Escalation Manager, AppZen

• U.S. citizenship (required) to support certain customer environments
• 10+ years in SaaS across escalation management, support leadership, incident management, or customer success escalations
• Strong executive presence and customer communication—able to drive clarity under pressure with internal leaders and customer stakeholders
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams through ambiguity and deliver outcomes with accountability
• Experience with support/engineering workflow tools such as Zendesk and Jira (or equivalent)

Desirable

• This role is Remote/Hybrid (U.S.-based), aligned to U.S. business hours, with flexibility to support critical incidents when needed
• The US-Based Escalation Manager is a senior, customer-facing leader responsible for driving resolution of AppZen’s most complex and high-impact customer escalations
• You will partner with CSMs and ISMs to unblock go-lives, stabilize at-risk accounts, and protect customer confidence—coordinating across Support, Engineering, Product, and the AppZen Executive Team to deliver timely, durable outcomes
• Own high-severity escalations (go-live blockers, production incidents, at-risk accounts) end-to-end: triage → containment → root cause → corrective actions → customer updates → post-incident review
• Lead escalation war rooms through structured triage, clear ownership, defined ETAs, and documented decisions
• Deliver crisp, executive-ready status updates including impact, risks, mitigation, and next steps
• Act as the central point of coordination for escalations, driving alignment, accountability, and resolution across teams
• Partner closely with Support Leadership / Support Engineering to improve escalation rigor and incident response consistency
• Partner with Implementation (ISMs) and Customer Success/Account Management to remove blockers, stabilize at-risk accounts, and reduce renewal risk
• Support executive customer engagements with the AppZen Executive Team, including escalation reviews and incident briefings
• Build trusted relationships with customer executives and key stakeholders, ensuring transparency and confidence throughout the escalation lifecycle
• Engage Engineering and Product Management to prioritize high-impact issues and drive resolution informed by escalation trends
• Monitor escalated accounts for recurring issues and systemic risks; identify early warning indicators and drive preventive actions
• Track and report trends impacting customer health and product reliability; report product issues and recommend operational/process improvements
• Create and maintain escalation runbooks, playbooks, and knowledge content that improve speed, quality, and consistency
• Strengthen internal operating rhythms for escalations (templates, comms standards, handoffs, and post-incident learnings)