Customer Support & Operations Team Lead

About the Opportunity

This role sits within a profitable, high-growth, YC-backed SaaS company that helps grant-funded organizations operate more efficiently. The platform replaces spreadsheet-based grant management with a modern operating system used by more than 5,500 nonprofits, from local community groups to large institutions. Across its customer base, the platform has supported the processing of over $1 billion in funding. The company has shown strong year-over-year growth, high customer satisfaction, and a clear focus on building products that create meaningful impact.

Role Overview

The company is looking for a Customer Support & Operations Team Lead who will report to the VP of Customer Success. This person will own the processes, systems, and workflows that power a fast, accurate, and highly positive support experience for nonprofit customers and grant writers. The position is both strategic and hands-on: you will personally manage tickets, billing questions, bug reports, escalations, and help-center updates, while also raising the bar for the broader support function.

This is a player-coach role. You will lead one full-time support contributor and a small contractor group, improve AI-driven support workflows, and help determine the right mix of automation, self-service, and human intervention. Because the company is scaling quickly, the support function has historically relied on a single person and contractors; this role will shape how support evolves, including future staffing, AI usage, service standards, and the definition of excellent support. As the team grows, the role is expected to expand into a broader management position.

Cross-functional collaboration is an important part of the job. You will work closely with Customer Success, Finance, Product, Engineering, and a Support Engineer to make sure customer issues are identified correctly, escalated efficiently, and resolved in a systematic way.

Key Responsibilities

• Take direct ownership of the customer support queue, including tickets, escalations, billing questions, bug reports, and product education.
• Set and uphold clear expectations for response quality, communication tone, accuracy, and escalation handling across both human and AI-assisted support.
• Improve first response and resolution performance for urgent ticket categories without sacrificing customer satisfaction.
• Put lightweight quality checks in place so support delivery remains consistent.
• Oversee the day-to-day performance of AI support tools, including training, review, monitoring, and workflow refinement.
• Spot recurring issues that can be solved through AI, macros, help-center improvements, or better product education, and then implement those fixes.
• Create human-in-the-loop processes that improve AI resolution while ensuring complex issues are routed to people at the right time.
• Use customer interactions to identify documentation gaps, AI weaknesses, product usability problems, and areas where users are confused.
• Manage queue structure, routing, escalation paths, SLA coverage, and support planning for holidays, events, and other special situations.
• Improve billing, cancellation, and refund workflows in partnership with Finance and Customer Success.
• Oversee operational data processes, including spreadsheet import workflows and the contractors supporting them.
• Build internal playbooks and documentation that centralize support knowledge and reduce dependence on informal know-how.
• Create reporting that gives leadership visibility into ticket trends, customer pain points, team performance, and scaling risks.
• Work with the Support Engineer on bug triage, reproduction steps, prioritization, and follow-up communication with customers.
• Separate true product bugs from user confusion, billing edge cases, and knowledge gaps, and route each appropriately.
• Translate recurring customer issues into actionable recommendations for Product, Engineering, Finance, and Customer Success.
• Keep customers informed when their issues require investigation or further follow-up.
• Lead and develop one full-time support contributor plus contractors or virtual assistants by clarifying responsibilities, setting goals, and defining performance expectations.
• Coach team members on judgment, efficiency, quality, and customer empathy.
• Improve onboarding and training so new contributors become productive more quickly.
• Help decide when the team needs additional full-time support hires and how the function should be structured over time.

Requirements

• At least 4 years of experience in customer support, support operations, or customer experience, ideally in SaaS, with responsibility that goes beyond closing tickets and includes quality assurance.
• Previous people management experience, including setting expectations, giving constructive feedback, and coaching performance improvement.
• Strong comfort with AI-first working methods, including regular day-to-day AI usage, independent judgment about AI output quality, and practical opinions on how AI should be applied.
• Demonstrated experience improving support systems such as routing, escalations, QA, reporting, or self-service tools.
• Excellent judgment and strong writing ability, with the skill to explain complex issues like billing problems or product bugs to non-technical users in a clear way.
• A player-coach mindset and willingness to stay close to frontline support work, including queue handling, documentation updates, AI review, and troubleshooting.
• Comfort working in a fast-moving, Slack-first environment where processes may still be developing.
• Preferred: experience with Intercom or Fin, or transferable experience with Zendesk, Help Scout, Ada, Forethought, Gorgias, or similar platforms.
• Preferred: prior work involving billing-heavy support, including subscriptions, plan changes, refunds, and failed payments.
• Preferred: experience overseeing operational data work such as spreadsheet imports or QA for contractor-led processes.
• Preferred: background supporting nonprofit, SMB, or prosumer SaaS users, especially where the audience is non-technical.
• Preferred: experience working in a remote startup environment.

Compensation & Benefits

For US-based candidates, the target base salary is $95,000 to $115,000 USD, plus equity. Final compensation will depend on experience, skills, scope, interview performance, and location.

• Health, dental, and vision coverage fully paid for employees; dependents are covered at 50%.
• Generous paid time off, including parental leave.
• 401(k) plan.
• Company laptop and a stipend to set up a home office.
• The chance to work with mission-driven nonprofits across the United States.

Additional Information

The hiring company is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to maintaining an inclusive workplace. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, or any other protected status. Candidates from all backgrounds are welcome. If you need a reasonable accommodation during the application or interview process, you may notify the company.