Senior Director of Customer Experience

Sauce•New York City Metropolitan Area, NY

3d•Onsite

About The Position

We’re looking for a seasoned Senior Director of Customer Experience — an experienced operator who owns the full client experience end-to-end, from product quality through support and retention, and who works hand-in-hand with Product and Sales to shape what we build and how we sell it. This is a leadership role reporting directly to the CEO, based in our NYC office (3x+/week in-person). You'll unify Customer Success and Support into a single CX function, build and manage regional teams and their managers, and act as the voice of the client inside product development. This is a strategic and tactical role in equal measure — you set the vision, and you're also in the weeds building the tools that make it real. You’ll oversee the entire customer experience journey from onboarding to success and support departments. Success means a client experience so strong that retention, health scores, and product quality all move together — and Sauce becomes the obvious platform restaurants can't imagine running without.

Requirements

8–12 years in Customer Success, Customer Experience, or Support leadership, with 4–6 years leading teams including regional or other managers.
Experience with SMB customers in a high-pressure, fast-moving operational environment — restaurant, food delivery, or food tech strongly preferred; other high-pressure industries acceptable.
SaaS-only backgrounds without operational intensity are not a fit for this role.
Proven experience building customer health scoring systems and working with full client data sets.
Direct experience partnering with Product — qualifying features, shaping releases, understanding a product deeply enough to evaluate it.
Strategic and tactical in equal measure — sets vision and executes hands-on.
Data-driven — every initiative measured and guided by numbers.
Self-sufficient builder — builds your own dashboards, automations, and regional playbooks without relying on engineering resources.
Genuine comfort with after-hours, high-stakes operational demands.
Hands-on AI builder — personally built and shipped automations, not just sponsored them.
Strong SQL skills — you write and run your own queries.
Track record of scaling a customer function's output without scaling headcount linearly - you solve for leverage, not just more people

Nice To Haves

Managing regional managers or a multi-region structure.
Background at a startup with genuine operational intensity — think Toast, or similar fast-paced restaurant/food-tech operators.
Deep familiarity with the food delivery product landscape.

Responsibilities

Own team-level retention, health scores, and overall client experience across CS and support teams.
Lead and develop the unified CX function as the primary people manager — including directly managing regional managers.
Build the customer health scoring system and the full view of client data that feeds it.
Ensure every customer's experience — product, support, and success — feels seamless and consistent.
Define the voice of Sauce for the customers and their customers
Personally engage on high-stakes accounts, escalations, and after-hours crisis moments when senior presence is needed.
Build regional playbooks and manage the regional structure as we expand into new markets.
Model urgency, ownership, and outcome-driven problem-solving in a high-pressure environment.
Work directly alongside Product (partnering closely with our Product Lead) to qualify features before they reach clients.
Bring the full picture of client data and feedback into product planning and release cycles.
Deeply understand our product in the food delivery domain — you're not just relaying feedback, you're evaluating product decisions yourself.
Build your own dashboards, systems, and automations — a true "ops co-pilot" for the function — without relying on R&D resources.
Prototype, deploy, and iterate yourself.
Partner closely with Sales (with our Sales Lead) to align client expectations from the first sales conversation through the full customer lifecycle.
Partner with Product on qualification, feedback loops, and release readiness.
Keep communication open across functions so teams move in sync, even under pressure.