{"id":481831,"url":"https://alion.io/job/terminal-founding-customer-success-manager","title":"Founding Customer Success Manager","company":{"id":33188,"name":"Terminal","domain":"terminal.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/terminal","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":6,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-11-04T06:34:25Z"}},"role":"Customer Success","role_family":"Customer Success","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Toronto, Canada"],"countries":["CA"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":135000,"max":165000,"currency":"CAD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":117297},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Databricks","optional":true},{"name":"Fivetran","optional":true},{"name":"Snowflake","optional":true},{"name":"Twilio","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-28T20:41:40Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-07-28","last_verified_at":"2026-11-04T03:45:09Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":98,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":98},"description":"About Terminal\nTerminal builds telematics data infrastructure for the commercial fleet industry. Commercial auto insurers and fleet software companies, including industry leaders like Intact Insurance, Penske, and Progressive, depend on our platform to access GPS, speeding, and vehicle data from 330+ telematics providers. We recently raised our Series A led by Battery Ventures and are backed by Y Combinator, Golden Ventures, Penske Transportation Solutions, and Intact Private Capital. Our team works together in person in Toronto, combining early-stage speed with late-stage maturity while processing many terabytes of vehicle data every day.\nFor more on working at Terminal, see our careers page at withterminal.com/careers.\nThis role is only open to Toronto/GTA-based candidates.\nAbout the role\nPost-sales at Terminal is NOT a support function - it is our primary growth engine. Our model compounds through the retention and expansion of existing customers, not through new logos, which makes this role the operational core of the company's growth.\nWe're hiring our first Customer Success Manager to own the activation motion inside Terminal's enterprise accounts. You won't inherit an end-to-end playbook; rather, you'll have the opportunity to write it. Working in a dedicated pod with a Strategic Account Manager and a Customer Engineer, you drive each customer from signed contract to go-live and then to activation at scale, and you build the system that every CSM after you will inherit.\nYou bring the urgency and drumbeat that move large, complex organizations forward - running the cadence, helping customer counterparts reach milestones, and turning operational friction into momentum. You take account-level direction from the SAM and report to the COO. This is a senior, high-accountability role: we're hiring someone who has done this specifically, not something adjacent.\nWhat you own, and what you don’t\nYou own three things:\nTime-to-value: the days from contract signature to production certification, the single most important leading indicator of whether a customer expands or churns.\n\nActivation: getting each customer to the point of deriving real value, while developing the repeatable motion behind it.\n\nThe success plan and QBR narrative: the structured system that keeps each account on track and surfaces expansion.\n\nYou do not own commercial negotiation, pricing, or technical implementation. Those belong to the Strategic Account Manager and the Customer Engineer. The pod model exists so each role can go deep rather than broad. Role clarity is a feature, not a limitation: if you find yourself doing someone else's job, your job is to name it, not absorb it.\nWhat you'll do\n1) Drive time-to-value and activation\nOwn the days from contract signature to production certification - your single most important metric and the leading indicator of expansion vs. churn.\n\nDrive each account from go-live to deriving real value, then to activation at scale (vehicle utilization vs. contract floor).\n\nSet the proactive cadence: bi-weekly working sessions and written status updates within 24 hours of every call. No customer waits for our response.\n\n2) Own the success plan, quarterly business review (QBR), and risk\nDraft a structured success plan at kickoff, a measurable Notion schema with baselines and targets, signed by the customer (not a narrative doc) - and maintain it at every account review.\n\nKeep an adoption and risk register: named risks with mitigations and due dates. Own stakeholder alignment across various customer stakeholders,s including product, data, security, and finance - not just the champion.\n\nLead the QBR in the customer's language: surface, validate, and either advance or evolve the expansion thesis every quarter. A QBR that produces only a status update has failed.\n\n3) Build the founding CSM playbook\nAs the first CSM, co-author the success-plan template, QBR framework, and activation playbook alongside the COO and team in your first 90 days.\n\nFeed recurring friction back to R&D so activation gets easier over time.\n\nBuild the system so that every CSM hired after you inherits it.\n\nWhat we're looking for\nYou've owned enterprise customer success at a technical product company: data infrastructure, developer platforms, or similar, not a horizontal SaaS tool, and can point to the retention and activation outcomes you owned (cohort NDR, Activation metrics, 90-day adoption).\n\nYou've managed multi-stakeholder alignment inside Fortune 500 accounts: product, data, security, finance, and you know what it costs when security blocks a go-live at week seven.\n\nYou understand data pipelines well enough to know when something is broken, why it matters to an insurance data science team, and how to convey that to an executive without creating panic. You don't need to build them.\n\nYou communicate clearly and directly with executives; QBR narratives that lead with feature adoption don't get past you.\n\nA high-urgency operator: you set the drumbeat, hold customer counterparts accountable, and drive to go-live and activation at scale.\n\nNice to have\nYou've built or operated inside a structured success-plan system and have opinions about what makes one work. You know the difference between a measurable KPI and a narrative goal.\n\nDomain exposure to telematics, fleet, insurance, or logistics.\n\nExperience at companies like Snowflake, Databricks, Twilio, Stripe, or Fivetran - the right peer group.\n\nWhat success looks like\nHow we'll measure success\nTime-to-go-live: Reduce days from contract signature to first production data flowing by 25% in the first 90 days.\n\nAdoption: vehicle utilization vs. contract floor, growing month-over-month across the book of business.\n\nSuccess-plan coverage: 100% of accounts have a current, measurable success plan signed by the account champion.\n\nExpansion thesis: surfaced, validated or evolved at every QBR.\n\nPlaybook: v1 success-plan template, QBR framework, and activation playbook shipped within 90 days.\n\nRepeatability: time-to-value trends down as the playbook matures.\n\nIn the first 90 days\nTake ownership of activation plans for your accounts and establish the cadence with each customer.\n\nPartner with the COO and your team to ship v1 of the success-plan template, the QBR framework, and the activation playbook.\n\nDrive at least one account to a major go-live, production-certification or equivalent milestone.\n\nIn 6-12 months\nWork diligently and consistently to drive activation at scale within the relevant enterprise accounts.\n\nBring new accounts from contract signature to production certification within target timelines.\n\nRun quarterly business reviews (QBR) that support activation at scale and surface new expansion theses across the book.\n\nEstablish the repeatable CSM playbook every future hire inherits.\n\nPractical details\nLocation: Toronto-based\n\nTravel: as needed for customer onboarding and meetings (up to 15-25%, vast majority to the US).\n\nReports to: COO (who leads Terminal's post-sales function). Operates in a dedicated account pod with a Strategic Account Manager and Customer Engineer; takes account-level direction from the SAM.\n\nCompensation\nOn-target earnings: $135,000 - $165,000\n\nMeaningful equity, plus the benefits below. The variable is tied to time-to-production-certification and the adoption score at the first QBR. The structure is defined before you start - you won’t be negotiating it in your first week.\n\nBenefits\nStrong compensation and equity packages.\n\nBrand new MacBook and computer equipment.\n\nTop-tier health/dental benefits and a flexible healthcare spending account.\n\nPersonal spending account for professional development, fitness and wellness.\n\nFour weeks paid time off + statutory holidays.\n\nIn-person culture with an office located in downtown Toronto.\n\nThe interview process\nIntro call with COO (30 min)\n\nSkillset assessment interview (60 min)\n\nCase study + QBR presentation (72 hrs prep period + 60 min)\n\nOn-site culture loop + final (180 min)\n\nAccessibility and accommodation\nTerminal is committed to an accessible hiring process. If you need an accommodation at any stage - applying, interviewing, or completing an assessment - email  and we will work with you to meet your needs. Accommodations are available under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) and the Ontario Human Rights Code, and requesting one will never affect how your application is considered.","description_format":"text","description_chars":8469,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Apple Macbook","Equity","Professional development"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Procurement & Spend Management"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-06T17:03:38Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":7,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.265,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":98,"expected_fill_days":25,"reasons":["conf:2","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-11-04T06:34:25Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":117297,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/terminal-founding-customer-success-manager","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/terminal-founding-customer-success-manager.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-04T08:01:15Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":12524,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-05T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":33188},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=33188"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fterminal-founding-customer-success-manager"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fterminal-founding-customer-success-manager"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fterminal-founding-customer-success-manager"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/terminal-founding-customer-success-manager\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fterminal-founding-customer-success-manager"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":481831}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"terminal.ai","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":481831},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. Docs: https://alion.io/developers"}}