Lead, Customer Intelligence Strategy

About the Role

Avalara is scaling an AI-first operating model designed to predict customer needs, reduce systemic friction, protect Gross Revenue Retention (GRR), and lower Cost to Serve (CTS). Customer signals exist across Voice of Customer systems, predictive analytics, operational data, and enterprise reporting tools. CX360 is intended to be the unified, designed intelligence engine that integrates these inputs into a scalable, durable platform.

This role exists to define, architect, and stand up CX360 as Avalara's enterprise customer intelligence engine. You will develop the strategic roadmap, define use cases, determine requirements, and sequence capabilities to ensure CX360 is built deliberately, aligned to enterprise needs, and scalable over time.

Impact

• Business Elevation:
  • Establish CX360 as a durable, enterprise-grade intelligence engine rather than a fragmented reporting tool.
  • Align platform capability to long-term retention visibility, lifecycle intelligence, and cost reduction needs.
  • Improve roadmap discipline by defining structured use cases and sequenced capability development.
  • Prevent redundant platform investments by enforcing architectural clarity.
• Customer Elevation:
  • Ensure earlier visibility into lifecycle friction and renewal risk.
  • Ensure customer insights are surfaced in structured, usable formats.
  • Reduce the risk of disconnected tools that obscure the full customer picture.
• Organizational Elevation:
  • Provide a unified capability roadmap for customer intelligence infrastructure.
  • Align Product, Engineering, Data, and Customer Experience partners to a shared system vision.
  • Establish disciplined business requirement standards before capability build.
  • Raise platform design from feature delivery to engine architecture.

A Bar Raiser in this role leaves CX360 architected for scale, clarity, and long-term enterprise value.

Responsibilities

• Enterprise Platform Strategy Ownership
  • Define the CX360 Strategic Vision
    • Establish the long-term vision and capability roadmap for CX360.
    • Define the enterprise use cases CX360 must support, including renewal risk visibility, lifecycle intelligence, and operational performance drivers.
    • Translate business strategy into structured platform capability requirements.
    • Ensure the CX360 roadmap meets enterprise Customer Intelligence standards and future decision needs.

    Authority: Strategic owner of CX360 vision and capability roadmap.

  • Oversee Use Case & Business Requirement Definition
    • Define high-value CX360 use cases tied to measurable retention and efficiency goals.
    • Translate use cases into structured, sequenced requirements.
    • Align partners across Product, Engineering, Data, and Customer Experience on capability priorities.
    • Ensure requirements are complete before development sequencing begins.

    Authority: Final decision authority on CX360 use case prioritization and business requirement clarity.

  • Lead Platform Architecture Understanding
    • Define how CX360 integrates analytics outputs, Voice of Customer inputs, and operational signals into a unified engine.
    • Ensure capability design supports scalability, extensibility, and governed intelligence standards.
    • Identify architectural dependencies and sequencing risks.
    • Prevent feature fragmentation by enforcing platform coherence.

    Authority: Strategic understanding owner for CX360 architecture direction.

  • Create Strategic Roadmap & Investment Clarity
    • Establish phased capability build with care for enterprise.
    • Present roadmap sequencing, tradeoffs, and investment possible effects to executive partners.
    • Ensure CX360 roadmap supports long-term intelligence goals rather than short-term feature requests.

    Authority: Owns roadmap sequencing and capability prioritization within CX360.

  • AI & Capability Design Leadership
    • Define how to embed artificial intelligence capabilities within CX360 architecture.
    • Design predictive indicators, classification logic, and automation pathways intentionally.
    • Partner with analytics teams to ensure model outputs are platform-ready.
    • Ensure AI capabilities within CX360 are governed, explainable, and scalable.

    Authority: Strategic design owner for AI capability within CX360.

Requirements

• B.S. in a related field.
• 8+ years of experience leading enterprise platform projects or strategic program delivery in SaaS environments.
• Demonstrated experience defining use cases and requirements for analytics-driven systems.
• Experience shaping multi-phase strategic roadmaps.
• Experience aligning Product, Engineering, Data, and team members around platform architecture.
• Experience integrating artificial intelligence capabilities into enterprise systems.
• Demonstrated VP-level partnerships on strategic sequencing and investment decisions.

Bar Raiser Expectations

We are hiring a Bar Raiser — someone who elevates the performance, standards, and strategic clarity of the teams they work with. This role is expected to strengthen how enterprise platforms are defined and delivered by improving decision quality, roadmap discipline, and cross-functional alignment.

• Raise the quality of platform thinking by introducing structured, scalable approaches to use case definition and capability design.
• Improve decision-making rigor by ensuring tradeoffs are clearly defined, data-informed, and aligned to long-term enterprise value.
• Elevate cross-functional alignment across Product, Engineering, Data, and Customer Experience through clear frameworks and shared understanding.
• Increase organizational capability by establishing repeatable standards for business requirements and platform development.
• Prevent fragmentation and redundancy by enforcing architectural clarity and disciplined roadmap sequencing.
• Challenge assumptions constructively and introduce better approaches to platform design and investment prioritization.
• Leave CX360 and the surrounding organization measurably stronger, improving both execution quality and long-term scalability.

AI Expectations

We are hiring an AI Bar Raiser — someone who brings deep, applied AI expertise and uses it to meaningfully improve how customer intelligence platforms are designed and operated. This role is expected to elevate how AI is applied across the organization, driving measurable improvements in decision clarity, predictive capability, and platform scalability.

• Avalara is an AI-first company. This role must embed AI capability deliberately into platform design.
• Define where AI improves intelligence scale and usability within CX360.
• Design predictive models and classification systems into the architecture.
• Partner to deploy AI responsibly and securely.
• Ensure AI-enabled features improve decision clarity and system scalability.
• AI usage must improve structural capability, not just surface-level automation.

12-Month Success Signals

• Documented CX360 strategic roadmap aligned to enterprise Customer Intelligence goals.
• Defined and approved priority use cases translated into structured requirements.
• Platform architecture validated across Product, Engineering, and Data partners.
• First phases of CX360 capability delivered aligned to defined use cases.
• Reduction in ad hoc intelligence reporting outside of CX360.
• Executive alignment on multi-phase capability sequencing.

Beyond 12 Months:

• CX360 recognized as the enterprise-standard intelligence engine.
• Platform capabilities expand in sequenced phases tied to measurable business use cases.
• Clear integration between analytics outputs and platform experience.
• Reduced duplication across customer intelligence tooling.

About Avalara

Avalara is defining the relationship between tax and tech. We’ve built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. We’re a billion-dollar business with a mission to be part of every transaction in the world. Our culture is bright, innovative, and disruptive, empowering our people to win.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation package, including eligibility for bonuses.
• Paid time off and paid parental leave.
• Health & wellness benefits, including private medical, life, and disability insurance (varies by location).
• Inclusive culture and diversity initiatives, including 8 employee-run resource groups with senior leadership sponsorship.