Director of Customer Success Engineering

Zero Networks is looking for a hands-on Director of Customer Success Engineering to lead our Customer Success Engineer (CSE) team. This is a player-coach role: you will hire, develop, and manage a team of CSEs while staying close enough to the work to run a deployment review, troubleshoot a segmentation issue, or lead an executive conversation yourself. You will own the post-sale technical experience for our customers, making sure they segment their assets and users, realize value quickly, and stay with us for the long term. You will act as a senior link between customers, Sales, Support, Product, and R&D. 

The preferred location for this role is Charlotte

• Team Leadership: Hire, onboard, coach, and retain a high-performing team of Customer Success Engineers. Set clear expectations, run regular 1:1s, and give direct, actionable feedback. 
• Technical Development: Raise the technical bar of the team through shadowing, account reviews, labs, and hands-on coaching. Lead by example rather than by slide. 
• Operating Rhythm: Define and run the cadence for the function: account coverage, engagement standards, health reviews, playbooks, and escalation paths. 
• Metrics and Reporting: Own and report on the outcomes that matter: segmentation adoption (assets and users), time to value, customer health, retention, and expansion readiness. 

Player: do the work 

• Strategic Accounts: Personally lead engagement with a small set of our largest and most complex customers, from deployment planning through full segmentation. 
• Customer Usage: Drive usage directly with customers. At Zero Networks, usage means segmenting assets and users effectively, and you should be able to guide a customer there yourself. 
• Escalation Ownership: Act as the senior escalation point for at-risk accounts and critical technical issues. Lead with extreme accountability to resolution, in collaboration with Support and R&D. 
• Training Delivery: Deliver and improve customer training and workshops, and step in for executive briefings and business reviews when the account calls for it. 

Partner: connect the business 

• Cross-Functional Alignment: Work closely with Sales, Customer Engineering, Support, and Renewals so that handoffs are clean and customers experience one team. 
• Feedback Loop: Turn patterns from the field into clear, prioritized input for Product and R&D, and close the loop with customers on what changed. 
• Scale: Build repeatable playbooks, tooling, and automation so the team can support more customers without lowering the quality of engagement. 

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant technical field (e.g., Computer Science, Engineering) or equivalent practical experience. 
• 8+ years of experience in customer success engineering, technical account management, sales engineering, professional services, or a related customer-facing technical role, preferably in the SaaS or information security industry. 
• 3+ years of experience managing and developing technical, customer-facing teams, including hiring and performance management. 
• Proven player-coach: comfortable carrying your own accounts and escalations while leading a team, and credible in front of both engineers and executives. 
• Strong technical background with the ability to understand complex technical concepts and communicate them effectively to non-technical audiences. 
• Must have hands-on technical understanding of Active Directory, networking and firewall fundamentals, REST APIs, scripting technology (Python or PowerShell), and Operating Systems (Windows, Linux, Mac). 
• Experience with network segmentation, identity security, or zero trust is a strong plus. 
• Track record of improving adoption, retention, and customer satisfaction using data, not anecdotes. 
• Experience building processes, playbooks, and metrics for a growing post-sale function. 
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with a passion for delivering exceptional customer experiences. 
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, with the ability to think critically and stay calm in high-pressure customer situations. 
• Ability to work independently, manage multiple priorities, and adapt in a fast-paced, dynamic environment. 
• Experience managing a geographically distributed team is a plus. 

Zero Networks is committed to fair and equitable compensation packages. The compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications, relevant experience, and work location. For candidates who receive an offer, the annual base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary + commission target (for sales/commissioned roles) is expected to be between this range: $ 190-220 USD. In addition to a competitive salary, our packages include stock options, attractive benefits, and an annual bonus (for non-commissioned roles).