[Hiring] Scaled Customer Success Manager @OpenRouter

Role Description

We’re looking for a Scaled Customer Success Manager, Startups to build and own the post-sale engine for OpenRouter’s startup ecosystem. This is a builder role, not a scaled nurture role.

OpenRouter’s startup ecosystem is one of the company’s most important growth surfaces, powered in part by the OpenRouter for Startups program, which helps AI-native companies access credits, infrastructure, and multi-model tooling to build and scale faster.

Your job is to make that ecosystem work at scale.

• Own the startup customer journey from program approval and onboarding through activation, production usage, retention, expansion, and Enterprise readiness.
• Own day-to-day program operations and communications across the OpenRouter for Startups ecosystem.
• Help launch new initiatives, workflows, and partner programs over time.
• Identify where startups get stuck, where high-potential customers are growing, where churn risk is emerging, and where OpenRouter should intervene.
• Build the system that makes those interventions repeatable.
• Design health scoring, build lifecycle triggers, create startup onboarding paths, develop risk dashboards, write playbooks, automate customer workflows, surface expansion-ready accounts, or create self-serve technical resources.
• Work cross-functionally with marketing, GTM, operations, sales, and partnerships teams.
• Comfortable talking to technical founders about APIs, model routing, latency, cost, throughput, reliability, and production usage.

Qualifications

• Managed a scaled customer portfolio, startup program operations, developer ecosystem, PLG customer base, or technical customer segment.
• Deeply care about startups and understand the realities of early-stage building.
• Enjoy working closely with founders, operators, and emerging teams.
• Comfortable working with technical founders and developer-facing products.
• Understand API-first businesses and can speak credibly about usage, latency, reliability, cost, integrations, and production adoption.
• Fluent in customer data and can use usage trends, support signals, product analytics, and revenue data to drive action.
• Built workflows, dashboards, automations, lifecycle programs, internal tools, customer journeys, or playbooks that improved customer outcomes at scale.
• Operate with a builder mindset and take ownership beyond your job description.
• Demonstrated strong execution in fast-moving environments.
• Energized by creating structure from ambiguity and helping new programs scale from 0 to 1.
• Comfortable working in evolving environments where processes are still being defined.
• Default to systems, repeatability, and leverage rather than manual touchpoints.

Requirements

• Experience in AI infrastructure, developer tools, API platforms, technical SaaS, or high-growth GenAI products.
• Worked with startup customers, founders, or startup programs.
• Experience with tools like HubSpot, Customer.io, Intercom, Zendesk, Linear, Retool, Zapier, Clay, Census, Hightouch, Mixpanel, Amplitude, or similar GTM / workflow / analytics platforms.
• Ability to build your own agents, write SQL, build lightweight internal tools, create automations, or use AI-assisted workflows.
• Partnered with Sales or Account Executives on expansion, renewal, or Enterprise conversion motions.
• Built customer health dashboards, scaled onboarding journeys, portfolio review cadences, lifecycle programs, or product feedback loops.
• Strong instincts for which startups are likely to grow, which are likely to churn, and which need intervention.

Benefits

• High autonomy.
• High leverage.
• Direct impact on retention, growth, and the future of OpenRouter’s customer ecosystem.

What Success Looks Like

• Within your first 2 weeks, understand the startup customer journey, map the current lifecycle, identify the highest-leverage activation and retention gaps, and define the first version of the startup health model.
• Within your first 4 weeks, launch initial workflows for activation, risk detection, expansion identification, scaled customer communication, and day-to-day program operations.
• Within your first 6 weeks, build the first version of the scaled startup success operating system: segmentation, health dashboards, lifecycle triggers, risk alerts, expansion signals, and a regular operating cadence.
• Longer term, success means higher startup activation, stronger retention, faster time-to-value, clearer Enterprise conversion paths, better product feedback loops, and a startup ecosystem that grows without requiring linear headcount.

This Is Not

• A lifecycle marketing role.
• A role focused on sending nurture campaigns and hoping customers engage.
• A traditional CSM role built around manual check-ins and one-off account management.
• A purely reactive support role.
• A program coordination role where you wait for perfect clarity before acting.

Why OpenRouter?

The AI landscape changes every week. OpenRouter sits at the center of it, helping builders access, route, evaluate, and scale across the world’s leading models. This role gives you the opportunity to shape how thousands of AI-native startups succeed on OpenRouter.

If building the engine sounds more exciting than simply running the motion, we should talk.