VP, Customer Operations
The Vice President of Customer Operations is responsible for driving world-class customer experience, retention, and growth across a set of customers supported by the Account Management team. The VP will define the operational strategy, build global high-performing teams, optimize the customer journey, and partner with Sales, Product, and Engineering leadership to ensure customers receive maximum value from BlackSky's unique real-time intelligence capabilities.
Key Responsibilities- Lead and scale multidisciplinary customer-facing organizations globally.
- Develop operational processes, KPIs, and performance dashboards that measure satisfaction and drive improvements.
- Recruit, mentor, and develop customer-centric teams across multiple regions.
- Build and maintain trusted relationships with domestic and international government and commercial customers.
- Lead complex, high-touch, technical customer engagements with long lifecycle demands.
- Communicate effectively with executive-level and technical stakeholders.
- Drive strategies that maximize customer retention, recurring revenue, and account expansion.
- Build customer health metrics and forecasting models to track experience, usage, and growth potential.
- Partner closely with Sales and Business Development to ensure seamless customer success and expansion.
- Apply knowledge of remote sensing, geospatial analytics, and space-based intelligence solutions to customer needs.
- Guide discussions on SLAs, data delivery, system integrations, and operational workflows.
- Translate complex technical concepts to support decision-making for non-technical audiences.
- Design and optimize onboarding, support, and retention processes across the full customer lifecycle.
- Lead incident management, service reliability, and quality assurance initiatives.
- Map and enhance the end-to-end customer journey for efficiency and satisfaction.
- Translate BlackSky's corporate vision into a cohesive customer operations strategy.
- Provide insights and customer intelligence that guide product prioritization and roadmap evolution.
- Work closely with Sales, Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Executive Teams to support strategic priorities.
- Represent Customer Operations in presentations to leadership, partners, and government stakeholders.
- Lead transformation efforts in rapidly evolving environments.
- Implement new structures, processes, and systems to support long-term scale.
- Drive modernization initiatives that elevate the customer experience and operational effectiveness.
Success Metrics- Customer satisfaction and NPS improvements
- Customer retention and renewal rates
- Account expansion and usage growth
- Time-to-value and onboarding efficiency
- Operational reliability and incident reduction
- Performance of customer-facing team
- Adoption and impact of operational processes and tools
Required Experience & Qualifications- Bachelor's degree in Business or related field
- 20+ years of total professional experience
- At least 10 years leading customer-facing teams
- Minimum 6 years in the geospatial or remote sensing sector
- Proven experience scaling global customer operations teams
- Strong operational, analytical, and strategic planning capabilities
- Experience with complex technical or government customer engagements
- Excellent communication and executive stakeholder management skills
Travel Requirements- Domestic and international travel as required (typically 15-20%) to support customer engagements, team activities, and executive meetings.
Work Environment- Fast-paced, high-growth technology and space industry environment
- Strong emphasis on cross-functional collaboration and remote teamwork
- Ability to work across multiple time zones and global teams
- Flexible work location depending on organizational needs
Life at BlackSky for full-time benefits eligible employees includes:
- Medical, dental, vision, disability, group term life and AD&D, voluntary life and AD&D insurance
- BlackSky pays 100% of employee-only premiums for medical, dental and vision and contributes $100/month for out-of-pocket expenses!
- 15 days of PTO, 11 Company holidays, four Floating Holidays (pro-rated based on hire date), one day of paid volunteerism leave per year, parental leave and more
- 401(k) pre-tax and Roth deferral options with employer match
- Flexible Spending Accounts
- Employee Stock Purchase Program
- Employee Assistance and Travel Assistance Programs
- Employer matching donations
- Professional development
- Mac or PC? Your choice!
- Awesome swag
#LI-Hybrid
