Chief Customer Officer
Reports to: CEO
Location: Denver, CO (on-site 3 days a week)
Compensation: $235,000 to $250,000 base + 20% bonus
The Opportunity:
Our client is a Private Equity-backed SaaS company (Marlin Equity Partners) providing Fund
Raising, Investor Relationship, and Deal Sourcing solutions for the world’s leading private capital
firms. We have established clear product market fit and are now executing the transition from
early scale to growth stage, launching a next-generation product suite with significant expansion
ahead.
This is a moment of change hire. We are searching for a Chief Customer Officer to own
everything that happens after a customer signs, and to build the discipline, structure, and
strategic clarity that the next chapter demands. They have taken a tactical service and support
organization stuck in a reactive motion and transformed it into a strategic, forward-thinking team
that creates a competitive advantage.
What You’ll Own:
The post-sale operating system, end-to-end. You will lead a team of approximately 20 across Customer Success, Technical Support, and Relationship Management. The mandate is not to manage this organization; it is to transform it: from reactive and account-managed to proactive, data-driven, and commercially oriented.
Core Responsibilities:
1. Client Retention and Revenue Protection: The right candidate will build the team and instill the culture to ensure the following are accomplished:
• Own Net Revenue Retention (NRR) as the leading operational metric. Identify at-risk accounts early, drive structured recovery playbooks, and hold the team accountable to outcomes rather than activity.
• Build the infrastructure for proactive client engagement: health scoring, early warning signals, escalation protocols, and executive-level relationship coverage on strategic accounts.
• Convert the Relationship Management function into a commercial driver, surfacing expansion opportunities and closing them rather than simply identifying them.
2. Customer Success and Support Transformation: We are looking for someone who has demonstrably transformed a service and support organization. Not optimized one, not inherited a good one, but taken a reactive, under-structured function and rebuilt it into something that retains clients, generates expansion revenue, and earns trust with sophisticated buyers.
• Lead the Customer Success and Support organization through a fundamental shift from a ticket closure culture to a value delivery culture.
• Define tiered service models appropriate to client size and complexity. Allocate Customer Service Managers (CSM) and Technical Account Managers (TAM) resources against accounts where investment will be recovered and make deliberate decisions about the rest.
• Build the playbooks, escalation paths, and accountability structures the team needs to operate with consistency and confidence.
• Establish executive relationship coverage for top-tier accounts and personally own several of the most strategic client relationships.
3. Operating Rhythm and Accountability:
• Establish and maintain the company’s operating cadence: weekly business reviews,
cross-functional alignment, and clear accountability structures that translate PE
mandated growth targets into departmental execution.
• Translate the CEO’s strategic priorities into department-level plans with named owners,
timelines, and measurable outcomes.
• Maintain a lean, high-output organization. Build scale through improved efficiencies,
processes, and tooling before adding headcount. All headcount additions must be justified
by capacity modeling rather than urgency or noise.
4. Product Feedback Loop and Launch Readiness:
• Serve as the operational bridge between customer-facing teams and Product and Engineering. Customer insights must become product inputs in a structured, repeatable way rather than through ad hoc escalations.
• Own readiness for our upcoming product launch: training, documentation, support playbooks, and the client communication strategy.
5. PE Reporting and Board Level Visibility:
• Define, own, and report on the core operational KPIs: Churn, NRR, CSAT, Gross Margin on Services, Support Efficiency, and Time to Value.
• Partner with the CEO in preparing Board materials and reporting to Marlin Equity Partners. Understand what drives valuation in a PE context and operate accordingly.
6. Professional Services and Implementation (Scope Dependent)
For the right candidate, this role will also include oversight of the Professional Services and Implementation function. This is not a requirement of the role at the outset. It is an expansion of scope available to a candidate with demonstrated PS leadership experience and the bandwidth to absorb it without compromising the core Customer Success and retention mandate.
What We’re Looking For:
Non-negotiable:
• 10+ years of operational leadership in a B2B SaaS environment as a COO, VP of Customer Success, or VP of Operations with P&L exposure.
• Enterprise SaaS client experience. You have managed a team that supports a vertical solution with industry-specific workflows and analytics.
• A proven transformation track record. You have taken a service or support organization that was substandard, structurally, culturally, and commercially, and rebuilt it into a high performing team. You can point to the before, the after, and what you did to get there.
• PE environment fluency. You understand the pace, the reporting requirements, and the metrics that matter to a financial sponsor. You are comfortable being accountable to a Board.
• SaaS model expertise. Deep familiarity with churn economics, recurring revenue retention, NRR benchmarking, and the tradeoffs in Customer Success resource allocation.
• A builder’s orientation. This role requires constructing systems, not inheriting them. You are energized by a blank canvas and frustrated by stagnation.
• Denver-based. This team needs an on-site leader.
Preferred:
• Experience in financial technology, alternative asset management software, or adjacent capital markets infrastructure. Our clients are among the most sophisticated buyers in the market, and familiarity with how GPs operate is a genuine advantage.
• PS or Implementation leadership experience, for candidates interested in the expanded scope described above.
Why This Role:
• A market that is growing. Private capital is expanding globally. The demand for GP operating infrastructure is real and accelerating.
• Direct CEO partnership. You will work alongside the CEO and the executive leadership team as a true operational counterpart.
• Strategic planning. As part of the executive leadership team, you will contribute to the company’s overall strategic planning, Board meetings, and Go-to-Market execution.
#LI-SL2 #LI-OnSite
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