Strategic Customer Success Manager

About the Role

As a Strategic CSM on the Federal Accounts team, you are Handshake's most senior customer-facing partner, responsible for owning the full success lifecycle of our most complex government agency relationships. You will drive value realization, strategic alignment, and deep adoption across a focused book of high-stakes accounts, while navigating the unique procurement cycles, compliance requirements, and stakeholder hierarchies that define the federal space.

Responsibilities

• Adoption & Expansion: Own onboarding, implementation, and ongoing adoption for large, complex government organizations, building tailored workflows and programs that map to each agency's mission, hiring priorities, and compliance requirements.
• Federal Relationship Management: Build and maintain deep relationships across agency hierarchies, contracting officers, HR leads, program managers, and senior officials, and serve as a trusted, long-term partner across every level of the org.
• Strategic Value Delivery: Lead Executive Business Reviews and strategic planning sessions that tie Handshake outcomes directly to agency hiring goals, diversity mandates, and workforce development priorities.
• Expansion & New Business Lines: Identify and pursue opportunities to grow within accounts, new business units, additional budget owners, and adjacent agency teams, using a data-driven, outcome-first narrative.
• Training & Enablement: Design and lead training for large, distributed government teams, making a complex platform accessible and valuable for users with varying levels of technical experience.
• Cross-functional Partnership: Collaborate closely with Sales, Product, Engineering, and Support to advocate for federal customer needs, surface product gaps, and bring the right internal resources to every account.
• Voice of the Federal Customer: Synthesize feedback from your portfolio into clear, actionable insights that help Handshake evolve its public sector strategy.

Desired Capabilities

• 5+ years managing large, high-touch enterprise or strategic accounts (typically 10–20 accounts) with $3M+ ARR responsibility.
• Proven track record working with enterprise-level or federal customers, including navigating multi-stakeholder org charts, complex procurement processes, and long sales and renewal cycles.
• Comfortable presenting to and building relationships with senior leaders and executive decision-makers, both virtually and in-person.
• Ability to move fluidly between tactical conversations with end users and strategic discussions with agency leadership, without losing the thread of either.
• Skilled at translating product workflows and usage data into compelling business value narratives for non-technical, senior audiences.
• Strong accountability muscle, you hold customers to milestones and timelines, and you hold yourself to the same standard.
• Data-driven communicator who can build a story from metrics and make that story land with an executive audience.
• Exceptional organizational and time management skills, you manage complexity across multiple stakeholders, timelines, and workstreams without dropping the ball.

Extra Credit

• Direct experience working with federal agencies in a talent, HR tech, or workforce development context.
• Familiarity with government procurement structures (e.g., contracting officers, option years, agency budget cycles).
• A track record of building internal playbooks, processes, or frameworks that upleveled your team's approach.
• A bias toward creative problem-solving in ambiguous, evolving environments.
• A genuine passion for Handshake's mission, connecting students to opportunity, and excitement about expanding that mission into the public sector.