while scaling a team Who You Are You're a builder and operator who thrives in fast-moving, high-accountability environments. You take pride in getting things done thoughtfully, efficiently, and without drama. You're energized by ambiguity, skilled at bringing clarity, and comfortable flexing between strategy and execution. You value feedback giving it, receiving it, and acting on it and you see collaboration as a competitive advantage, not a burden. You're low-ego but high-agency: you care about winning as a team more than being right individually. You move quickly, communicate directly, and make decisions grounded in impact and data. You don't need constant direction you create momentum. You take ownership for outcomes, and you expect the same from those around you. How We Operate We work with focus and intention, holding ourselves to a high bar while respecting the need for balance. Axion isn't a traditional 9 to 5 job, but it's also not a place that glorifies overwork. We take pride in the work, support each other through hard problems, and make space to recharge. We're a highly collaborative team that stays connected throughout the day, often over Slack. We share feedback freely, communicate clearly, and make decisions quickly so we can keep momentum without unnecessary meetings. If you value openness, iteration, and shared problem-solving, you'll fit right in. We: Collaborate deeply. Feedback is part of how we build; everyone has a voice, and ideas win on merit. Leave ego at the door. Titles don't define valuecontribution does. Bias toward action. We favor progress over perfection and learn as we go. Communicate with clarity. Direct, transparent, and always in service of the mission. Act like owners. Everyone is accountable for outcomes, not just tasks. Aim for excellence sustainably. We challenge ourselves, support each other, and stay in it for the long game. If you're excited to help shape a company redefining how manufacturing operates