Strategic Customer Success Manager

About CoLab
At CoLab, we help mechanical engineering teams bring life-changing products to market years sooner.
We build AI for engineers designing cars, medical devices, and jet engines. Products this complex aren't sketched and sent to production. Teams spend months on iterations, reviews, and tests, predicting how every part performs before anything is built. CoLab is where those reviews happen, and we capture the rationale behind every change. Other tools show what changed between versions. Only CoLab knows why. That's how our AI helps manufacturers like Bobcat, Triumph Motorcycles, and GE Appliances make better decisions, eliminate rework cycles, and get to market faster.
Proudly based in St. John's, Newfoundland, CoLab started with one customer in 2018. Since then we've raised a $72M Series C, been named the 57th fastest growing company in North America by Deloitte (Fast 500™), signed multi-year AI partnerships with companies like Bombardier, and grown to a team of 250 .
About the role
As a
Strategic Customer Success Manager
, you will serve as a trusted advisor to our most complex, global enterprise customers. You will lead the post-sale customer journey, driving business transformation and ensuring customers effectively adopt CoLab to achieve measurable ROI. You'll drive executive alignment, identify and mitigate risks, surface expansion opportunities, and collaborate cross-functionally to maximize customer value.
You will collaborate with Sales partners to support growth and retention and work closely with a team of Customer Engineering Advisors to enable customer teams on CoLab's capabilities. Your role is to execute a customer success strategy that drives retention, value realization, and long-term growth.
In-person customer engagement is a key part of this role's success. On-site visits have consistently driven higher adoption, deeper relationships, and better business outcomes for our customers. We recognize personal travel constraints may arise and we expect Strategic CSMs to proactively plan for and prioritize in-person opportunities.
Twice annually we bring together all CoLabers at our HQ in St. John's, Newfoundland (typically in June and December), to participate in company Team Week.
What you'll do
Own gross revenue retention (GRR) across your book of business, with strong influence over NRR and account growth
Define and communicate a clear customer success strategy aligned to their goals and CoLab's expansion motion
Lead executive engagement, stakeholder mapping, and success planning to drive measurable outcomes
Lead structured executive business reviews that translate CoLab usage to measurable outcomes and business impact
Coach customers to take ownership of their outcomes and proactively challenge the status quo to unlock ROI
Manage project timelines, stakeholders, and implementation milestones in a structured way to maximize product adoption & customer value
Drive outcomes with a bias for urgency, balancing quality execution with time-to-value
Collaborate with Sales on growth strategy, account planning, and renewal execution
Identify risks early, define and execute action plans, escalate with urgency
Leverage usage data, customer feedback, and adoption insights to inform strategy and measure success
Support champions in building internal case studies and advocacy to accelerate adoption and expansion
Partner with champions to drive change management, optimize engineering workflows, and accelerate time-to-value
Partner with Sales in late-stage deals to shape rollout plans and success metrics
Drive internal CS maturity by contributing to playbooks, onboarding assets, and scalable frameworks
Act as a leader across the GTM org, modeling cross-functional alignment, ownership, and high performance
What we're looking for
7 years in Customer Success, Strategic Consulting, or Enterprise Account Management
Proven success driving enterprise transformation and value realization across global Fortune 1000 accounts
Experience with customer journey orchestration and success planning in a high-ACV SaaS environment
Track record of partnering with Sales to shape and execute multi-threaded expansion strategies in large, complex organizations
Familiarity with navigating complex procurement, security, and compliance processes in enterprise accounts
Strong executive presence and communication skills
Comfortable operating in fast-paced, high-growth environments
Highly organized, data-driven, and accountable
Willingness to travel up to 25% of the time
Nice to have
Experience supporting engineering or manufacturing customers (CAD, PLM, or technical tools)
Familiarity with land-and-expand SaaS motions
Background in vertical SaaS (e.g., construction tech, industrial IoT, logistics)
You'll thrive at CoLab if you:
Excel at translating product functionality into customer value in a technical domain
Take ownership of customer outcomes and internal clarity
Thrive in a fast-paced, evolving environment where processes are still being shaped
Are energized by solving complex customer challenges
Lead strategic conversations with confidence and clarity
Excel at cross-functional collaboration, even in ambiguous territory
Operate with urgency and proactively mitigate risk
Translate product signals into actionable customer strategy