Director, Commercial Customer Success

At Vanta, our mission is to help businesses earn and prove trust. We believe that security should be monitored and verified continuously, and we empower companies to practice better security and prove it with ease. Vanta has a kind and talented team, and while some have prior security experience, many have been successful at Vanta without it. As the Director, Commercial Customer Success at Vanta, you will own and scale our Commercial Customer Success function — including our Partner Customer Success motion. You will define the strategy, operating model, and standards that ensure our Commercial customers achieve their desired outcomes and realize lasting value from Vanta, while building the Partner Customer Success motion that extends our reach and impact. The mission of the Customer Success team is to ensure our customers achieve their desired outcomes and maximize the value they receive from our products. We aim to build strong, lasting relationships and drive long-term customer success and retention. This role fulfills that mission by owning the Commercial CS function end to end: setting functional strategy, leading and developing a team of managers and CSMs, and driving retention, adoption, value realization, and expansion across the Commercial book of business. What you’ll do as a Director, Commercial Customer Success at Vanta: - Own the Commercial CS strategy and vision: Define a clear vision, strategy, and success metrics for Commercial Customer Success, translating Vanta’s company goals into functional priorities and a concrete operating plan. - Build and scale Partner Customer Success: Design and grow how Vanta drives customer outcomes through our partner customer success program — working cross-functionally to establish the model, enablement, and shared metrics for a partner customer success motion that scales our impact. - Design an operating model that scales without losing the human touch: Apply process, automation, and AI to handle volume efficiently across the Commercial segment, while protecting and strengthening the one-to-one, customer-facing motion that still drives value here. Build the segmentation and playbooks that take low-value work off CSMs' plates so their time goes where relationships and outcomes are actually won. - Lead and develop leaders: Hire, coach, and develop a team of CS managers and CSMs. Set the talent bar, build succession depth, and raise overall team capability and judgment. - Drive results across retention, adoption, and expansion: Own the metrics that matter — gross and net retention, adoption, time-to-value, and expansion — and establish the operating cadence to manage them with urgency and transparency. - Lead cross-functionally: Partner with Sales, Account Management, Partnerships, Product, Support, Marketing, and Rev Ops to align on customer needs, remove blockers, and advocate for the Commercial and partner segments. How to be successful in this role: - Proven CS leadership at scale: Track record leading a Customer Success function and managing managers, with direct accountability for retention and expansion outcomes. - Experience scaling Commercial CS motions: Built or scaled efficient CS motions for mid-market / commercial segments, balancing scaled programs (digital, one-to-many, pooled, AI) with the high-touch, relationship-driven motion the segment still requires. - Partner / ecosystem experience: Experience building or operating customer success through partners, channel, or an ecosystem motion (strongly preferred). - Functional strategy and operating-model design: Demonstrated ability to define functional strategy and build CS methodology — playbooks, segmentation, and operating systems — that scale across teams. - Data-driven decision making: Uses data, frameworks, and strong judgment to make timely decisions and run an operating cadence against clear KPIs. - Deep understanding of SaaS business models: Experience operating in a SaaS environment and the economics of a recu