Strategic Technical Account Manager

Avalara

5h

About The Position

The Strategic Technical Account Manager (STAM) supports the retention and growth of Avalara’s highest-ARR customers by serving as their primary technical support resource. This role provides expert troubleshooting, proactive technical guidance, and structured engagement to ensure product stability and long-term customer success. The STAM builds trusted relationships and drives a preventative support approach that reduces risk and improves customer outcomes. The role also partners during hypercare to ensure a smooth transition from implementation to ongoing support. From a business perspective, the STAM strengthens Avalara’s relationships with its highest-value customers by delivering consistent, expert technical leadership. By resolving complex issues quickly and preventing recurring risk, this role protects revenue, reduces churn exposure, and reinforces customer confidence in Avalara’s platform. For our teams, the STAM improves operational stability and cross-functional alignment. Through structured feedback to Product and Engineering, this role helps identify systemic gaps, influence product improvements, and reduce support burden over time. Proactive engagement and risk identification support retention and expansion strategies in partnership with Customer Account Management. For customers, the STAM provides a trusted technical partner who understands their environment, anticipates risk, and delivers clarity during high-impact situations. This proactive, relationship-driven approach increases platform reliability, improves customer experience, and drives long-term success.

Requirements

• Actively leverage AI to enhance productivity, quality, innovation, and customer value.
• Embrace AI as an essential capability, not an optional tool.
• Demonstrate advanced, applied AI expertise by delivering measurable improvements in areas such as incident resolution speed, root cause accuracy, case deflection, and customer communication quality.
• Identify and implement new AI-driven approaches to technical support (e.g., automated diagnostics, intelligent case triage, predictive risk identification) that go beyond current team practices.
• Quantify AI impact through clear metrics (e.g., reduced time to resolution, lower repeat case rates, improved SLA adherence, increased automation coverage).
• Elevate team capability by sharing AI techniques, coaching peers, and establishing repeatable best practices that improve overall team performance.
• Drive adoption of AI at scale by embedding AI into workflows, documentation, and operational processes—not as optional tools, but as standard ways of working.
• Apply strong judgment in AI usage, ensuring data security, compliance, and responsible application in customer-facing and internal scenarios.
• Continuously assess and advance Avalara’s AI maturity within the STAM function, identifying opportunities to increase leverage, reduce manual effort, and improve customer outcomes.
• Elevate team performance and standards through coaching, knowledge sharing, and setting a high bar for technical excellence and customer outcomes.
• Demonstrate strong ownership and accountability for complex, high-impact customer issues, and modeling this behavior for others.
• Improve systems, processes, and documentation so that the team operates more efficiently and consistently over time.
• Simplifying complex technical and compliance challenges in ways that improve both internal execution and customer experience.
• Challenging assumptions constructively and introducing better approaches that increase effectiveness and scalability.
• Leaving every team, process, and customer engagement stronger than they found it, contributing to increased talent density and execution rigor across the organization.
• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Business.
• 5 years of experience in technical account management, customer success, or customer or partner support roles.
• Experience supporting enterprise or high-revenue customers.
• Experience leading complex issue resolution and coordinating cross-functional teams.
• Working knowledge of networking concepts, application programming interfaces, and common enterprise resource planning and eCommerce platform workflows.
• General knowledge of SaaS-based application support models and incident management processes.
• Ability to conduct root cause analysis and translate technical findings into clear customer communication.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to engage technical and business stakeholders.
• Ability to manage multiple high-priority accounts while meeting defined service level agreements.
• Strong problem-solving skills and sound judgment in high-impact customer situations.
• Bring experience using AI and AI-related technologies, ready to thrive here.
• Apply AI every day to business challenges - improving efficiency, contributing solutions, and driving results for your team, our company, and our customers.
• Grow with AI by staying curious about new trends and best practices, and by sharing what you learn so others can benefit too.

Responsibilities

• Own a named portfolio of Avalara’s highest-ARR customers, serving as the primary technical support lead and trusted advisor for all post-implementation needs.
• Resolve complex and high-impact technical issues by leading root cause analysis, coordinating cross-functional resources, and delivering timely, accurate solutions that minimize customer risk.
• Lead incident response and escalation management, including direct customer communication and internal alignment, ensuring adherence to contractual service level agreements, including a one-hour initial response requirement and any custom SLAs.
• Drive proactive account engagement through tailored outbound communications, technical health reviews, case trend analysis, and risk assessments to prevent recurring issues and improve platform stability.
• Partner closely with Customer Account Management to align on strategies that support retention, expansion, and overall account health.
• Support hypercare transitions from implementation to steady-state support, ensuring continuity and reducing disruption for strategic customers.
• Influence product and engineering teams by providing structured customer feedback and identifying recurring technical gaps that impact customer outcomes.
• Be recognized by assigned enterprise customers as the trusted technical lead and primary escalation point for complex support matters, measured by best-in-class CSAT scores.
• Consistently meet or exceed contractual service level agreements, including one-hour initial response targets, while maintaining high resolution quality for high-impact cases.
• Reduce repeat case volume within the assigned portfolio by identifying and addressing systemic root causes.
• Deliver structured health reviews and risk assessments that contribute to measurable improvements in account stability and customer satisfaction.
• Influence at least three product or engineering enhancements that reduces support burden, improves platform reliability, or addresses recurring customer risk.
• Demonstrate quantifiable AI-driven performance gains, such as faster diagnostics, improved case documentation quality, enhanced knowledge sharing, or automation of recurring technical tasks.

Benefits

• Great compensation package
• Paid time off
• Paid parental leave
• Many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses
• Private medical insurance
• Life insurance
• Disability insurance
• Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion
• 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Number of Employees: 501-1,000 employees