Head of Client and Partner Success

Remote Full TimeWashington, WA, United States (Remote)Merit America

The American economy is broken. Today 53 million working adults–nearly half of the U.S. workforce–do not earn a living wage. And these talented workers have few options to advance: college is too long and expensive, full-time bootcamp programs don’t offer enough flexibility, and online courses don’t have the structure or support to translate learning into a new career. The result? Talented workers, disproportionately people of color and women, get stuck in low-wage roles with no way to build a better life for themselves and their families.

Merit America is a national nonprofit that creates pathways to family-sustaining careers for Americans without college degrees, stuck in low-wage work. Our fast, flexible solutions are built for working adults: we start by analyzing tens of millions of job postings to identify in-demand, high-paying tech careers, and then work with industry-recognized partners to train for these roles with part-time programs that combine flexible online learning with best-in-class coaching. Finally, we work with a broad constellation of local and national employers like JPMorgan Chase and Infosys to place learners into higher-earning, family-sustaining jobs, driving an average wage gain of $19k. Merit America is on a mission to build a scalable pathway for workers to join the middle class through merit, not money. We’re on track to generate $1B in wage gains by 2024.

About the Role:

The primary mission of the founding Head of Client and Partner Success is to build and lead the success and partnership teams for Merit America’s earned revenue function. These partners are employers who hire our alumni for family-sustaining jobs. The Head of Client and Partner Success will work with their teams to ensure clients and partners fully utilize their contracts by hitting learner hiring targets, renewing their contracts, and growing their accounts year-over-year and to new business units within the same company.

The Head of Client and Partner Success is an exempt role and will report to the Vice President of Earned Revenue. A successful candidate will:

  1. Create sustainable, scalable systems and processes to build and expand Merit America’s client and partner success function;
  2. Lead a team of Success Managers to ensure contract utilization, renewal, and upsell; and
  3. Assist with direct management of our largest partnerships: Google Career Certificates Fund, OneTen, and Amazon.

As the founding Head of Client and Partner Success at Merit America, this role will have a unique opportunity to design and build the systems and processes for our client and partner success function to support our employer partners in hiring increasing numbers of learners.

What You’ll be Doing:

The responsibilities of the Head of Client and Partner Success will include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Hire, build, and manage the Client and Partner Success teams, ensuring it matches the business’s needs as we scale, coach, and develop Success Managers to surpass their goals.
  • Develop systems and processes: Define and scale client and partner success workflows and playbooks to drive success (learner placement) for enterprise partners; work cross-functionally with Merit America’s Product, Sales, Marketing, and Program teams to improve processes, drive adoption, and increase value, so we continually satisfy and delight our clients (employer partners)
  • Drive, collaborate, develop, and own goalsand the bi-annual Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for the client success team
  • Represent the client voice  to influence the GTM roadmap:  collect client and partner feedback and, in collaboration with the Head of Sales, design and iterate on the GTM strategy

Oversee success of strategic partnerships: Ensure that our strategic accounts (Google, Amazon, and OneTen) are thriving, as measured by contract utilization, renewals, and growth

What Makes a Successful Candidate:

We know that women and people of color are often less likely to apply to a position if they don’t match 100% of the job qualifications. Don’t let that be the reason you miss out on this opportunity!  We encourage you to apply if you can demonstrate many of these skills and competencies. Below are the skills that are relevant for thriving in this role:

Must Haves:

Customer Success Strategy and Implementation

  • 5-10+ years experience building and managing a client success team, including creating and executing Customer Success procedures and playbooks, setting targets, and applying metrics to track account health and ensure targets are hit
  • Coaching and mentorship approach to leadership with a strong focus on team development and a growth mindset
  • Experience growing revenue by establishing trusted advisor relationships with clients that return results
  • Strong written & verbal communication skills
  • Knowledge of and experience with Salesforce CRM
  • Solutions-oriented and positive attitude, with the motivation to design and implement systems and processes where they don’t yet exist

Data-Driven & Results-Oriented Operations

  • Bias for action – a willingness to roll up your sleeves and do whatever it takes to make things successful
  • Phenomenal operational skills and experience, including an obsession with using data to manage performance and drive experimentation; passionate about fostering a strong team data culture
  • Ability to create client and partner success playbooks quickly, test them, measure performance with data, and iterate rapidly
  • Comfort making bold, data-backed changes to achieve annual targets
  • Impressive attention to detail

Experience in High-Growth Organizations:

  • Strong background in managing organizational change while quickly establishing credibility
  • Exceptional organizational skills to juggle multiple demanding opportunities at once and thrive in a rapidly-changing environment

Exceptional Interpersonal Skills and Motivation:

  • High emotional intelligence, with an aptitude to empower and enable team members through authenticity, integrity, advocacy, empathy, and levity
  • Ability to develop trusted relationships, deeply listen to client and partner needs, and align those needs with solutions
  • Strong written & verbal communication skills that translate into clear and concise strategy and execution
  • Extremely responsive and fast on follow-through; excellent tracking of tasks and execution through completion
  • Commitment and focus on developing a team to surpass goals consistently

Mission-Driven Team Player

  • Be energized by our organizational mission – to provide a pathway to family-sustaining careers for Americans without college degrees
  • Proven history of living within our values
  • Sense of deep personal responsibility for our collective success
  • Commitment to DEIJ

Nice to Have:

  • Experience in talent acquisition or staffing industry
  • Experience in B2B sales, especially with enterprise companies

Other Logistics

  • This position is full time: 4 days/week
  • Location: Remote
  • Salary: $160,300 – $160,300

Our goal is to have competitive and equitable compensation. We have a market-based compensation approach, which means we benchmark each role from reputable data sources. We compare our benchmarks against similarly sized non-profit organizations with comparable annual budgets and geographical areas. We pay the same rate for the same roles and adjust to comply with statutory mandates. 

We take care of our employees by providing the following perks and benefits:

  • 4-day work week (Fridays are an operating day if there is a holiday closure during the week)
  • Medical, Dental and Vision insurance (100% Paid Employee Only Coverage)
  • Flexible Spending Account and Health Savings Account
  • Dependent care Flexible Spending Account
  • Health Reimbursement Account fully funded by Merit
  • Education reimbursement & personal development stipend
  • Short and long-term disability
  • Unlimited vacation (after a 90-day introductory period)
  • Paid Parental Leave and Adoption benefits (after 1 year of employment)
  • 10 federally recognized holidays
  • 1 week office closure in July (week of July 4th)
  • 2 week holiday office closure in December/January
  • 401(k) retirement plan with automatic Merit contribution
  • Employee Assistance Program | Talkspace | Sanvello
  • Discount perks at work program
  • Phone/technology stipend
  • Home office setup stipend

Remote Work & Sponsorship

Candidates must reside within the 50 states or District of Columbia and have full authorization to work in the 50 U.S. states & the District of Columbia (international work abroad, including the U.S. territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, and other islands are excluded). In addition, Merit America doesn’t offer employment visa sponsorship.

Equal Opportunity Statement

Building an inclusive, high-performing team that is diverse across lines of personal identity is integral to our success and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer.

This means we do not discriminate against any job applicant or employee because of their race, ethnicity, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This applies to all terms and conditions of employment.

We actively strive and evolve to develop and maintain workspaces that are fully inclusive. We encourage candidates from underrepresented groups to apply.

Still excited about our work?  You can learn more about our work in this video we made with our founding partner, Google.

E-Verify Statement

This employer participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. If E-Verify cannot confirm that you are authorized to work, this employer is required to give you written instructions and an opportunity to contact Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Social Security Administration (SSA) so you can begin to resolve the issue before the employer can take any action against you, including terminating your employment. Employers can only use E-Verify once you have accepted a job offer and completed the I-9 Form.

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  • This position has been filled

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