Director, Customer Success

Backstory (formerly People.ai) is the leading AI answers platform for sales teams. With more than a decade of training AI models on billions of sales interactions, Backstory enables modern sales teams to ask questions and get the right answer in the moment directly within their existing AI workflows. Sales leaders from companies like OpenAI, IBM, Red Hat, Verizon, Palo Alto Networks, Iron Mountain, Trans Union, Randstad and others rely on Backstory to get trusted answers wrapped in real business context helping them orchestrate deals more effectively and drive revenue.

By connecting every signal to the right accounts and opportunities, Backstory shows teams exactly what is happening and what to do next. Customers across industries including enterprise, cybersecurity, data and analytics, and defense use Backstory to drive trillions in pipeline and revenue.

Recognized by Gartner and Forrester, the Inc. 5000, Y Combinator Top Companies, and the Forbes AI 50, Backstory is based in San Francisco and backed by ICONIQ Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Akkadian Ventures and Mubadala Capital.

We're looking for a Director of Customer Success to lead our CS organization and own retention and consumption across our full customer base. You'll lead a team of one to two managers and around eight to twelve CSMs, and you'll build the customer motions that put our deepest investment where growth is most likely while moving every customer toward deployed, production-grade use of Backstory.

This role is for someone who looks past the request to the business problem underneath it. You'll bring that instinct to every customer conversation, teach it to your team, and work closely with Sales, Professional Services, Technical Support, Studio and Product. You'll also lead by example by running CS on Backstory itself and showing customers what the platform makes possible.

Own retention and consumption

• Drive gross retention, expansion and credit consumption, and lead customers onto the Backstory platform

• Give leadership a weekly view of renewal risk, and run save motions with direct executive engagement

Run segmented customer motions

• Run three coverage models: high-touch strategic, time-boxed emerging, and scaled, moving emerging accounts into strategic coverage within their renewal cycle

• Own account alignment, book economics, capacity planning, and the playbooks that take accounts from data platform adoption to deployed use cases

Deliver value through solution-based thinking

• Understand each strategic customer's business, technical environment, and what our product can become for them

• Trace every request to an agreed problem statement and measurable outcome, and own the value realization framework (success plans, executive readouts, EBRs)

Build a high-performing team

• Hire, develop and retain managers and CSMs, with a bench ready for larger books and new segments

• Build solution instinct across the team: spot the architecture under a request, gather context before engaging technical teams, and see it through

• Own onboarding and ramp, career paths and performance standards

Run the CS operating rhythm

• Own weekly renewal reviews, segment account reviews, monthly business reviews and quarterly planning

• Maintain the metrics and dashboards behind them, and manage budget, staffing and process

Be our best customer

• Run CS on Backstory, from account plans and health signals to renewal reviews and customer prep

• Lead forums where CSMs share their platform workflows, and turn daily use into product input

Lead cross-functional partnerships

• Own the Sales to CS relationship, from handoff standards to joint renewal and expansion planning

• Coordinate with Professional Services, Technical…