Critical Support Manager - Escalations

Who we are About Stripe Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies - from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups - use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone's reach while doing the most important work of your career. About the team The Product Support team directly supports our largest and fastest growing users, partnering with them to grow their business. We actively seek and capitalize on opportunities to meet and exceed their service expectations, working to impress the trendsetters and remove obstacles from their path. The team is there when users need us but also there proactively - before they even realize they need support. The Critical Support team exists within Product Support to help address the most escalated user issues. This team responds to users who have sent their issue or concerns to a member of their Stripe account team or to a Stripe executive. We own the resolution of the immediate issue at hand, as well as ensuring that the factors that led to the escalation are addressed and remediated. Ultimately, these cases often shine a light on points of failures within Stripe, and the team has the opportunity to create transformative user experiences, while also helping edit Stripe to rectify the structural issues that resulted in the escalation in the first place. This is a high visibility, high impact role, with the responsibility to work with executives users and cross functional stakeholders, all while helping shape the evolution of this team. What you’ll do We are looking for a strategic leader to continue to build and lead Critical Support as Stripe’s ultimate. You will own the strategy, operating model, and cross-functional partnerships that enable Stripe to resolve the most severe and consequential user issues with urgency, judgment, and lasting impact on Stripe’s product and processes. You will equally wear a strategic and operational hat. You will lead a high performing team of escalations specialists to deliver exceptional user experiences. This team goes beyond basic troubleshooting—it's about developing a team of product and process expertise with analytical mindset and project management skills to strategically improve our support systems, processes, and product quality. You will play a key role to cultivate the happiness of their team through clear goal setting, feedback mechanism, mentoring, and advocacy within the organization. Responsibilities • Guide the organization to design and deliver scalable user support by partnering effectively with cross functional stakeholders across Product, Engineering and broader teams such Sales (Go-To-Market), Risk etc as needed • Co-own & drive Critical Support strategy, operating model, and multi-quarter roadmap development that meets or exceeds Stripe’s users and internal stakeholders expectations towards critical support experience • Act as a trusted partner to Sales, Account Management, Product, Engineering, Risk, and executive leadership during high-stakes user situations. • Drive strong operational delivery and process improvement helping to mitigate risk while balancing operational efficiency and user impact • Maintain metrics and analysis of team performance, and provide regular reporting on team performance in the form of written analysis and performance reports • Develop strong ties with cross-functional teams and position the Critical Support team to act as ultimate unblocking force for users as well as source of the insights on Stripe’s product and process. • Set clear goals and directions, and provide regular feedback on team members’ performance • Ensure team members are happy, effective, and growing in their career and new work experiences • Transmit and foster our values, serving as a beacon of Stripe’s user-centric philosophy and culture of transparency, empathy, inclusion, and empowerment • Help build the organization through management projects such as recruiting, training, writing team policies, defining team processes, or other organizational improvements Who you are We're looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements to be considered for the role. If you meet these requirements, you are encouraged to apply. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement. Minimum requirements • At least 8+ years of direct people management experience; including senior front line specialists and/or managers and supported them to career growth and transitions • Experience leading operational teams such as product support teams (preferably in high-growth technology companies) • Experience in strategizing and driving large scale operational process improvements and program management work • Solid experience in stakeholder management, with the ability to influence cross-functional teams and drive progress for the team and users • Strong analytical sense and track-record of making data driven decisions • Skill and credibility doing the core work of a user facing team with a high bar for quality and a willingness to lead by example and get into the details of front-line work if required • Strong ownership mindset and experience in driving highly complex initiatives at speed • Excellent written and verbal communication skills Preferred qualifications • Prior experience with Escalations, Incident Management • Comfort with some technical troubleshooting • Familiarity with FinTech industry and products • Passion for learning new functions and features of technical products