Director, Customer Success - Onboarding & Adoption

Job Description

Austin, TX 

We’re hiring a leader to build and scale two critical global functions: Customer Onboarding & Targeted Adoption. 

This role is central to ensuring customers in our higher volume segments realize early value and long-term success through the right combination of human-led and digital onboarding engagements. Additionally, it ensures our more established customers are maximizing value from their investment, including complex use cases and product adoption scenarios. 

You’ll lead the development, launch, scale and across both teams – including hiring, operations, process and execution. 

This role is highly cross functional requiring partnership and collaboration across Sales, Product, Marketing, Digital and more. You’ll report to the VP, Global Customer Success. 

What You’ll Do:

• Build and lead a global onboarding team focused on lower ARR cohorts, delivering high-volume, structured engagements to drive early value and successful go-lives

• Stand up a targeted adoption team of experienced CSMs who operate across accounts within regions, diving into complex product adoption scenarios when deeper engagement is required

• Define onboarding experiences by segment, including webinar and digital-led models, 1:1 onboarding sessions, and strong handoff and integration processes 

• Align onboarding and adoption engagements to customer objectives, plan types, and lifecycle stages

• Partner with Sales, Product, Marketing, Digital and Analytics teams to position resources correctly and integrate with existing onboarding flows and content

• Drive tooling and workflow decisions for team assignment, scheduling, and engagement tracking

• Ensure both teams are measurable, scalable, and outcomes-driven, with clear KPIs tied to customer activation and adoption. 

What You Bring:

• 12+ years of professional experience in a GTM and/or Success function 

• 5+ years of people leadership experience, ideally including experience as a 2nd-line leader or leader of leaders (leading a global team ideal) 

• Proven success building and scaling Customer Success, Onboarding, or Implementation teams preferably in a SaaS environment

• Strong data fluency and technical aptitude 

• Operational strength and comfort driving execution in fast-moving environments

• Experience with tools like Zendesk, Salesforce, Gainsight, Gong, and other platforms

• Strong collaboration and stakeholder management across GTM and Product orgs

• Spanish fluency a plus, but not required 

• Willingness to travel quarterly to global sites

The US annualized OTE (On Target Earnings) range for this position is $209,000.00-$313,000.00 with a pay mix of 70/30 (base/commission). This position may also be eligible for bonus, benefits, or related incentives. While this range reflects the minimum and maximum value for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations, the offer for the successful candidate for this position will be based on job related capabilities, applicable experience, and other factors such as work location. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only (or OTE for commissions based roles), and do not include bonus, benefits, or related incentives.

Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster