Director of Launch

Job Description

Job DescriptionAbout the Role: The Director of Launch owns the end-to-end client onboarding experience, leading teams to deploy the Loop Ai platform and all of its subsequent services from contract signing through go-live and into early-stage customer health. This senior leadership role sits at the intersection of strategy and execution — managing all deployments, driving operational efficiency, and directly influencing the SaaS metrics that matter most to the business: time-to-value, net revenue retention, and churn prevention.
This role demands a leader who can build scalable onboarding infrastructure, develop high-performing teams, and serve as a trusted partner to customers, Sales, Product, and Customer Success at a critical stage of the customer lifecycle. Key Responsibilities: 1. Strategic Leadership

• Define and own the implementation strategy, roadmap, and operating model to support company growth and product evolution.
• Establish best practices, playbooks, and standardized deployment frameworks that reduce time-to-go-live without sacrificing quality.
• Partner with Sales leadership to influence deal structuring, scoping, and implementation pricing to protect margin and set realistic customer expectations.
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering to provide implementation feedback loops that inform roadmap decisions and reduce recurring technical friction.

2. Team Management

• Recruit, coach, mentor, and develop a team of Implementation Managers and Implementation Specialists across varying complexity tiers (SMB, Mid-Market, Enterprise).
• Conduct regular performance reviews, set individual KPIs aligned to team and company-level SaaS metrics, and manage resource allocation across the project portfolio.
• Build career development pathways within the Implementation function and foster a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and customer empathy.
• Manage team capacity planning in alignment with sales pipeline forecasts to ensure headcount and bandwidth scale with new business volume.

3. Project Delivery

• Act as the senior escalation point for complex, high-value, or at-risk implementations, removing blockers and realigning stakeholders to keep projects on track.
• Ensure all implementations are delivered on time, within scope, and within budget, with clear milestones, risk registers, and executive status reporting.
• Oversee portfolio-level project health — monitoring implementation velocity, identifying systemic delays, and driving corrective action across the team.
• Enforce quality gates at key project milestones to ensure customers are fully activated and positioned for long-term product adoption before handoff to Customer Success.

4. Client Relations & Stakeholder Coordination

• Serve as an executive sponsor and primary escalation contact for strategic or high-complexity customer implementations.
• Manage stakeholder expectations proactively, ensuring customers have full visibility into project timelines, dependencies, and risks.
• Partner closely with Sales during pre-sales to provide scoping guidance, solution design input, and realistic implementation timelines.
• Coordinate seamlessly with Customer Success to execute warm handoffs, ensuring customer health scores, adoption benchmarks, and success plans are in place at go-live.

5. Process Improvement & Operational Excellence

• Identify bottlenecks across the implementation lifecycle and lead initiatives to eliminate manual effort, reduce cycle time, and scale delivery capacity.
• Build and maintain dashboards and reporting frameworks that surface real-time visibility into project status, team performance, and SaaS health metrics.
• Evaluate and implement tooling (PSA software, CRM integrations, onboarding automation platforms) to improve operational efficiency and data accuracy.
• Drive the development of self-serve and tech-touch onboarding options to support scaled segments without sacrificing customer outcomes.

Key Qualifications:

• Experience: 7+ years in implementation, professional services, or client onboarding roles within a SaaS or technology environment, with at least 3 years in a people management or team leadership capacity. Demonstrated experience managing enterprise-level implementations with six- or seven-figure ACV.
• Technical Proficiency: Deep understanding of SaaS software architectures, API-based integrations, data migration workflows, and complex system deployments. Ability to engage credibly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• SaaS Business Acumen: Strong command of SaaS business models and the downstream impact of implementation outcomes on metrics including NRR, churn, expansion revenue, and time-to-value. Experience influencing revenue recognition timelines through efficient project delivery.
• Leadership & Communication: Exceptional ability to lead cross-functional initiatives, influence without authority, and communicate clearly at all levels — from individual contributors to C-suite executives.
• Project Management: Proficiency with project management methodologies (Agile, Waterfall, hybrid) and tools such as Salesforce, Gainsight, Asana, Smartsheet, or similar platforms.
• Education: Bachelor's degree in a relevant technical, business, or operations field. MBA or equivalent advanced degree is a plus.

Performance Metrics: 1. Delivery & Velocity

• Time-to-go-live / Implementation velocity — average days from contract signature to customer go-live, segmented by customer tier and product
• On-time delivery rate — percentage of implementations completed within the originally scoped timeline
• Implementation capacity utilization — ratio of active projects to team capacity, used to guide hiring and resource planning

2. Customer Outcomes & SaaS Health

• Time-to-value (TTV) — time from go-live to the customer achieving their first defined success milestone or meaningful product adoption threshold
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) / Implementation NPS — post-implementation survey scores measuring the quality of the onboarding experience
• Early churn / post-implementation churn rate — percentage of customers who churn within 90–180 days of go-live, a leading indicator of onboarding quality
• Product adoption rate at handoff — percentage of contracted features or seats actively used at the point of Customer Success handoff
• Expansion influence — implementations that result in upsell or cross-sell opportunities identified and passed to Account Management

3. Financial & Business Impact

• Revenue recognition timing — average lag between contract signing and first recognized revenue, directly tied to implementation speed
• Renewal rate for implementation cohorts — NRR and GRR tracked for customers by the implementation team, providing a longitudinal view of onboarding quality's impact on retention

4. Team Performance

• Milestone attainment rate — percentage of project milestones hit on schedule across the active portfolio
• Team ramp time — average time for new Implementation Managers to reach full productivity

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.