OpenRouter is hiring its first Customer Success Lead to build and lead the CS function from scratch. As a foundational team member, you will own customer relationships directly while designing the processes and infrastructure to scale. You will work directly with the founders and have a massive impact on our fast-growing AI infrastructure platform.
What You'll Do
- Manage a portfolio of customers directly and build deep relationships with technical and business stakeholders.
- Analyze usage patterns and create custom LLM optimization strategies for each customer.
- Guide customers on model selection, routing strategies, and cost/quality/performance tradeoffs.
- Stay ahead of the LLM landscape and educate customers on emerging capabilities and providers.
- Navigate technical discussions with engineering teams and strategic conversations with business stakeholders, including C-level executives.
- Build the CS foundation from scratch—define strategy, metrics, customer segmentation, and scalable playbooks for onboarding, adoption, expansion, and renewals.
- Set up the CS tech stack and operational workflows, including establishing early warning systems and health scoring.
- Partner with Sales on account transitions and expansion plays; collaborate with Product and Engineering to represent customer feedback and influence roadmap.
- Advocate for customer needs with Product and Engineering teams and influence the roadmap based on customer insights.
What We're Looking For
- 5+ years in Customer Success with experience building or scaling a CS function.
- Strong retention and expansion track record.
- Hands-on approach—excited to be in the trenches with customers while building for scale.
- Proven builder—you've created CS processes, playbooks, and teams from scratch.
- Technical depth—fluent with APIs, can read code, and understand technical architectures.
- Deep LLM/AI knowledge—understand models, providers, capabilities, tradeoffs, and the evolving landscape.
- Hiring experience—you've successfully recruited and developed CS talent.
- Executive presence and ability to engage with C-suite stakeholders and technical teams equally well.
Nice to Have
- First or second CS hire at a startup that scaled.
- Experience at API-first or AI infrastructure companies.
- Technical background (engineering, data science, solutions architecture).
- Experience with prompt engineering and LLM evaluation.
Team & Environment
You will be the first Customer Success hire, building the function from scratch and reporting directly to the founders.
