Strategic Customer Success Manager (In-Person Preferred)

About Nexus

Nexus is an AI-powered decision intelligence platform purpose-built for K-12. School districts run on dozens of disconnected systems — SIS, assessments, finance, HR, transportation, facilities — and the people making the biggest decisions have the least access to the data behind them.

Nexus sits on top of all of it. A proprietary semantic layer connects and normalizes data across every system a district operates, and the decision engine built on top of that infrastructure figures out what matters and surfaces it before anyone has to ask. The result is something closer to a full-time data analyst and strategic advisor than a reporting tool, available on demand across every department in the district.

We're growing fast, adding districts across multiple states, and building toward a platform that learns from every engagement, tracks the outcomes of every decision, and compounds institutional knowledge across leadership transitions. The team we're building now is what gets us there.

Before you read any further

This is a building role at a company in the middle of a breakout moment. You'll start hands-on-keys — running accounts, leading trainings, driving adoption in districts — and grow into the person who owns the entire CS function. If you've led a CS team before, left to find something earlier-stage, and want to build the department the right way this time, this is that opportunity.

If you're looking for a role where someone else sets the strategy and you execute it, this isn't it. If you want to be the one who writes the playbook, hires the team, and owns the number — keep reading.

The Role

We're looking for a Strategic Customer Success Manager who doesn't just manage accounts but transforms them. You'll own the full customer lifecycle from onboarding through renewal and expansion, but the most critical work happens in between: getting district teams to actually use Nexus as a living part of their weekly and monthly workflows.

That means showing a curriculum director how to pull a data snapshot before a board meeting. Helping a superintendent build a quarterly review cadence around Nexus. Convincing a principal that the dashboard they've been ignoring is worth opening every Monday. This is an influence and adoption role as much as it is a CS role.

You'll work closely with our district strategy lead on account planning, implementation sequencing, and making sure every engagement compounds. You'll partner tightly with sales to ensure clean handoffs, realistic scoping, and expansion pipeline that comes from customer outcomes rather than cold outreach.

You'll be supported during onboarding by our founding CSM, who will share context, introduce you to accounts, and help you ramp. After that, you'll run your book independently. Nobody is hovering over your calendar. You own your time, your accounts, and your outcomes.

This role is based in Knoxville, TN. We are open to a remote position however we believe in would greatly benefit the team for you to be in the office with the rest of the leadership team, and on the road visiting districts often. We're building something that requires proximity — to each other and to our customers.

What you'll own

• Full-cycle customer success across a book of K-12 district partners: onboarding, training, adoption, renewal, and expansion
• District-specific adoption strategies that move accounts from single-user dependency to multi-stakeholder, workflow-embedded usage across cabinet, campus leadership, and data teams
• Onsite and virtual training tailored by district size, role, and data maturity, with the presence and credibility to hold a room of superintendents or a table of data coordinators
• Cross-functional partnership with our district strategy and sales teams: tight feedback loops on account health, implementation capacity, expansion timing, and competitive dynamics
• Client-facing materials: onboarding guides, training decks, spotlight content, and adoption resources, most of which are still being built
• Internal advocacy for your districts, surfacing product needs, integration priorities, and real-world friction to our product and engineering teams
• Tracking adoption signals and account health, and surfacing risks before they become churn

What we're looking for

• 4+ years of customer success experience with a complex SaaS product, the kind that requires real behavior change and adoption work, not support ticket management
• Proven ability to influence stakeholders who didn't ask for the tool and weren't part of the buying decision
• Comfortable presenting to senior district leadership (superintendents, CFOs, curriculum directors) and working alongside data coordinators in the same afternoon
• Fluent with AI and data. You use AI tools in your own workflow and can help district contacts see where AI fits in theirs. You understand how data integration works at a conceptual level (SIS, assessment platforms, finance systems, APIs, SFTPs) and can speak credibly about data-driven decision-making.
• Genuinely self-directed. You don't need someone to set your priorities or check your work. You figure out what matters and go do it.
• Strong communicator in writing, on calls, and in the room. You can run a live training and adapt on the fly when the audience shifts.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and energized by building processes, assets, and relationships that didn't exist before you.

Preferred

• Prior experience working in or with K-12 school districts
• Familiarity with state accountability systems (TEA, ACAP, etc.)
• Experience with EdTech SaaS