Customer Success Lead

Perplexity•San Francisco, CA

8d•$265,000 - $320,000

About The Position

As Customer Success Lead at Perplexity, you will lead the team responsible for helping enterprises adopt Perplexity Computer and API products and turn adoption into measurable business value. You will own the customer success strategy and operating model, lead CSMs across customer segments, and be accountable for gross and net revenue retention across the post-sale customer base, with expansion targets shared with Sales. This is a hands-on leadership role that stays close to customers and the product while building the team, programs, and cross-functional partnerships needed to scale.

Requirements

10+ years in customer success, account management, or post-sales roles at enterprise software companies.
5+ years leading customer success teams, with a track record of hiring, coaching, and developing high-performing CSMs.
Experience owning GRR and NRR targets and demonstrating how your team improved them.
Experience building or rebuilding a customer success function during rapid growth.
Experience operating both high-touch and scaled or digital coverage models and knowing when each is appropriate.
Ability to demonstrate how your team helped customers progress from onboarding to sustained adoption and measurable business outcomes.
Comfort with usage and consumption data.
Strong command of Salesforce, forecasting, and customer health tooling.
Hands-on familiarity with AI products and ability to build product fluency, understand customer workflows, diagnose adoption barriers, and earn trust with business and technical stakeholders.
Clear communication with executive buyers, administrators, and technical teams, including during sensitive product changes or escalations.
Comfort operating without an established playbook, using AI and automation where they improve execution and applying human judgment where it matters.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting usage-based or API products.

Responsibilities

Own gross and net revenue retention for the customer base, including renewal forecasting, risk management, and expansion targets shared with Sales.
Set the customer success strategy and coverage model across high-touch Enterprise, scaled SMB and Mid-Market, and technical API customers.
Hire, coach, and develop CSMs across customer segments, establishing regular 1:1s, account and renewal reviews, and clear performance and product-expertise expectations.
Build team playbooks for Sales-to-CS handoffs, onboarding, customer success plans, health scoring, executive business reviews, and escalations.
Partner with Applied AI and Enablement to build onboarding, workshops, champion programs, and scaled education that help customers reach first value and sustain adoption.
Help customers connect adoption and consumption to business outcomes, understand usage and cost trade-offs, and build a clear case for renewal and expansion.
Partner with Sales to identify self-serve customers ready to move to Enterprise and plan expansion in named accounts.
Work with RevOps and Finance on capacity planning, account assignment, book-of-business design, and accurate reporting in Salesforce.
Partner with cross-functional teams to deliver a cohesive customer journey, with clear ownership and handoffs from onboarding through adoption, renewal, and expansion.
Coordinate customer readiness and communications for product launches, migrations, pricing and usage changes, and incidents, partnering with Product, Marketing, Support, and Engineering on accurate guidance.
Bring customer needs and recurring friction into product planning, and close the loop with customers on decisions and progress.
Engage executive sponsors at the largest accounts and personally support strategic adoption efforts, high-stakes renewals, and escalations while building the team’s ability to own day-to-day execution.