Customer Success Manager (CSM)

Upstream is seeking an experienced Customer Success Manager to join our North America team and lead high-touch enterprise relationships across automotive and mobility customers. This role reports to the Director of Customer Success, North America, and works closely with cross-functional leaders across Sales, Product, Data, Research, Cyber, Delivery, and Ops.

This position combines strategic account ownership with hands-on execution. The CSM serves as the primary technical lead and main customer focal point, guiding customers from the early engagement call, PoV, through onboarding, production deployment, operationalization, and ongoing value delivery. You will engage both at the executive level and directly with technical and operational teams to ensure measurable business impact.

As we grow and scale, we are strengthening structure, accountability, and proactive account management across the region, while maintaining the agility and ownership mindset of a startup. This role will play a key part in driving that balance: bringing clarity, follow-through, and disciplined execution in complex, fast-moving environments.

Success in this role requires strong project management skills, technical fluency, value delivery and the ability to manage detailed day-to-day execution without losing sight of long-term strategy.

Location: Remote - Eastern Time Zone (Metro Detroit, NYC Metro, Greater Boston preferred)

Responsibilities

High-Touch Customer Management

• Serve as the primary day-to-day point of contact for customer stakeholders
• Lead ongoing cross-functional engagement across customer operational, technical, and leadership teams to ensure alignment and progress.
• Clearly communicate ROI and measurable business impact
• Ensure commitments are tracked, documented, and delivered
• Support renewal, expansion planning and forecasting

Strategic & Executive Engagement

• Own overall customer health, retention, and expansion strategy
• Build structured account plans aligned to customer objectives
• Lead business reviews and executive-level discussions
• Identify risks and drive mitigation strategies

Project & Program Management

• Define and manage project plans, milestones, timelines, and success criteria
• Coordinate internal cross-functional execution across Product, Delivery, Research, Data, etc.
• Manage competing priorities and ensure forward progress across workstreams
• Lead structured follow-ups and maintain clear documentation of actions and ownership
• Translate customer operational requirements into structured internal action plans
• Facilitate and oversee onboarding, new feature rollouts, workshops, working sessions, and other activities to drive implementation and optimization
• Support escalation management during critical customer events

Requirements

Required

• 5+ years of experience in Customer Success, Technical Account Management, or Program Management 
• Demonstrated experience managing complex, high-touch enterprise accounts
• Strong project and program management capabilities
• Ability to manage multiple parallel workstreams with attention to detail
• Experience operating in highly technical environments
• Ability to engage confidently with both executives and technical practitioners
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Comfortable discussing APIs, cloud environments, cybersecurity concepts, and data-driven platforms
• Ability to translate technical solutions into operational outcomes
• Experience managing cross-regional stakeholders and coordinating delivery across globally distributed product, engineering, and customer teams

Preferred

• Experience in automotive, mobility, cybersecurity, IoT, or data platform environments
• Experience working in startup or scale-up environments with evolving processes