**Introduction** Position Overview: We are seeking a Director, Customer Value Squad, a critical role that will focus on leading a team of technical experts to resolve high-priority, complex customer issues for Apptio. This leader will bring both deep technical expertise in Apptio products and exceptional leadership skills to manage and prioritize critical work, ensuring that customer escalations are handled swiftly and effectively. The Director, Customer Value Squad will also serve as a liaison between the technical team and executive leadership, communicating clearly and concisely to ensure alignment on key priorities. This position will manage and mentor a team of two technical specialists while working cross-functionally with Customer Success, Support, Sales, and Product teams. About the Customer Value Squad: The Customer Value Squad is a highly specialized team dedicated to resolving critical customer escalations with speed and precision. As the Director, Customer Value Squad, you will guide this team, working closely with internal stakeholders to ensure alignment and swift resolution. This role is ideal for a seasoned technical leader who thrives in a fast-paced, dynamic environment, enjoys solving complex problems, and contributes to the long-term success of the business. The squad brings significant benefits to the Apptio business, including: * Improved Customer Satisfaction: Playing a key role in resolving high-priority issues to drive customer retention and enhance satisfaction. * Reduced Churn: Leading efforts to identify and resolve churn risks, ensuring at-risk customers remain engaged and successful. * Operational Efficiency: Streamlining the escalation process for timely issue resolution, enabling other teams to focus on proactive engagement. * Increased Revenue: Directly contributing to increased revenue by improving customer retention and lifetime value. * Scalability & Process Improvement: Driving process standardization and creating repeatable solutions that can scale as the business grows, ensuring continued success as the customer base expands. **Your role and responsibilities** * Escalation Management & Resolution: Lead the resolution of high-priority customer escalations that require specialized technical knowledge, ensuring that critical issues are addressed quickly and effectively. Provide guidance to your team on best practices for managing complex customer problems. * Leadership & Team Management: Manage, mentor, and develop a team of two technical specialists. Provide direction, prioritize workloads, and ensure team members' time and priorities are aligned with customer needs and company objectives. Foster a collaborative, high-performance environment within your team. * Strategic Communication with Executives: Act as the primary point of contact between the Customer Value Squad and executive leadership. Regularly update senior leaders on the status of critical escalations, potential churn risks, and progress on resolutions. Ensure that messaging is clear, concise, aligned with organizational priorities, and action oriented. * Prioritization & Workload Management: Work closely with the technical team to prioritize escalations based on business impact, ensuring the most critical issues are resolved first. Balance strategic priorities with immediate customer needs, maintaining a focus on long-term success while addressing urgent issues. * Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate closely with internal teams (Sales, CS, Support, P&E) to drive alignment and quick resolution of escalations. Lead cross-functional efforts to deploy solutions, ensuring smooth communication and coordination across departments. * Technical Leadership & Expertise: Provide expert-level guidance and technical leadership on complex customer issues, particularly in resolving product-related technical challenges. Help shape best practices for handling escalations, ensuring your team has the tools and knowledge to effectively manage issues. * Churn Risk Management: Proactively identify and address potential churn risks by developing strategies to retain at-risk customers. Work with customer success teams to implement these strategies and reduce customer attrition. * Standardization of Processes & Save Plays: Lead the development and implementation of standardized processes for escalations and save plays. Ensure that your team follows these processes consistently to improve response times and outcomes for customers. * Continuous Improvement: Identify opportunities to improve the escalation management process and the effectiveness of the Customer Value Squad. Lead initiatives to streamline workflows, improve communication, and reduce inefficiencies across the team and the broader organization. Leaders are expected to spend time with their teams and clients and therefore, are generally expected to be in the workplace a minimum of three days a week subject to business needs. **Required technical and professional expertise** * Leadership Experience: 8+ years of experience in technical leadership roles, with a proven track record of managing technical teams, solving complex customer problems, and influencing executive decisions. * Technical Expertise: In-depth knowledge of Apptio products and services, with a strong background in addressing complex technical challenges and leading resolution efforts in a high-pressure environment. * Executive Communication: Strong communication skills, with the ability to effectively communicate technical concepts to non-technical executive stakeholders. Comfortable presenting status updates and strategic insights to senior leadership. * Team Management & Development: Experience managing and developing small teams, with a focus on mentorship, performance management, and fostering a collaborative, high-performance culture. * Problem-Solving & Strategic Thinking: Ability to think critically and strategically about customer issues and prioritize solutions based on business impact. Skilled at balancing immediate customer needs with long-term company objectives. **Preferred technical and professional experience** * Collaboration & Cross-Functional Work: Proven ability to work cross-functionally with Sales, Support, P&E, and other teams to achieve results. Able to lead efforts that require coordination across multiple departments and stakeholders. * Customer-Centric Mindset: A strong focus on delivering customer value and understanding the impact of customer success on the business. Proven track record of improving customer satisfaction and reducing churn through proactive engagement and technical IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.