Director, Customer Success

About this role

ABOUT OPENROUTER

OpenRouter is the unified interface for AI inference, giving developers and organizations access to hundreds of models through a single API. Our platform helps teams choose, route, evaluate, and scale model usage across providers, making it easier to build production AI applications with the right model for every use case.

As inference becomes a core operating layer for modern software companies, OpenRouter helps customers move faster, reduce complexity, and get more value from the rapidly evolving model ecosystem.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We're looking for a Director of Customer Success to build and scale the next generation of Customer Success at OpenRouter.

This is a builder role, not a traditional Customer Success management role.

Our ambition is to build an AI-native Customer Success organization that combines exceptional customer relationships, deep technical expertise, and intelligent systems to drive adoption, retention, and growth at scale.

You'll own our Customer Success strategy and execution across AI-native startups, enterprises, and strategic customers. You'll lead a team of Customer Success Managers, partner closely with Forward Deployed Engineering, Support and Sales, and build the systems that help our customers realize value from OpenRouter.

The ideal candidate has led Customer Success at a hyperscaling AI-native company, model lab, or developer infrastructure platform. You understand consumption-based businesses, can build trusted relationships with technical and executive stakeholders, and know how to turn customer usage into measurable business outcomes.

We're looking for someone who can operate at both ends of the spectrum: personally engage with our largest strategic customers while building AI-powered systems and scalable programs that support thousands of growing developers and startups.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Build an AI-Native Customer Success Organization: Define and execute a Customer Success strategy that scales through intelligent systems, automation, and high-impact customer engagement rather than proportional headcount growth.

- Drive Adoption and Customer Value: Own the customer journey from onboarding through production adoption, value realization, retention, and expansion across our customer segments.

- Own Retention and Growth: Drive Gross Revenue Retention (GRR), Net Revenue Retention (NRR), customer health, and inference consumption growth. Partner with Sales on strategic renewals and expansion opportunities.

- Build Scalable Customer Engagement: Develop AI-powered workflows, customer intelligence, and lifecycle programs that proactively identify risks, uncover growth opportunities, and deliver personalized engagement at scale.

- Lead Strategic Customer Relationships: Build trusted relationships with developers, technical leaders, founders, and executives at some of the world's most innovative AI companies and enterprises.

- Build a High-Performance Team: Lead and develop exceptional Customer Success Managers who combine technical fluency, commercial acumen, and strong customer ownership.

- Drive Operational Excellence: Establish customer health frameworks, success plans, adoption milestones, executive business reviews, and measurable customer outcomes.

- Partner Cross-Functionally: Work closely with Sales, Forward Deployed Engineering, Product, and Support to accelerate customer activation, resolve adoption barriers, and identify opportunities for growth.

- Turn Customer Insights Into Action: Use product telemetry, inference usage, customer feedback, and business signals to drive proactive engagement and influence product strategy.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

- AI-Native Leadership: Experience leading and scaling Customer Success at a hyperscaling AI-native company, model lab, or developer-first infrastructure platform.

- Proven Customer Success Experience: 8+ years in Customer Success, account management, or related post-sales functions, including 4+ years leading teams through significant growth.

- Builder DNA: You've personally built scalable Customer Success programs, workflows, automations, or AI-powered systems that meaningfully improve customer outcomes and team effectiveness.

- Developer-First Mindset: You understand APIs, SDKs, LLMs, inference infrastructure, and the challenges of taking AI applications from experimentation into production.

- Commercial Ownership: You have a strong track record of driving retention, expansion, NRR, GRR, and consumption growth in usage-based or subscription businesses.

- Strategic Customer Leadership: You're comfortable engaging with developers, engineering leaders, founders, and C-level executives, translating technical adoption into measurable business value.

- Track Record of Scale: You've built repeatable customer engagement models that support significant growth in customers and revenue without proportional increases in headcount.

- Data-Driven Approach: You use product usage, customer health, adoption signals, and revenue data to prioritize engagement and drive outcomes.

- High Ownership: You move quickly, thrive in ambiguity, and are comfortable balancing hands-on customer work with building long-term organizational capabilities.

NICE TO HAVE

- Experience at a leading LLM model lab, AI inference platform, or developer-first AI infrastructure company.

- Experience managing enterprise and AI-native startup customer segments.

- Experience building AI agents, automated customer lifecycle programs, or intelligent customer engagement workflows.

- Familiarity with model routing, inference economics, latency, reliability, and production AI workloads.

- Experience building Customer Success organizations in consumption-based, product-led growth environments.

- Experience partnering closely with Forward Deployed Engineering or technical implementation teams.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

In your first 30 days, you'll develop a deep understanding of…