[Hiring] VP of Strategic Customer Engagement & Operations @Striim, Inc.

Role Description

We are seeking a highly strategic and execution-oriented Vice President of Account Management & Strategic Engagement to lead and evolve our post-sales customer organization while partnering closely with the broader Go-To-Market (GTM) leadership team.

This newly created executive leadership role will oversee two critical functions:

• Technical Account Management (TAM) organization responsible for long-term customer engagement, retention, expansion, adoption, and upsell.
• A newly established “Tiger Team,” composed of highly technical customer-focused professionals with blended Product Engineering, Support Engineering, Architecture, and enterprise deployment expertise focused on mission-critical customer escalations and operational stabilization.

The Tiger Team will operate as a specialized escalation and stabilization function engaged selectively for mission-critical customer situations requiring deep cross-functional technical coordination, architectural intervention, accelerated problem resolution, production recovery, or strategic deployment support.

The TAM organization will maintain responsibility for long-term customer continuity, relationship management, adoption planning, retention, expansion alignment, and ongoing customer health engagement.

This role requires a rare combination of:

• Executive leadership
• Customer strategy
• Operational escalation management
• Enterprise technical depth
• Commercial acumen
• Cross-functional execution leadership
• Hands-on operational problem-solving capability

The ideal candidate understands that customer experience is directly tied to long-term revenue growth and customer loyalty and is equally comfortable operating strategically at the executive level while engaging directly with customers, internal stakeholders, and cross-functional teams to drive outcomes.

Success in this role requires a leader who thrives in fast-moving environments, brings a strong sense of ownership and urgency, and leads with credibility, adaptability, and sound judgment.

This individual must be highly collaborative, emotionally intelligent, and capable of navigating complex organizational dynamics while building strong relationships across a broad range of personalities, functions, and executive stakeholders.

Given the nature of the Tiger Team organization, this role requires strong technical credibility across:

• Enterprise software deployments
• Cloud infrastructure
• Distributed systems
• Real-time data architectures
• Production operations
• Complex customer escalation environments

This leader will work cross-functionally with Sales, Product, Engineering, Field Engineering, Alliances, Support, and Executive Leadership.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of progressive leadership experience within enterprise software, cloud, data infrastructure, SaaS, or data modernization environments.
• Proven success leading Customer Success, Technical Account Management, Strategic Services, Solutions Architecture, Professional Services, or related customer-facing technical organizations.
• Demonstrated track record of driving enterprise customer retention, expansion, adoption, and upsell growth.
• Strong experience within data modernization ecosystems, including cloud adoption and migration, real-time data streaming, analytics, observability, AI enablement, or related enterprise data technologies.
• Experience working with highly technical enterprise customers across complex and/or regulated environments.
• Experience leading complex enterprise escalations, operational recovery initiatives, strategic customer stabilization efforts, or cross-functional technical intervention programs.
• Strong understanding of enterprise deployment models, distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, real-time data architectures, operational support models, and production incident management.
• Demonstrated ability to coordinate cross-functional execution across Engineering, Product, Support, Architecture, and GTM organizations during high-pressure customer situations.
• Ability to engage credibly in technical discussions involving enterprise architecture, scalability, platform stability, cloud operations, database technologies, and production deployment challenges.
• Ability to operate strategically and tactically in a high-growth startup environment.
• Experience building, scaling, or transforming customer-facing technical teams.
• Demonstrated ability to lead effectively in high-growth, fast-paced, and evolving environments with competing priorities and multiple stakeholder perspectives.
• Strong emotional intelligence, executive presence, and interpersonal judgment with the ability to influence, collaborate, and build credibility across all levels of an organization.
• Proven ability to balance urgency, accountability, and operational rigor with a highly collaborative and team-oriented leadership style.
• Hands-on, proactive leadership approach with a willingness to engage directly in solving customer and operational challenges when needed.
• Ability to navigate complex organizational dynamics with professionalism, adaptability, and a solutions-oriented mindset.
• Strong executive presence with exceptional written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences, including executive stakeholders.
• Commercial mindset with comfort operating against revenue-oriented metrics and customer growth objectives.
• Strong cross-functional leadership skills with experience partnering across Sales, Product, Engineering, Alliances, and Executive Leadership teams.
• Comfortable operating in environments with lean internal infrastructure and non-traditional marketing support models.
• Strong technical depth with the ability to engage credibly in enterprise architecture discussions, production escalation management, operational risk analysis, cloud infrastructure strategy, and complex deployment troubleshooting.
• Experience working within fast-paced, less structured startup cultures with high visibility and accountability.
• Willingness and enthusiasm for extensive travel, including international travel.

Preferred Requirements

• Experience with real-time data streaming technologies, CDC frameworks, cloud-native data architectures, observability platforms, or AI-driven enterprise solutions.
• Experience working within highly cross-functional escalation environments involving Product Engineering, Support Engineering, Professional Services, and enterprise customer operations teams.
• Experience supporting partner-led or alliance-driven GTM motions.
• Background in enterprise platform adoption within Fortune 1000 or highly regulated industries.
• Prior experience building or leading strategic escalation, customer advocacy, or executive engagement programs.
• Familiarity with consumption-based growth models, enterprise platform expansion strategies, and complex multi-stakeholder sales cycles.
• Experience supporting beta programs, customer advisory initiatives, or product feedback programs.

What Success Looks Like

• Increased enterprise customer retention and expansion performance.
• Stronger executive-level customer relationships and engagement.
• Successful launch and operationalization of a scalable Tiger Team escalation and stabilization model with measurable impact on strategic customer outcomes.
• Improved execution speed, coordination efficiency, and resolution outcomes during strategic customer escalations and critical deployment situations.
• Improved customer adoption, advocacy, and platform utilization.
• Enhanced alignment between customer feedback, product strategy, and GTM execution.
• Measurable contribution to company growth through customer expansion and strategic account development.
• Establishment of scalable customer engagement frameworks that support long-term company growth.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and pre-IPO stock options
• Comprehensive health care plans (medical, dental, vision), including medical and dependent FSA
• Retirement plan (401K)
• Paid Time Off (Vacation, Sick & Public Holidays)
• Opportunity to contribute to and shape a collaborative, high-growth company culture