Vice President, Customer Operations

BlackSky•Herndon, VA

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Vice President of Customer Operations is responsible for driving world-class customer experience, retention, and growth across a set of customers supported by the Account Management team. The VP will define the operational strategy, build global high-performing teams, optimize the customer journey, and partner with Sales, Product, and Engineering leadership to ensure customers receive maximum value from BlackSky’s unique real-time intelligence capabilities.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Business or related field
20+ years of total professional experience
At least 10 years leading customer-facing teams
Minimum 6 years in the geospatial or remote sensing sector
Proven experience scaling global customer operations teams
Strong operational, analytical, and strategic planning capabilities
Experience with complex technical or government customer engagements
Excellent communication and executive stakeholder management skills
Domestic and international travel as required (typically 15-20%) to support customer engagements, team activities, and executive meetings.
To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Responsibilities

Lead and scale multidisciplinary customer-facing organizations globally.
Develop operational processes, KPIs, and performance dashboards that measure satisfaction and drive improvements.
Recruit, mentor, and develop customer-centric teams across multiple regions.
Build and maintain trusted relationships with domestic and international government and commercial customers.
Lead complex, high-touch, technical customer engagements with long lifecycle demands.
Communicate effectively with executive-level and technical stakeholders.
Drive strategies that maximize customer retention, recurring revenue, and account expansion.
Build customer health metrics and forecasting models to track experience, usage, and growth potential.
Partner closely with Sales and Business Development to ensure seamless customer success and expansion.
Apply knowledge of remote sensing, geospatial analytics, and space-based intelligence solutions to customer needs.
Guide discussions on SLAs, data delivery, system integrations, and operational workflows.
Translate complex technical concepts to support decision-making for non-technical audiences.
Design and optimize onboarding, support, and retention processes across the full customer lifecycle.
Lead incident management, service reliability, and quality assurance initiatives.
Map and enhance the end-to-end customer journey for efficiency and satisfaction.
Translate BlackSky’s corporate vision into a cohesive customer operations strategy.
Provide insights and customer intelligence that guide product prioritization and roadmap evolution.
Work closely with Sales, Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Executive Teams to support strategic priorities.
Represent Customer Operations in presentations to leadership, partners, and government stakeholders.
Lead transformation efforts in rapidly evolving environments.
Implement new structures, processes, and systems to support long-term scale.
Drive modernization initiatives that elevate the customer experience and operational effectiveness.

Benefits

Medical, dental, vision, disability, group term life and AD&D, voluntary life and AD&D insurance
BlackSky pays 100% of employee-only premiums for medical, dental and vision and contributes $100/month for out-of-pocket expenses!
15 days of PTO
11 Company holidays
four Floating Holidays (pro-rated based on hire date)
one day of paid volunteerism leave per year
parental leave
401(k) pre-tax and Roth deferral options with employer match
Flexible Spending Accounts
Employee Stock Purchase Program
Employee Assistance and Travel Assistance Programs
Employer matching donations
Professional development
Mac or PC? Your choice!
Awesome swag