Manager, Customer Success

About the role

The Customer Success Manager leads and grows a team of Customer Success Managers who deliver a best-in-class experience for life sciences customers. They personally own strategic account relationships and set the standard for how Automata delivers integrated lab automation.

Responsibilities

• Team leadership (approx. 55%): Line manage a team of four to six Customer Success Managers. Run 1:1s, set clear expectations, coach against the Customer Success career progression framework, own development plans and performance reviews, and lead hiring and onboarding as the team grows.
• Set the standard for project management, customer communication and tooling discipline across the team.
• Strategic account ownership (approx. 20%): Personally own a book of strategic accounts from contract signature through low-level design, procurement and build, in-house testing, shipping, installation, re-testing, training and handover to field services. Act as the trusted senior point of contact for customer scientists and leadership, including the difficult conversations on timelines, scope and technical trade-offs.
• Portfolio oversight and escalations (approx. 15%): Maintain a clear, current view of timelines, risk and resourcing across every US account. Report status, risk and mitigation to Customer Success leadership early and clearly. Step into at-risk accounts alongside the account CSM to reset the path to success.
• Process, product and cross-functional impact (approx. 10%): Lead change initiatives that improve how the Customer Success organization delivers. Act as the voice of the customer into Product, communicating roadmap and platform gaps to customers and priorities back to the business. Build relationships with third-party instrument vendors that make our deployments smoother.

Requirements

• 8+ years in customer-facing roles within life sciences or lab technology (customer success, account management, project or program management, field applications), with at least 2 years line managing a customer-facing team.
• Proven track record delivering complex, multi-stakeholder hardware and software deployments into working laboratories (lab automation, analytical instruments, liquid handling, LIMS or ELN integrations).
• Expert understanding of laboratory science and the lab automation landscape: vendors, product lines, limitations, and how instrument choice affects a customer's scientific workflow.
• Strong program management skills: running multiple concurrent projects, proactively identifying and mitigating risk, allocating resources across projects, and reporting clearly to leadership.
• Fluent in Asana, Jira or similar tools.
• Executive-level stakeholder management. Comfortable protecting both the customer's interests and Automata's in the same conversation, and able to handle delays, scope changes and technical issues with senior non-technical audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to coach and develop people, with evidence of raising individual and team performance.
• Experience in start-up or scale-up environments where process is still being built.
• US based. Greater Boston preferred with hybrid working; strong remote candidates considered with regular travel to our UK or US HQ.
• Willingness to travel to customer sites as needed (typically 20 to 30%).

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with automated lab equipment, scheduling software, or scripting (Python, SDKs, JSON) used to configure and troubleshoot automated workflows.
• Scientific depth in cell-based assays, genomics, proteomics or clinical diagnostics workflows.
• Experience delivering into regulated or GxP environments and familiarity with lab automation compliance and safety standards.
• Ownership of commercial outcomes on a book of business (renewals, expansions, reference customers).
• Experience building or scaling a customer success or professional services function.
• Prior experience as a Principal or Staff-level CSM, or equivalent, before moving into people leadership.