Director, Scaled Customer Success

We are looking for a Director, Scaled Customer Success to join our Customer Success team. Reporting to the VP, Customer Success, you will be responsible for defining and leading the strategy, execution, and performance of Newsela’s scaled customer segments, including SMB and Schools. You will lead frontline managers, design and optimize our scaled coverage model, and ensure our teams are delivering strong customer outcomes across adoption, retention, renewal readiness, and long-term account health.

This is a pivotal people leadership role responsible for leading frontline managers whose teams manage a large volume of accounts. You will own core revenue and retention targets (NRR, GRR), driving growth not just through successful renewals, but by establishing a proactive culture of whitespace penetration, upsell, and account expansion. You will build a scalable, data-driven coverage model that pairs digital engagement and automation with high-impact human account management to maximize support at the right moments in the customer journey.

What You'll Be Doing:

• Define and execute the long-term Scaled Customer Success strategy across Newsela’s SMB and Schools customer segments. This includes determining how we segment customers, where we leverage digital or tech-touch engagement, and where human intervention is most critical to driving adoption, retention, and customer value.
• Own the expansion and retention strategy across the high-volume SMB and Schools segments, converting adoption and customer health into predictable account growth. Equip managers and their teams to systematically map accounts, identify cross-sell/upsell signals, and proactively pitch additional solutions.
• Lead, coach, and develop frontline managers who are responsible for the day-to-day execution of scaled customer success motions. Ensure managers are equipped to lead their teams effectively, coach toward key business outcomes, and create a culture of accountability, clarity, and growth. Establish strong management rhythms, including regular 1:1s, performance conversations, career development, team health monitoring, and leadership coaching.
• Own the scaled coverage model and partner closely with CS Operations to ensure the model is supported by the right data, systems, workflows, reporting, and capacity planning. Be accountable for identifying what the business needs, defining the desired customer and team experience, and partnering cross-functionally to bring that experience to life.
• Maintain accountability for core business outcomes across the scaled customer segments, including NRR, GRR, product adoption, customer health, renewal readiness, and engagement. Use customer data, team insights, lifecycle trends, and business performance metrics to identify risks and opportunities, make strategic recommendations, and adjust the scaled CS strategy as needed.
• Build the team’s ability to identify and influence growth opportunities across the scaled customer base. This includes coaching managers and CSMs on how to recognize upsell signals, surface customer needs, partner effectively with Sales and SDR teams, and ensure growth opportunities are handled in a way that feels aligned to customer goals and the broader Newsela partnership.
• Design and improve the scaled customer journey, ensuring customers are advancing through the right lifecycle moments from onboarding through adoption, renewal, and expansion readiness. This includes partnering with Customer Experience on scaled onboarding, adoption campaigns, customer education, webinars, playbooks, and digital programs that drive meaningful customer outcomes at scale.
• Build strong cross-functional partnerships with Sales, CS Operations, Product, Marketing, Enablement, and Customer Experience. Advocate for the needs of scaled customers, synthesize feedback and trends from the field, and ensure the voice of the customer is represented in broader business decisions. Create clear feedback loops so that insights from SMB and Schools customers inform product, process, enablement, and go-to-market strategy.
• Serve as a senior leader within the Customer Success organization, helping shape how Newsela continues to evolve its customer coverage model. Identify gaps, propose solutions, influence change, and help managers and teams successfully adopt new processes, systems, and ways of working.
• Bring clarity to what the Scaled CS team owns and how the team operates. This includes defining roles and responsibilities, establishing success metrics, improving team operating rhythms, and ensuring that managers and CSMs understand how their work connects to broader customer and business outcomes.

About You:

• 7+ years of experience in Customer Success, Account Management, or a similar customer-facing function. 
• 3+ years of experience managing people leaders, with demonstrated success leading teams that drive and improve retention, adoption, customer health, and revenue outcomes. 
• Experience in EdTech, K-12 education, SaaS, or institutional customer segments.
• Demonstrated success owning revenue metrics (NRR, GRR, Expansion ARR) and driving proactive whitespace penetration, upsells, and cross-sells alongside renewal execution.
• Experience building, leading, or optimizing scaled customer success models, including digital-touch, tech-touch, or hybrid coverage approaches, with a deep understanding of how to balance efficiency and customer experience, overseeing a large number of accounts, all while designing impactful customer journey.
• Hands-on experience designing and implementing automation models that support scaled Customer Success teams, alongside comfort partnering with CS Operations to build and optimize journeys, playbooks, health signals, lifecycle triggers, and automated engagement motions in tools like Gainsight, Planhat, or similar CS platforms.
• A strategic, data-driven leadership style that relies on customer insights, business metrics, health data, capacity models, and team feedback to analyze trends, identify root causes, and translate data into clear recommendations for senior leadership.
• A passion for leading leaders, with the proven ability to coach managers, set clear expectations, hold teams accountable, navigate ambiguity, and create an environment where people can grow, perform, and prioritize through complexity.
• Strong cross-functional influence and skills in partnering with Operations, Product, Marketing, Sales, Enablement, and Customer Engagement teams to align stakeholders around shared goals, advocate for customer and team needs, and drive progress through collaboration.
• A highly organized and systems-minded approach that stays focused on strategy, outcomes, and leadership, with the ability to identify necessary processes, tools, reporting, or workflows without needing to personally own the backend administration or technical build.
• Experiencing using AI tools to drive greater efficiency and productivity.
• Open to travel as needed. Travel is estimated to be approximately 10-15%, depending on business and customer needs.
• Legally authorized to work in the US.

This role is classified as an exempt salaried and is not eligible for overtime. 

All offers of employment are contingent upon the successful completion of a background check as part of our pre-employment process.

Why you’ll love working at Newsela:

• Health & Wellness: Comprehensive medical benefits with employer contribution to premiums and to HSA accounts. Additional benefits such as gym reimbursement, pet insurance, free access to the Calm app, Rocket Lawyer and more to help you stay healthy: mind, body, and soul. 
• Work From Home: We are a fully remote company. We provide a monthly tech stipend to support your WFH needs!
• Supporting ALL Families: Inclusive benefits to support you and your family, including parental leave, fertility support, adoption, and more! 
• Financial Wellbeing: Invest in your future with our 401(k) plan, which includes a employer match to help you build long-term financial security.
• Time Off: Flexible PTO, paid sick time off, company holidays plus winter break (Dec 24th - Jan 1st).
• Professional Development:Newsela offers an annual learning and development allowance to employees to attend external training sessions, classes, workshops, conferences, and educational materials to foster professional growth within their current role and career aspirations at Newsela.
• Make A Difference: No matter your role or department, the work you do each day helps share the future of education and improves the lives of students and teachers.

About Newsela:

Newsela is a leading education technology company dedicated to meaningful classroom learning for every student. We deliver integrated, AI-powered solutions designed to unlock student engagement, empower teachers, and drive meaningful learning outcomes. Our suite of products supports knowledge and skill development, writing practice, daily instruction, assessment, and data-informed decision-making across K–12 classrooms. Grounded in learning science research, Newsela’s solutions integrate content, assessment, and analytics to help educators track progress, understand student outcomes, and deliver high-impact instruction that supports every learner.

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Compensation Breakdown: 

• Base salary: $120,000 - $144,000, depending on experience 
• On-target commission (OTC): $40,000, depending on experience 
• On-target earnings (OTE): $160,000 - $184,000