Customer Operations Lead

Bastion•New York, NY

20h•Hybrid

About The Position

Bastion enables financial institutions and enterprises to issue regulated stablecoins, generate revenue on reserves, and expand their ecosystems. Bastion’s platform combines stablecoin issuance, secure custody, and seamless orchestration for cross-border transfers, on/off-ramps, and stablecoin conversions. With Bastion’s platform and APIs, businesses can create and scale their stablecoin network, while optimizing revenue, compliance, and control. The Customer Operations Lead will be the front line of support for Bastion's partners, starting with their highest-profile integration. This role involves responding to partner escalations daily, triaging technical issues, and collaborating directly with engineering, product, finops, and compliance to resolve them. The lead will also be responsible for building sustainable and scalable processes, knowledge bases, and tooling. This is a hands-on role, involving fielding partner inquiries, managing escalation workflows, and defining scope. As volume grows, the lead will design and manage the BPO strategy to scale support. A core part of this role is selecting, implementing, and optimizing AI-powered support tools, such as knowledge bases for AI agents, automated triage, and tools for delivering white-glove service at scale without linear headcount growth. The role requires cross-functional collaboration with engineering, product, and compliance to ensure fast, accurate, and consistent support and to build the operational infrastructure for quality at scale.

Requirements

Ability to diagnose and triage partner issues without relying on engineering or product for every question
Strong judgment: knowing where automation belongs and where a human touch is non-negotiable
Ability to work cross-functionally
Comfortable with a fast pace and changing work
Ability to contribute in the first week, and fully productive in the third month
Ability to earn the right to delegate by doing the work first
Ability to think doing the same task manually for the tenth time is a waste of everyone's time
Ability to manage an evolving escalation dynamic and push back constructively
Ability to build a knowledge base in a fast-moving product environment
Ability to bridge the gap between support and engineering
Ability to balance automation and white-glove service
Ability to learn financial services regulatory requirements quickly

Nice To Haves

Experience with automation workflows
Experience with AI tooling
Experience working with tools like Claude Code

Responsibilities

Be the front line of support for Bastion's partners
Respond to partner escalations every day
Triage technical issues
Work directly with engineering, product, finops, and compliance to resolve issues
Build processes, knowledge base, and tooling for sustainable and scalable support
Field partner inquiries and manage escalation workflows
Hold the line on what's in scope and what isn't
Design and manage the BPO strategy to scale support
Select, implement, and optimize AI-powered support tools (knowledge bases, automated triage)
Continuously tune AI tools for effectiveness
Learn the product deeply enough to diagnose and triage partner issues independently
Handle partner escalations directly, working alongside the team members currently managing support
Audit the current state of support: what's documented, what's not, where issues get stuck, what patterns emerge in escalations, and where the boundary between Bastion's scope and partner scope is unclear
Evaluate and recommend ticketing and knowledge management systems, with a strong bias toward AI-first platforms
Be the primary point of contact for partner support, handling escalations end-to-end and routing to other teams only when genuinely necessary
Build and ship a decision framework that clearly defines what's in Bastion's scope vs. partner scope
Use the decision framework to hold partner teams accountable to appropriate escalation behavior
Stand up the knowledge base: document resolution paths for the top issue types, create internal troubleshooting guides, and structure all of it so it feeds directly into the AI-powered support tools
Identify which escalation patterns are automatable and begin deploying AI-assisted triage
Establish SLA tracking and reporting (measure first response time, resolution time, and escalation rates)
Use data to identify where the process breaks
Partner with product and engineering to formalize the escalation path for technical issues, reducing back-and-forth and improving resolution speed
Design and begin executing a BPO strategy
Identify, evaluate, and onboard an outsourced support partner to handle Tier 1 volume
Manage quality, training, and escalation protocols for the BPO team
Train the BPO team (or partner support staff) using the knowledge base and decision frameworks
Expand support coverage and capacity to meet contractual SLA requirements across time zones, including planning for non-US business hours
Build a voice-of-customer feedback loop that routes product insights, documentation gaps, and recurring pain points to product and engineering in a structured, actionable format
Measure and optimize the balance between AI-automated resolution and human-handled support
Manage an evolving escalation dynamic with partner's support teams, pushing back constructively while maintaining a strong partnership
Build a knowledge base in a fast-moving product environment, creating systems that stay current and are structured well enough to power AI-assisted support
Bridge the gap between support and engineering by designing the handoff process for technical escalations
Balance automation and white-glove service, knowing which interactions demand a human touch
Navigate financial services regulatory requirements, learning quickly and knowing when to loop in compliance