Manager, Strategic Customer Onboarding

Tipalti•Plano, TX

8d•$123,200 - $154,000•Hybrid

About The Position

As the Manager, Strategic Onboarding, you will lead a team responsible for Tipalti’s most complex and strategically important customer implementations, including both internally delivered and partner-led engagements. You will be accountable for the performance, development, and success of your team and the overall health of the delivery portfolio, ensuring projects are appropriately staffed, risks are identified and addressed early, and customers receive a consistently high-quality onboarding experience. You will own portfolio-level delivery performance, capacity and resource management, operational cadence, and first-line escalation management for your team. You will coach and develop experienced Onboarding Managers, establish repeatable and scalable delivery practices, and partner cross-functionally to remove systemic barriers to successful implementation. This is a people and portfolio leadership role, not an individual implementation role. Success is measured by the performance of the team and portfolio—not by personally carrying customer implementations.

Requirements

7+ years of experience in Customer Onboarding, Professional Services, Implementation, or a similar customer delivery function within B2B SaaS.
3+ years of direct people-management experience leading experienced implementation or onboarding professionals.
Demonstrated experience managing a portfolio of complex enterprise customer implementations, with accountability for delivery quality, customer outcomes, capacity, and risk.
Strong people leader with a track record of coaching experienced professionals, managing performance, and developing future leaders.
Strong executive presence and demonstrated ability to lead difficult customer conversations and high-stakes escalations.
Excellent operational judgment, including the ability to distinguish between an individual project problem and a systemic delivery issue.
Demonstrated ability to build scalable processes and operating rhythms in a fast-changing environment.
Strong cross-functional leadership skills and the ability to influence Product, Engineering, Sales, Support, Alliances, and other stakeholders without direct authority.
Strong analytical skills and comfort using data to understand portfolio health, capacity, performance, and emerging risks.
Excellent communication, prioritization, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
Detail-oriented and well organized, with the ability to maintain strategic perspective while managing a complex delivery portfolio.
Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment.
BA/BS in a related field or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading complex fintech, payments, ERP, or financial-technology implementations.
Experience working with implementation partners or systems integrators is a plus.
Experience leading teams through AI, automation, or significant delivery-process transformation.
Familiarity with Salesforce, project-management platforms, and ticketing systems such as Jira.
Experience operating in a high-growth SaaS environment.
Experience partnering closely with Product and Engineering organizations to resolve systemic customer-delivery challenges.

Responsibilities

Lead, coach, and develop a team of experienced Onboarding Managers responsible for complex and strategically important customer implementations.
Establish clear performance expectations, provide regular coaching and feedback, and create development opportunities that strengthen the team’s delivery and leadership capabilities.
Build a culture of ownership and accountability in which Onboarding Managers independently lead their portfolios and escalate intentionally rather than relying on management to run projects for them.
Recruit, hire, onboard, and develop new team members as the organization grows.
Own performance management, goal setting, and development planning for the team.
Own the overall health and performance of the Strategic Onboarding portfolio, including project health, delivery risk, time-to-value, customer experience, capacity, and forecast accuracy.
Establish and lead a consistent portfolio operating cadence that surfaces risks early, drives clear ownership of actions, and enables proactive intervention before issues become escalations.
Own staffing and capacity management across the team, balancing customer needs, project complexity, team capabilities, and business priorities.
Serve as the first level of management escalation for at-risk implementations, providing leadership and executive customer engagement when appropriate while maintaining clear ownership with the assigned Onboarding Manager.
Provide leadership oversight for Tipalti’s most complex and strategically important implementations, ensuring teams have the resources, cross-functional support, and decision-making required for successful delivery.
Identify patterns across projects and escalations and translate them into systemic improvements rather than repeatedly solving the same issues customer by customer.
Maintain accurate portfolio visibility and forecasting, using data to identify emerging risks, capacity constraints, and opportunities to improve delivery performance.
Provide operational oversight of strategic partner-led implementations within the broader Strategic Onboarding portfolio, ensuring appropriate visibility, governance, escalation management, and consistent delivery standards across both Tipalti-led and partner-led engagements.
Identify and implement improvements to delivery processes, tools, and operating practices that increase consistency, scalability, and customer outcomes.
Use portfolio data and frontline insights to identify systemic delivery issues and drive improvements across the organization.
Partner with Product, Engineering, Support, Sales, Professional Services, Alliances, and other cross-functional teams to resolve recurring delivery barriers and represent the needs of Strategic Onboarding.
Ensure lessons learned, delivery patterns, and successful practices are captured and reused across the team rather than remaining with individual team members.
Share structured product and process feedback with appropriate stakeholders to improve the customer onboarding experience.
Establish clear ownership and escalation paths for cross-functional dependencies that impact customer delivery.
Champion adoption of AI-enabled delivery workflows across Strategic Onboarding, partnering with the AI Strategy function to identify high-value opportunities, drive frontline adoption, and measure operational impact.
Help evolve team roles and operating practices as AI removes administrative work, enabling Onboarding Managers to spend more time on strategic customer engagement and higher-value delivery activities.
Provide frontline feedback and operational insights to help ensure AI capabilities address real delivery challenges and create measurable value.
Reinforce new AI-enabled ways of working through coaching, operating cadence, and performance expectations.

Benefits

Hybrid working model that requires you to be in the Plano office on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday
Competitive salary and stock options
Matching 401K
Extended benefits, Employee Assistance Program, life insurance, AD&D, LTD
Maternity, Paternity and Fertility Treatment benefits
15 days of PTO
Subsidized lunch on office days
Fresh fruit, snacks & drinks in office
Phone/internet allowance
Regular company-wide social events
Multiple ERG groups celebrating our diversity and creating an inclusive culture