Strategic Customer Success Manager (Aerospace & Defense)

About CoLab

At CoLab, we help engineering teams bring life-changing products to the world years sooner. Our platform is the world’s first Design Engagement System (DES) - a category defining product that Engineering teams use to engage in meaningful, productive design conversations, catch preventable mistakes, and get to market faster. Our customers include the largest engineering organizations in the world spanning from industrial equipment, consumer products, automotive, aerospace & defense, and shipbuilding industries.

About the role

As a Strategic Customer Success Manager, you will serve as a trusted advisor to our most complex, global Aerospace & Defense customers. You will lead the post-sale customer journey, driving business transformation and ensuring customers effectively adopt CoLab to achieve measurable ROI. You’ll drive executive alignment, identify and mitigate risks, surface expansion opportunities, and collaborate cross-functionally to maximize customer value.

You will collaborate with Sales partners to support growth and retention and work closely with a team of Solutions Engineers to enable customer teams on CoLab’s capabilities. Your role is to execute a customer success strategy that drives retention, value realization, and long-term growth.

In-person customer engagement is a key part of this role’s success. On-site visits have consistently driven higher adoption, deeper relationships, and better business outcomes for our customers. We recognize personal travel constraints may arise and we expect Strategic CSMs to proactively plan for and prioritize in-person opportunities.

Twice annually we bring together all CoLabers at our HQ in St. John’s, Newfoundland (typically in June and December), to participate in company Team Week.

What you’ll do

• Own gross revenue retention (GRR) across your portfolio, with strong influence over net revenue retention (NRR) and strategic expansion within global A&D accounts

• Define and execute a customer success strategy aligned with long-cycle aerospace programs, engineering milestones, and CoLab’s broader expansion motion

• Lead executive engagement, stakeholder mapping, and success planning to drive measurable business outcomes

• Conduct executive-level business reviews that connect CoLab adoption to quantifiable impact such as reduced engineering change cycles, improved program velocity, or supplier collaboration efficiency

• Translate customer insights, usage data, and feedback into actionable strategies that accelerate time-to-value and showcase ROI

• Partner cross-functionally with Sales, Product, and Solutions Engineering to deliver adoption outcomes, manage risk, and uncover new growth opportunities

• Coach customer champions to build internal advocacy and communicate success stories that drive organizational buy-in and expansion

• Lead customers through change management and workflow optimization, helping them embed CoLab into critical engineering and manufacturing processes

• Identify risk signals early, define mitigation plans, and escalate with urgency when required

• Contribute to the evolution of CoLab’s Customer Success playbooks and frameworks, raising the standard for strategic execution and operational excellence across the team

• Act as a cross-functional leader, modeling accountability, ownership, and clarity in a fast-paced, scaling environment

What we’re looking for

• 7+ years in Customer Success, Strategic Consulting, or Enterprise Account Management, preferably with exposure to aerospace, defense, or complex engineering/manufacturing environments

• All applicants must be eligible for the necessary authorizations to access information or technology governed by export control and defense compliance programs (ex: ITAR, EAR, or Canada’s Controlled Goods Program)

• Proven track record driving enterprise transformation and measurable outcomes for global manufacturing or defense-industry customers

• Comfortable navigating compliance, procurement, and security requirements common in A&D (ex: ITAR, export control, multi-site governance)

• Experience with customer journey orchestration and success planning in a high-ACV SaaS environment

• Track record of partnering with Sales to shape and execute multi-threaded expansion strategies in large, complex organizations

• Familiarity with navigating complex procurement, security, and compliance processes in enterprise accounts

• Strong executive presence and communication skills

• Comfortable operating in fast-paced, high-growth environments

• Highly organized, data-driven, and accountable

• Ability to travel up to 25% of the time

Nice to have

• Experience supporting engineering or manufacturing customers (CAD, PLM, or technical tools)

• Familiarity with land-and-expand SaaS motions

• Background in vertical SaaS (especially A&D, shipbuilding, heavy industrial sectors)

You’ll thrive at CoLab if you:

• Excel at translating product functionality into customer value in a technical domain

• Take ownership of customer outcomes and internal clarity

• Thrive in a fast-paced, evolving environment where processes are still being shaped

• Are energized by solving complex customer challenges

• Lead strategic conversations with confidence and clarity

• Excel at cross-functional collaboration, even in ambiguous territory

• Operate with urgency and proactively mitigate risk

Translate product signals into actionable customer strategy