Escalation Manager

Smartcat

9h•Remote

About The Position

Smartcat is building the future of work, where human expertise meets digital teammates to drive 10x to 1000x productivity gains for the world’s leading enterprises. We’re on the frontier of an entirely new category: Agentic AI. We enable enterprises to build high-performing hybrid workforces made up of both humans and AI agents. These AI agents aren’t generic copilots. They’re fully trained digital teammates that learn from your best people, your content, and your business strategy—ready to get to work from day one. Our platform combines generative AI, human-in-the-loop workflows, and a living Enterprise Skill Graph that continuously learns and improves. Whether you're launching a product globally, onboarding new hires, translating learning content, or aligning legal teams across regions, Smartcat turns knowledge into action and action into scale. Over 1,000 companies, including 20% of the Fortune 500, rely on Smartcat to bring their business to the world—instantly, accurately, and in every language. As a Series C company with 130% year-over-year growth, we’re scaling fast and investing in people who want to shape the future of work with us. Join us in unlocking global potential, one human and agent team at a time. The Customer Escalation Manager is responsible for leading the resolution of high-priority customer escalations while ensuring an exceptional customer experience throughout the escalation lifecycle. This role serves as the primary point of accountability for escalated issues, combining structured escalation management with strong customer advocacy, proactive communication, and disciplined execution against defined SLAs and contractual commitments. The ideal candidate is customer-obsessed, calm under pressure, and highly skilled at managing complex, high-impact situations with professionalism and empathy. Success in this role is measured not only by speed and quality of resolution, but by the customer’s confidence in the process, clarity of communication, and the long-term improvement of customer outcomes.

Requirements

5+ years of experience in customer escalation management, customer success, technical support operations, program/project management, or related disciplines
Proven ability to manage complex, high-severity escalations while maintaining strong customer experience, communication and SLA outcomes
Strong customer-facing communication skills, including experience engaging with senior customer stakeholders
Strong internal communication skills with internal stakeholders at all levels
Demonstrated ability to implement AI tools and techniques to reduce total time to resolution while enhancing customer experience. Candidates should be comfortable leveraging AI to optimize efficiency, automate decision-making, and drive measurable improvements in service delivery
Experience supporting AI-enabled products, platforms, or workflows
Creating reporting on KPI and metric results and implementing improvement plans to meet KPI goals
Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams and influence outcomes without direct authority
Strong organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities and deliver results under pressure
Ability to balance urgency, empathy, and operational discipline in high-impact situations
Customer-first mindset with strong advocacy and relationship management
Escalation leadership and structured execution discipline
Results-driven with focus on SLA performance and customer confidence
Executive-level communication and stakeholder alignment
Strong cross-functional influence and coordination skills
Presenting in monthly/quarterly business reviews on organizational results to company KPIs and metrics
Analytical problem solving and continuous improvement orientation
Calm, professional judgment in high-pressure situations

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting enterprise or strategic customer accounts
Familiarity with SaaS platforms and technical support/product development lifecycles
Project management certification or experience (CAPM, PMP, Agile/Scrum, ITIL)
Experience establishing escalation governance, customer experience standards, or operational excellence programs

Responsibilities

Serve as the primary customer-facing owner of escalations, ensuring customers feel informed, supported, and confident throughout the resolution process
Act as a strong customer advocate internally by translating business impact, urgency, and expectations into clear action plans and priorities
Ensure communications are clear, timely, empathetic, and solution-oriented, reinforcing trust during high-pressure situations
Drive a consistent, high-quality escalation experience by setting expectations, aligning on next steps, and maintaining transparency
Own the end-to-end lifecycle of escalations from intake through resolution, ensuring compliance with SLAs, contractual obligations, and internal quality standards
Drive progress through structured execution, strong accountability, and effective stakeholder coordination
Monitor escalation timelines and SLA performance, proactively identifying risks and implementing mitigation strategies to maintain delivery commitments
Escalate internally as needed to secure prioritization, alignment, resources, or decisions required to achieve customer outcomes
Lead cross-functional collaboration across Engineering, Product, Support, Operations, and leadership teams to deliver timely resolutions
Establish escalation action plans with clear milestones, owners, priorities, and delivery timelines
Facilitate escalation operating rhythms (triage calls, war rooms, executive updates) to ensure momentum, clarity, and alignment
Track progress, risks, and dependencies and remove blockers to maintain forward movement and resolution certainty
Provide clear and consistent status updates to customers and internal stakeholders, including executive-ready summaries when required
Ensure customers understand impact, progress, expected timelines, and resolution plans in business-friendly language
Maintain escalation documentation, including customer communications, decision logs, action tracking, and final outcomes
Support internal reporting and insights to improve escalation transparency and operational visibility
Partner with internal teams to support issue triage, root cause analysis, and corrective/preventative action planning
Lead post-resolution reviews focused on both technical outcomes and customer experience learnings
Identify recurring patterns, systemic risks, or operational gaps impacting customers and drive improvements to prevent future escalations
Contribute to improving escalation frameworks, playbooks, processes, and customer communication standards

Benefits

Fully remote team
We are a global team of 200+ enthusiastic people spread across 30+ countries. We have been fully remote since 2020, with some locations populated with more Smartcaters than others, such as Boston, Belgrade, Lisbon, Tbilisi and Yerevan.
Be part of an AI Native Organization
We are highly innovative, using AI across all areas of the organization to accelerate decision-making and free people to focus on strategy and high-impact work. We embrace new ideas and encourage all Smartcaters, regardless of level or department, to manage their own AI Agents. At Smartcat you’ll shape how AI transforms the workplace and play an integral role in ensuring Smartcat remains a leader in AI innovation.
Innovating a $100 Billion industry
Smartcat is reshaping the $100B multilingual content industry with an AI-powered platform that makes it easy for companies to create, translate, and localize global content at scale. Our platform enables enterprise teams to move away from slow, traditional outsourcing methods, and achieve fast, high-quality results, at a fraction of the cost.
Join the rocketship to scale-up 10x and beyond together
We are looking for someone to become an integral part of our team and play a crucial role in the most exciting part of our journey: transitioning from a post-Series C startup to a company exceeding $100M in ARR and $1B in valuation. Our journey isn’t for the faint of heart. We are growing at 130% YoY, thanks to our strong product-market fit and high-performing team, and plan to accelerate from here.
Smartcat Culture: Where Diversity Meets High Performance
At Smartcat, we are committed to building a culture that highlights respect and appreciation for each individual's unique background and perspective, while maintaining a strong focus on results and engagement. We believe in welcoming everyone and fostering an inclusive environment where team members can be their authentic selves at work. Our commitment to inclusion is steadfast, and we stand firmly against discrimination and harassment.