SMB Account Manager

About this role

ABOUT HANDSHAKE

Handshake was founded on a simple belief that everyone deserves a path to a great career, regardless of where they went to school or who they know. Today, we power 25 million job seekers, 1 million+ employers, and 1,600 educational institutions.

In 2025, we started Handshake AI and built the fastest-growing AI data business in history. We work directly with frontier AI lab researchers to create evaluations, publish benchmarks, and push the boundary of data. We’ve grown from $0 to ~$1B run rate and pay ~$60M to over 30K individuals every month.

Why join Handshake now:

- Shape how every career evolves in the AI economy, at global scale, with impact your friends, family and peers can see and feel

- Partner hand-in-hand with world-class AI labs, Fortune 500 partners and the world’s top educational institutions

- Work together with engineers, scientists, operators, and more from Palantir, Meta, Scale AI, and former YC founders

- Build a massive, fast-growing business with billions in revenue

ABOUT THE ROLE

Account Management at Handshake owns Gross Revenue Retention (GRR), Net Revenue Retention (NRR), renewals, and expansion revenue across our customer base.

As an Account Manager, SMB / Mid-Market, you'll own the commercial relationship and growth strategy for a portfolio of approximately 75–130 customers, acting as a strategic commercial owner rather than a contract-execution renewal rep. You’ll be accountable for retaining and growing revenue while helping customers maximize the value of their partnership with Handshake.

You’ll partner closely with Customer Success, Sales, RevOps, Product, Support, Finance, and Legal to develop account strategies, mitigate risk, navigate complex customer needs, and identify opportunities to deepen and expand customer relationships.

This role is ideal for someone who enjoys balancing strategic account management, consultative selling, customer advocacy, and operational rigor. You’ll manage customers at different stages of their lifecycle and prioritize your time based on retention risk, expansion potential, and overall business impact.

- Own commercial strategy across a portfolio of approximately 75–130 SMB and/or Mid-Market customers, with accountability for GRR, NRR, renewals, and expansion performance

- Develop and execute strategic account plans that identify customer priorities, business outcomes, retention risks, expansion opportunities, and paths to long-term growth

- Proactively manage the renewal lifecycle from early strategy and stakeholder alignment through negotiation and close

- Lead commercial negotiations involving pricing, packaging, contract terms, multi-year agreements, and complex renewal scenarios

- Identify, qualify, and close expansion opportunities across additional licenses, products, and multi-product offerings to increase NRR

- Build multi-threaded relationships with champions, decision-makers, and executive stakeholders to reduce churn risk and unlock growth

- Partner closely with Customer Success to connect product adoption and demonstrated customer value to renewal and expansion strategies

- Lead strategic customer conversations focused on business priorities, ROI, future needs, and opportunities to expand the partnership

- Proactively identify accounts at risk and develop clear retention and mitigation strategies in partnership with internal stakeholders

- Navigate complex customer situations—including competitive evaluations, budget pressure, organizational changes, product concerns, and procurement—with sound commercial judgment and customer empathy

- Maintain a clear understanding of portfolio health, including renewal status, expansion pipeline, account risk, stakeholder engagement, and growth potential

- Own accurate and timely forecasting, pipeline management, and opportunity hygiene across revenue systems

- Prioritize your portfolio effectively, balancing high-touch strategic engagement with scalable account management motions

- Surface customer insights and trends to Product, Sales, Customer Success, and leadership to help improve our product and go-to-market strategy

- Contribute to the continued evolution of Account Management by sharing best practices and identifying opportunities to improve processes, playbooks, segmentation, automation, and operating rhythms

DESIRED CAPABILITIES

- 2+ years of experience in Account Management, Customer Success, Sales, Renewals, or another customer-facing B2B SaaS role

- 1+ years owning commercial outcomes such as renewals, expansion, upsell, cross-sell, or revenue retention

- Track record managing and growing a portfolio of B2B SaaS customers and associated ARR

- Proven ability to lead renewal and expansion opportunities from strategy through negotiation and close

- Strong commercial acumen with the ability to balance customer needs with business objectives

- Experience identifying customer risk and developing strategies to protect and improve retention

- Experience managing pipeline and producing accurate forecasts against retention and/or expansion targets

- Ability to build credibility and influence across multiple levels of a customer organization, including senior stakeholders and decision-makers

- Strong prioritization and organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple customer opportunities and deadlines simultaneously

- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to navigate strategic, commercial, and difficult customer conversations

- Strong cross-functional collaboration skills across Customer Success, Sales, Product, Support, Finance, Legal, and RevOps

EXTRA CREDIT

- Experience managing SMB and/or Mid-Market SaaS customers with responsibility for both retention and expansion

- Experience carrying a renewal, expansion, or revenue quota and consistently delivering against commercial targets

- Experience working in a startup,…