[Hiring] Director of Support @Virtuous

Role Description

We're hiring a Director of Support to own a 23-person global support organization across three manager led teams aligned directly to our core Product and Engineering functions. You'll scale and refine the tooling, operational processes, and performance metrics as the team enters its next phase of growth.

This is also an AI-forward mandate. You'll own Swift CX, our AI chatbot, and shape how AI-assisted triage and first response keep evolving across the team. We think AI should expand what the team can do, not replace headcount before capacity catches up.

How You Work

• Everyone acts like a founder. You own the SLA gap for the whole team, not just the parts assigned to you, and you run toward it.
• Speed is a feature. You ship fixes and process changes quickly. You don't let a perfect process design hold up a near-term win.
• Customer value above all else. Every metric change gets judged by whether it actually makes a nonprofit feel heard, not by whether the dashboard looks better.
• One company, one team, one customer experience. You partner for real with CX Ops, Customer Success, Professional Services, and Enablement so support isn't operating in its own silo.
• AI as a value accelerator. You use Swift CX and AI triage to take low-leverage work off the team's plate, so people spend more time on judgment calls and the human parts of the job.

What You'll Own

TEAM & OPERATIONS

• Lead, develop, and scale a 23-person support organization by leading three team managers and driving operational excellence.
• Drive first reply time from today's baseline toward a sustained SLA of 2 to 72 hours, based on ticket priority.
• Own Requester Wait Time: any time a customer re-engages on an open ticket, we reply within 24 hours, for as long as the ticket stays open.
• Build and defend the capacity plan: translate ticket volume, complexity, and team performance into a clear, data-backed staffing narrative for leadership.
• Look across escalations for the pattern; individual contributors and managers already flag urgent tickets and patterns but your job is making sure those flags turn into action and escalation to Product Management.
• Own and evolve the team development through a documented & clear process.
• Evolve our coaching strategy to support ongoing career growth and performance for managers and individual contributors.
• Foster a collaborative, high engagement culture grounded in active mentorship, two way feedback, and sustainable pacing across all support tiers.

METRICS & REPORTING

• Own the core metrics here: first reply time (FRT) and the Tier 2 hand-off SLA are the headline numbers, tracked and reported on consistently.
• Track and report on Requester Wait Time (24 hours on any re-engaged open ticket), ticket pickup time, tickets resolved, and CSAT.
• Own Zendesk as the platform of record: administration, configuration, and all reporting through Zendesk Explore.
• Bring outside perspective on support metrics best practices. Recommend what Virtuous should add or retire based on what actually predicts customer health, not just what's easy to pull from Zendesk today.

AI & PROCESS

• Own Swift CX, Virtuous's AI chatbot: its continued configuration, escalation logic, and roadmap for deflection.
• Identify and prioritize the highest-leverage places to expand AI further: triage, first replies, and deflection on repetitive ticket categories.
• Partner with Product and Engineering on the integrations and tooling an AI-augmented support operation needs.
• Enhance the quality and process discipline already in place: SLA tiering, escalation paths, bug reproduction and hand-off to EPD.

REPORTING & INFLUENCE

• Report directly to the CCO and serve as the executive-level owner of the team's performance, roadmap, and resourcing conversation.
• Partner closely with CX Ops, Customer Success, Professional Services, and CX Enablement to keep support connected to the rest of the customer experience.
• Take a step back to truly understand the customer's pain from the customer's perspective, then share that across teams: the customer impact and desired outcomes, not just what the software can or can't do.
• Engage directly with customers when it matters: a high-visibility escalation, a strategic account conversation, whatever the moment calls for.

Qualifications

• 7+ years leading technical or customer support functions in B2B SaaS, with direct experience managing managers (not just individual contributors) across a team of 20+.
• A track record of scaling a support org through a period of fast growth.
• Deep, hands-on Zendesk experience: administration and Explore reporting, not just using it as an agent.
• A track record of building or maturing a support metrics framework. You can look at what a team tracks today and tell them what's missing.
• Strong pattern recognition with ticket and escalation data. You find the systemic issue behind a cluster of hard cases, and you can teach that instinct to your managers.
• Comfortable working directly with customers, not just managing through others.
• Real, hands-on comfort with AI tooling. You've used it to build or improve a workflow yourself, not just bought a feature.
• Excellent written and verbal communication. You can coach a manager, brief an executive, and talk through a hard problem with a customer, all with the same clarity.
• Comfort with ambiguity and the resourcefulness to build structure and process where it doesn't yet exist.

Nice To Have

• Experience with nonprofit, higher-ed, or other mission-driven customer bases.
• Experience designing or scaling a Tier 2 or escalation model.
• Familiarity with Jira, Linear, Lattice, and BI tooling (Sigma or similar).

What Success Looks Like

• A path to Next Reply Time at 24 hours or better across the board. No open ticket goes quiet once a customer re-engages, and nobody feels like their ticket disappeared.
• First reply time and the Tier 2 hand-off SLA are both hit consistently, with FRT landing in the 2 to 72 hour range based on ticket priority.
• Virtuous's support metrics reflect real best practice, not just what Zendesk shows by default, because this person pushed for it.
• Swift CX and the AI triage process are measurably deflecting or speeding up repetitive ticket categories, and the team's time is shifting toward higher-value, higher-complexity work.
• Every manager, and their individual contributors, has a real coaching relationship and a framework for growth.
• Leadership has a clear, current view of team capacity and what it takes to sustain performance as volume grows.
• The team feels resourced and set up to win, not asked to do more with less.

Benefits

• Market competitive pay leveraging Carta data.
• Employee recognition through Bonusly (birthdays, anniversaries, achievements, etc.).
• 401(k) retirement plan with company matching - 50% match up to 6% of compensation after 90 days.
• We value our employee’s work-life balance and encourage taking advantage of Unlimited PTO.
• Supportive time off including paid volunteer days and company holidays.
• Employer-contributed healthcare benefits, encompassing medical, dental, and vision coverage, with plans available for dependents and choices for Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA).
• 12 weeks primary parent leave, 4 weeks secondary parent leave - full pay (adoption as well).
• We pride ourselves on Community and host exciting company outings and events.