What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Renewals Manager position at Zendesk?
Job Description
Job Summary:
As a Senior Renewals Manager, you will own and drive the full contract renewal process for a strategic portfolio of NA SMB SaaS customers, ensuring retention, revenue growth, and customer satisfaction. In this role, you will serve as a trusted advisor to both internal stakeholders and external clients, using data-driven insights, strong commercial acumen, and collaborative strategies to guide renewal negotiations. You’ll be a key player in identifying risks and opportunities, shaping renewal playbooks, and influencing account strategies in partnership with Sales, Customer Success, and cross-functional teams.
Key Responsibilities
Business Knowledge
Business Knowledge
Possesses in-depth knowledge of Zendesk products, including roadmap awareness, use-case positioning, and competitive differentiation. Leverages industry expertise to align renewals with evolving customer needs and business goals.
Relationship Management
Builds and sustains long-term relationships with executive stakeholders, acting as a strategic advisor and trusted advocate. Navigates complex organizational structures to ensure stakeholder alignment and ongoing engagement. Understands prompts for customer escalation and can execute quickly to gather appropriate audience.
Communication & Conflict Resolution
Communicates with clarity, precision, and influence across all levels of the customer organization. Resolves complex objections and escalations with professionalism, empathy, and a focus on delivering mutually beneficial outcomes.
Analytical Skills
Expertly interprets customer usage, financial data, health scores, and renewal trends to drive account strategy, retention forecasting, and executive reporting. Uses data to guide decision-making and improve renewal performance at scale.
Negotiation
Leads high-stakes negotiations with confidence, balancing business objectives with customer needs. Uses strategic concessioning, value framing, and swap plays to preserve revenue and strengthen customer commitment.
Qualifications
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.
As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.
Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.
Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to peopleandplaces@zendesk.com with your specific accommodation request.
Job Summary:
As a Senior Renewals Manager, you will own and drive the full contract renewal process for a strategic portfolio of NA SMB SaaS customers, ensuring retention, revenue growth, and customer satisfaction. In this role, you will serve as a trusted advisor to both internal stakeholders and external clients, using data-driven insights, strong commercial acumen, and collaborative strategies to guide renewal negotiations. You’ll be a key player in identifying risks and opportunities, shaping renewal playbooks, and influencing account strategies in partnership with Sales, Customer Success, and cross-functional teams.
Key Responsibilities
- Own and manage the full lifecycle of renewals for high-value North America SMB accounts, ensuring optimal customer retention and minimizing revenue leakage
- Lead renewal planning with Sales, Customer Success, and Product teams to align on customer health, expansion paths, product usage, and strategic initiatives
- Engage with VP and C-level customer stakeholders to understand business objectives, align contract strategy, and reinforce long-term value
- Serve as a primary commercial point of contact for renewal discussions, pricing alignment, term negotiations, and contractual governance
- Anticipate risk through analysis of customer signals, usage trends, and engagement gaps—developing and executing mitigation strategies in partnership with cross-functional teams
- Lead complex negotiations involving multi-product solutions, budget constraints, custom pricing, and contractual amendments
- Drive adoption of internal renewal methodologies and continuously improve forecasting accuracy and pipeline transparency
- Act as a trusted advisor and subject matter expert in renewals, offering strategic guidance to internal teams and mentoring junior renewal professionals
- Champion process optimization initiatives by identifying gaps, creating scalable playbooks, and partnering with RevOps to improve tooling and reporting
- Represent the Renewals function in strategic planning and operational review meetings with Sales Leadership, Finance, Legal, and Customer Success
Business Knowledge
Business Knowledge
Possesses in-depth knowledge of Zendesk products, including roadmap awareness, use-case positioning, and competitive differentiation. Leverages industry expertise to align renewals with evolving customer needs and business goals.
Relationship Management
Builds and sustains long-term relationships with executive stakeholders, acting as a strategic advisor and trusted advocate. Navigates complex organizational structures to ensure stakeholder alignment and ongoing engagement. Understands prompts for customer escalation and can execute quickly to gather appropriate audience.
Communication & Conflict Resolution
Communicates with clarity, precision, and influence across all levels of the customer organization. Resolves complex objections and escalations with professionalism, empathy, and a focus on delivering mutually beneficial outcomes.
Analytical Skills
Expertly interprets customer usage, financial data, health scores, and renewal trends to drive account strategy, retention forecasting, and executive reporting. Uses data to guide decision-making and improve renewal performance at scale.
Negotiation
Leads high-stakes negotiations with confidence, balancing business objectives with customer needs. Uses strategic concessioning, value framing, and swap plays to preserve revenue and strengthen customer commitment.
Qualifications
- 4-6 years of experience in SaaS renewals, customer success, account management, or sales in a high-growth or enterprise environment
- Proven track record of owning and closing high-value and complex contract renewals with executive stakeholders
- Deep expertise in commercial negotiation, customer relationship management, and strategic account planning
- Strong proficiency in Salesforce, CPQ, Gainsight (or similar tools), with a data-first approach to managing pipeline and forecasting
- Exceptional verbal and written communication skills; able to distill complex ideas into compelling narratives for executive audiences
- Experience building and scaling renewal processes, playbooks, or frameworks across cross-functional teams
- Demonstrated leadership through mentoring, training, or influencing cross-functional peers
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.
As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.
Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.
Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to peopleandplaces@zendesk.com with your specific accommodation request.
Salary : $126,000 - $190,000