Director of Strategic Accounts

The Director of Strategic Accounts will own relationships with some of the organization’s most important and high-value customers. The role combines strategic account management, customer retention, executive engagement, and commercial growth.

About the role

• Serve as the primary corporate relationship owner for assigned strategic, national, and high-value customer accounts, developing a deep understanding of their business, priorities, organizational structures, testing programs, and long-term objectives.
• Build relationships with customer stakeholders at operational and executive levels, maintaining consistent engagement beyond individual projects, locations, or laboratory interactions.
• Develop and maintain strategic account plans covering customer priorities, service expectations, risks, opportunities, retention objectives, and growth opportunities.
• Lead regular business reviews with strategic customers to evaluate performance, discuss future requirements, strengthen relationships, and reinforce partnership value.
• Own customer retention and relationship health, proactively identifying dissatisfaction, service risks, competitive threats, and potential attrition.
• Act as the senior escalation point for complex customer concerns, coordinating internal teams to resolve issues and ensuring corrective actions and commitments are clearly assigned, tracked, communicated, and completed.
• Cross-functionally coordinate across laboratory operations, Customer Service, Sales, Quality, Finance, IT, Logistics, and other functions to ensure strategic customer requirements are consistently understood and delivered.
• Facilitate internal strategic account meetings, establish accountability for customer commitments, and align operational capacity, turnaround times, service expectations, and customer priorities.
• Partner with Sales and Business Development to identify opportunities to expand existing relationships through additional services, testing capabilities, locations, or solutions.
• Support contract renewals, RFPs, pricing discussions, and strategic proposals while providing customer and market intelligence to commercial and executive leadership.
• Establish and monitor account KPIs, including retention, revenue trends, service performance, turnaround time, complaints, escalations, and customer satisfaction.
• Develop account scorecards and dashboards, using customer and operational data to identify trends, risks, service improvements, and growth opportunities.
• Provide executive leadership with regular updates on account health, significant risks, opportunities, and organizational actions required.
• Influence stakeholders across departments and locations, balancing customer advocacy with operational, financial, quality, and regulatory considerations.
• Travel to customer and company locations as required, with travel expected to represent approximately 50% of working time.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Science, Environmental Science, Chemistry, or a related field preferred.
• 7+ years of experience in strategic account management, customer success, commercial leadership, laboratory services, environmental services, or another relevant B2B industry.
• Proven experience managing large, complex, national, or multi-location customer relationships, preferably within a technical or scientific services environment.
• Demonstrated ability to establish and manage executive-level customer relationships and communicate effectively with senior stakeholders.
• Strong understanding of customer retention, strategic account management, service delivery, and relationship health.
• Experience leading cross-functional initiatives and influencing stakeholders without relying on direct reporting authority.
• Strong analytical, organizational, communication, negotiation, and problem-solving capabilities.
• Able to use customer and operational data to identify trends, assess account performance, and inform strategic decisions.
• Ability to navigate complex customer situations with professionalism, discretion, and sound judgment.
• Able to balance customer needs with operational, financial, quality, and regulatory requirements.
• Experience in laboratory testing, environmental services, scientific services, or another technical service organization is preferred.
• Comfortable working in a general office environment and meeting occasional physical requirements, including lifting or moving up to 25 pounds.
• Willingness and ability to travel approximately 50% of the time.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation and benefits designed to support employees’ professional and personal wellbeing.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage.
• Life and disability insurance.
• Paid time off, including vacation, holidays, and flexible time off options.
• Wellness program supporting employee health and wellbeing.
• Tuition reimbursement to support continued learning and professional development.
• Employee referral bonus opportunities.
• Collaborative and supportive work environment with engaged leadership.
• Mission-focused culture centered on respect, accountability, appreciation, loyalty, safety, quality, and compliance.
• Strategic leadership opportunity with significant exposure to executive stakeholders, major customers, and cross-functional teams.
• Travel-based customer engagement, providing opportunities to build high-level relationships across multiple locations.