Sr. Manager, Customer Programs

At F5, we strive to bring a better digital world to life. Our teams empower organizations across the globe to create, secure, and run applications that enhance how we experience our evolving digital world. We are passionate about cybersecurity, from protecting consumers from fraud to enabling companies to focus on innovation.

Everything we do centers around people. That means we obsess over how to make the lives of our customers, and their customers, better. And it means we prioritize a diverse F5 community where each individual can thrive.

F5’s Customer Advocacy team plays a critical role in showing the world what’s possible when our customers bet on F5. They are laser focused on building strong connections with select customers to gather insights and build advocacy for the problems that F5 helps solves.

We’re looking for an experienced customer advocacy leader who’s ready to create a center of excellence within the Global Marketing and Customer Experience (GMCX) organization. As the Sr. Manager of Customer Programs, you will lead the global Customer Advocacy team and execute modern and targeted customer communications that deliver meaningful engagement across all points of the customer journey. You will also drive the strategy for creating compelling programs where customers crave to engage, where we forge connections and relationships that help F5 build better products and solve our customer’s problems. In collaboration with the rest of your team, you’ll work to build a strong rapport with customers to deepen loyalty and engagement and turn them into raving fans and advocates.

The right candidate will seamlessly balance strategic thinking with tactical execution – considering what the current customer journey is and where it should be headed. This role is incredibly cross-functional, requiring regular communication across marketing, branding, partners, creative, studio, product marketing, sales and sales enablement, customer success teams and our executive team. Successful candidates will have a proven track record of evolving and scaling customer advocacy programs and developing customer champions and will provide “outside-in” perspectives and recommendations leveraging best-in-class practices.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the global customer advocacy team – identifying what success looks like, the programs that will get us there, driving execution within the team, and scale our initiatives globally.
• Drive strong growth within customer advocacy efforts, working closely with the team on customer testimonials (video and written), customer quotes, peer review platform strategy, executive programs, and future customer pilots.
• Maintain and track a repository of “go to” customer references, closely tracking and reporting on references within our customer base.
• Build and drive the strategy for customer engagement and communication programs, such as awards programs, onboarding, and always-on nurture campaigns.
• Coordinate with product marketing teams to strengthen our brand presence and reputation on customer reviews and rating platforms.
• Develop and nurture strong working relationships with executive customers, leading by example for the rest of your team in what it takes to develop long-standing, mutually beneficial relationships with key customers.
• Partner with marketing, sales, and product to infuse the customer’s voice into the customer journey across our internal and external initiatives.
• Align with Customer Success leadership to execute customer-centric strategies that increase net retention, net promoter scores, and customer lifetime value.
• Be the “voice of the customer” internally — capturing and communicating customer insights back to a variety of internal teams (for example: marketing, product management and sales enablement teams).

Qualifications & Background:

• Demonstrated ability to lead a global customer advocacy program – strategy balanced with tactical execution is critical here.
• Strong leadership skills and executive presence is a must. Experience managing multiple stakeholders and senior executives, both internally and externally, to develop and execute marketing programs.
• Proven ability to develop deep relationships and influence cross-functional teams.
• Strong communication, writing, and storytelling skills with the ability to distill complex information into clear, concise messaging; ability to write in a simple, direct, and human-first tone.
• Strong affinity for working in deep collaboration with customers to understand their unique challenges and goals, and to partner closely to make them successful.
• Ability to quickly learn and navigate internal teams to find efficient and effective solutions cross-functionally.
• Data-driven and results-oriented to dramatically grow business results.
• Strong project management and organizational skills with an ability to create, execute, and adjust plans as needed.
• Innovative – is creative and enjoys generating new ideas to push the bounds of marketing.
• 12+ years of experience in Marketing or a Communications role, with at least 5 years’ experience in a customer advocacy role specifically. Enterprise security and SaaS experience is a plus.