Founding Customer Success Lead

About the role

Vela is a YC‑backed AI recruiting coordinator for executive search firms. The product handles scheduling, follow‑up, change management, and interview coordination so that search teams can focus on hiring senior leaders. As the first Customer Success Manager you will own onboarding, adoption, issue resolution, usage reporting, account health, and the creation of a CS playbook, working closely with the CEO, engineering, and customers.

Responsibilities

• Onboarding and implementation – run kickoffs, understand each firm’s workflow, coordinate setup and permissions with customer IT teams, train users, and follow through until they’re scheduling successfully with Vela.
• Adoption – stay close to partners, recruiters, researchers, and coordinators; identify usage barriers, run useful check‑ins, and help teams build lasting habits (expect frequent in‑person visits and events).
• Customer issues from start to finish – investigate problems, reproduce where possible, give engineering clear context, keep customers updated, confirm resolution; maintain excellence with sub‑3‑minute average response time.
• Usage and value reporting – show customers how they’re using Vela, where they derive value, and what to improve; turn usage data and feedback into clear recommendations.
• Account health – spot disengagement and renewal risks early, build remediation plans, surface expansion opportunities, and partner with the CEO on commercial conversations.
• The CS playbook – build onboarding checklists, customer guides, rollout plans, follow‑up templates, and simple systems that improve each subsequent onboarding.

Requirements

• 2–3+ years in customer success, implementation, account management, or a similar hands‑on customer‑facing role; strong recruiting operations experience is relevant.
• Proven ownership of customer onboarding or adoption with measurable results; ability to advance rollouts amid shifting priorities.
• Clear communication – can lead calls with firm owners, train new users, write concise recaps, and handle difficult conversations calmly.
• Organized and dependable – tracks open issues, owners, deadlines, and follows through without prompting.
• Deep product learning – comfortable investigating configurations, permissions, and workflows, and explaining findings to customers and engineers.
• Commitment to doing the work well – investigates problems, takes ownership of next steps, and sees them through to resolution.
• Comfortable building from scratch and spending most of the day directly with customers.
• Naturally positive attitude – eager to spread joy to customers.
• Experience with executive search, recruiting software, B2B SaaS, or AI products is a strong plus.
• Above all, ability to learn quickly, earn trust, and deliver results.

Pay

$110,000–$200,000 total compensation

Schedule

Full‑time, in person

First 90 days

• Independently running routine onboardings and customer check‑ins.
• Accounts have clear rollout