Customer Success Specialist

The Role

We are looking for a Customer Success Specialist to join our Customer Success organization and support customers across all segments: SMB, Mid-Market, and Enterprise. Reporting to the Manager of Customer Success, this role is designed to extend and amplify the impact of our Customer Success Managers (CSMs).

As a Specialist, you will operate as a strategic partner to the CSM team—owning targeted bodies of work that drive teacher adoption, engagement, and instructional impact, while creating scale and efficiency across the CS organization. You will exercise strong judgment, work with a high degree of autonomy, and use data, curriculum knowledge, and customer context to influence outcomes that matter for customers and the business.

This role is not focused on frontline onboarding or reactive issue resolution. Instead, it centers on proactive adoption support, curriculum alignment, coverage, and execution of high‑impact initiatives that help schools and districts realize value from Newsela.

What You’ll Do

Teacher Adoption & Engagement

• Drive teacher activation, adoption, and ongoing engagement with Newsela products through targeted plays and outreach
• Partner with CSMs to identify usage gaps and execute strategies that move teachers from rostered → active → engaged
• Support execution of adoption campaigns, events, and initiatives that increase meaningful product use

Curriculum Alignments

• Support curriculum alignment work for schools and districts, connecting Newsela content and products to instructional goals, standards, and pacing
• Develop and deliver curriculum‑aligned resources, mappings, or guidance that help educators see immediate classroom relevance
• Partner with internal teams to scale curriculum alignment efforts across priority accounts

Customer Coverage & Support

• Provide temporary customer coverage during CSM leave or capacity gaps, ensuring continuity and momentum for customers
• Support priority accounts with proactive engagement tied to adoption, usage, and instructional impact

Data & Insights

• Pull, analyze, and synthesize customer data from Tableau, Salesforce, Gainsight, and other internal tools
• Surface actionable insights for CSMs that inform outreach, prioritization, and customer conversations
• Track progress against adoption and engagement goals and recommend adjustments based on data

Renewal & Expansion Support

• Support renewal motions through targeted adoption efforts that strengthen value realization
• Assist districts during decentralization efforts for renewals, ensuring a seamless process for both internal and external stakeholders
• Assist with preparation of complex renewal materials or quotes as needed, ensuring accuracy and alignment

Operational Excellence & Scale

• Create efficiencies for the CSM team by owning repeatable processes, playbooks, and executional work
• Maintain clean, accurate data in Salesforce and Gainsight to support forecasting, reporting, and customer health
• Contribute to continuous improvement of CS workflows and specialist programs

Why You’ll Love This Role

• You thrive in a role with high autonomy, where you can independently prioritize, problem‑solve, and drive results
• You enjoy working at the intersection of data, curriculum, and customer strategy
• You like building repeatable solutions that scale impact across many customers—not just one
• You’re energized by helping educators succeed and seeing tangible classroom impact from your work

Why You’re a Great Fit

• 1+ years of professional experience in customer success, education, curriculum, operations, or a related role
• Strong communication and relationship-building skills, with the ability to partner effectively across teams
• Demonstrated ownership and solutions-oriented mindset: you take accountability for outcomes, not just tasks, and proactively identify paths forward
• Adaptive and flexible in a fast-changing environment, adjusting quickly as priorities evolve
• Comfortable managing multiple priorities with attention to detail and follow-through
• Experience working with data and CRM tools (e.g., Tableau, Salesforce, Gainsight)
• Background as a former educator or experience supporting K–12 customers strongly preferred
• Bachelor’s degree preferred

Compensation:

Base compensation: $68,000 - 70,000. Total compensation for this role also includes incentive stock options and benefits. This compensation range may be adjusted based on actual experience.

Why you’ll love working at Newsela:

• Health & Wellness: Comprehensive medical benefits with employer contribution to premiums and to HSA accounts. Additional benefits such as pet insurance, free access to the Calm app, and more to help you stay healthy: mind, body, and soul. 
• Work From Home: We are a fully remote company. We provide a monthly tech stipend to support your WFH needs!
• Supporting ALL Families: Inclusive benefits to support you and your family, including parental leave, fertility support, adoption, and more! 
• Financial Wellbeing: Invest in your future with our 401(k) plan, which includes a employer match to help you build long-term financial security.
• Time Off: Flexible PTO plus 10 company holidays plus winter break (Dec 24th - Jan 1st).
• Professional Development: Newsela offers an annual learning and development allowance to employees to attend external training sessions, classes, workshops, conferences, and educational materials to foster professional growth within their current role and career aspirations at Newsela.
• Make A Difference: No matter your role or department, the work you do each day helps share the future of education and improves the lives of students and teachers.

About Newsela:

Newsela takes authentic, real world content from trusted sources and makes it instruction ready for K-12 classrooms. Each text is published at five reading levels, so content is accessible to every learner. Today, over 3.3 million teachers and 40 million students have registered with Newsela for content that's personalized to student interests, accessible to everyone, aligned to instructional standards, and attached to activities and reporting that hold teachers accountable for instruction and students accountable for their work. With over 15,000 texts on our platform and multiple new texts published every day across 20+ genres, Newsela enables educators to go deep on any subject they choose.

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