Head of PLG Customer Success

AI overview

Lead the optimization of low-touch customer experiences, maximizing Lifetime Value through advanced churn mitigation strategies and cross-functional collaboration.

The Company

GitKraken is seeking an experienced and strategic Head of PLG Customer Success to serve as the lead responsible for optimizing our low-touch customer experience from trial completion through initial product onboarding, customer health, and renewal for our developer tools and engineering leader solutions. This is a critical PLG role focused on maximizing Lifetime Value (LTV) by perfecting developer activation, driving feature adoption, and executing advanced churn mitigation strategies.


You will be the key architect driving long-term value creation by leveraging product data, behavioral psychology, and cross-functional influence across Product, Engineering, and Customer Success. This role reports to the Chief Customer Officer and requires a systems thinker who is strong at analyzing product usage data, building scalable programs, and leveraging AI & domain expertise to create written, visual, and video content suited for our audience of millions of software developers.


What you'll do

  • Activation & Onboarding Ownership: Own the customer journey immediately following sign-up. Design, test, and optimize the onboarding flow to minimize friction and rapidly accelerate the user's Time-to-Value (TTV) and successful activation as a core user (e.g., connect integrations, complete the first commit, resolve the first merge conflict, participate in the first collaboration).
  • Customer Journey Mapping (Post-Acquisition): Define, map, and continuously optimize all customer lifecycle stages from Activation to Renewal and Expansion. This includes identifying key habits, usage milestones, and successful adoption patterns for both GKS and GKI.
  • Churn Mitigation & Retention Strategy: Develop and execute high-impact, usage-based strategies to identify, proactively intervene, and retain at-risk users/accounts. This includes designing segmented, automated playbooks triggered by measurable drops in product engagement and usage signals.
  • Telemetry & Data Infrastructure Overhaul: Lead the strategy for customer data and telemetry to ensure robust, accurate, and real-time tracking of all in-product user behaviors (CUJ). This is foundational for building reliable health scoring and predictive churn models.
  • In-Product Guidance & Messaging: Own the strategy and execution of contextual communication designed to drive successful outcomes within the product. This includes in-app guidance, walkthroughs, tooltips, and behaviorally-triggered email campaigns that coach the user toward deeper product usage and value realization. This scope begins post-registration and focuses on product education and habit formation.
  • Product Growth Influence: Serve as the "Voice of Retention" by partnering with Product teams to identify and prioritize product improvements and UX changes that directly reduce friction in key adoption pathways.
  • Performance Accountability: Own and report on critical business metrics related to the installed base, including Activation Rate, Net Revenue Retention (NRR), LTV, and customer Churn Rate.


What you'll bring

  • 4-10 years of specialized experience in Product Growth, Lifecycle Management, or Customer Value roles within a B2B Product-Led Growth (PLG) company that caters to a very technical audience that prefers to learn by reading, exploring & doing on their own.
  • Deep practical expertise in designing and optimizing onboarding and activation flows.
  • Proven experience in defining requirements for and utilizing advanced customer usage telemetry platforms (e.g., Mixpanel, Amplitude, Heap) to measure post-onboarding success, as well as customer communication tools (e.g., HubSpot, Wordpress).
  • Bonus points if you’ve worked in a content or customer-facing role for a low-touch PLG company that caters to a technical audience (e.g., Docker, Zapier, Box, Figma, Notion, or gaming-type companies)
  • Strong analytical skills with proficiency in SQL or similar tools for deep customer data segmentation and analysis.
  • Exceptional ability to bridge Product, Engineering, and Customer Success functions.


How you'll be rewarded

💵  Excellence — Competitive compensation with annual performance-based pay increases

🏖  Balance — Flexible Paid-Time-Off Policy + paid company holidays (chosen by our employees)

👶  Parent life — Generous paid parental leave

🐶 Pets — Pet insurance plan (with no exclusions)

🍎 Health — Health, dental, and vision insurance with competitive employer cost-sharing + employer-paid life/AD&D insurance

🌵 Headquarters — Modern, fully equipped offices designed to maximize productivity in a hybrid environment

🏆  Culture — Great Place to Work Certified

📚  Growth — Paid career development opportunities, audiobook subscriptions, and mentorship

🔮  Future — 401(k) retirement plan plus company matching  

🛫  Travel — Company-paid domestic trip after your 1-year anniversary, and an international trip every 5 years


Location

GitKraken is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona and while we would like to have candidates be local to the Scottsdale office, we understand that talent and drive are much more important than location. We will consider strong candidates from anywhere in the US who apply for this role. 


Equal Employment Opportunity Statement: 

At GitKraken, we believe that diversity among our teammates is critical to our success as a company. GitKraken evaluates all employees and job applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender (including pregnancy, gender expression, or gender identity), national origin, age, disability status, or any other legally protected class. We recruit, hire, and retain top talent from a diverse candidate pool.

Perks & Benefits Extracted with AI

  • Health Insurance: Health, dental, and vision insurance with competitive employer cost-sharing + employer-paid life/AD&D insurance
  • Company-paid trips: Company-paid domestic trip after your 1-year anniversary, and an international trip every 5 years
  • Paid Parental Leave: Generous paid parental leave
  • Paid Time Off: Flexible Paid-Time-Off Policy + paid company holidays (chosen by our employees)
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