VP, Professional Services

About this role

About Starburst

Starburst delivers enterprise intelligence at scale by giving organizations secure, governed access to all their data, wherever it lives. Built for distributed data environments, Starburst helps enterprises power AI and analytics without the cost and complexity of traditional data consolidation. With open standards including Trino and Apache Iceberg, Starburst enables trusted access to complete enterprise context while helping organizations avoid vendor lock-in. Leading global enterprises trust Starburst to fuel AI, analytics, and enterprise intelligence. Learn more at starburst.ai .

The Role:

We are looking for a VP of Professional Services to lead and scale the organization responsible for the following technical phases of the customer journey: onboarding, adoption, utilization, and renewals. This is a critical leadership role that owns the customer journey from "signed" to "renewed and growing," and directly influences Net Revenue Retention (NRR), Gross Revenue Retention (GRR), and overall customer lifetime value.

You will build and lead a team spanning Customer Success Managers, Enterprise Architects, Technical Engagement Managers, Professional Services, and Educational Services, ensuring customers realize value from Starburst and become long-term advocates and expansion opportunities.

What You'll Do:

• Own post sales strategy and outcomes. Build and execute the strategy for onboarding, adoption, renewals, and expansion across the installed base, with clear accountability for GRR, NRR, and churn reduction.

• Lead and scale the team. Hire, develop, and manage a team of CSMs, Enterprise Architects, Technical Engagement Managers, Professional Services, and Educational Services. Build the org structure, coverage model, and career paths needed to scale with the business.

• Drive value realization. Ensure customers move from initial deployment to production usage quickly, and that value is measured and communicated back to the customer.

• Own the renewal and expansion motion. Partner closely with Sales/Account Management on renewal forecasting, risk mitigation, and identifying expansion opportunities (new use cases, new business units, consumption growth).

• Build scalable playbooks. Develop repeatable onboarding, adoption, health-scoring, and escalation processes that work across a diverse customer base — from fast-moving digital natives to large, complex enterprise accounts.

• Be the voice of the customer internally. Work cross-functionally with Product and Engineering to surface systemic issues, influence roadmap prioritization, and ensure customer feedback shapes the platform.

• Manage escalations. Act as an executive point of escalation for at-risk accounts, technical blockers, or strategic customer relationships.

• Report on health and performance. Own postsales metrics and reporting (adoption, health scores, GRR/NRR, churn, expansion pipeline) for leadership and the board.

• Own packaging and services strategy. Define professional services offerings and how postsales investment maps to customer segments (enterprise vs. mid-market, self-serve vs. high-touch), in partnership with Product and Sales leadership.

What You'll Need:

• 8+ years of experience in Customer Success, Postsales, or related revenue leadership roles, with at least 3-5 years managing managers or scaling a multi-function postsales org.

• Experience in enterprise infrastructure, data platform, or developer-tooling software (data warehousing, data lakes, databases, analytics, or similar technical categories strongly preferred).

• Track record of owning and improving GRR/NRR and renewal outcomes in a B2B SaaS or enterprise software environment.

• Comfort operating in technically complex sales cycles — you don't need to write SQL yourself, but you should be conversant enough with concepts like data federation, query engines, data lakes, and open table formats (e.g., Iceberg) to earn credibility with technical customers and your own Enterprise Architects.

• Experience building a postsales function from a still-scaling stage (not just running an already-mature machine) — including defining segmentation, health scoring, and coverage models.

• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, particularly with Sales, Product, and Engineering leadership.

• Executive presence and experience serving as an escalation point for strategic enterprise accounts.

• Data-driven approach to running the business — comfortable owning a metrics dashboard and using it to drive team behavior, not just report results.

Nice to Have:

•

• Prior experience at an open-source-adjacent or infrastructure company (databases, query engines, data platforms, cloud infrastructure).

• Familiarity with Trino, Presto, or similar distributed SQL engines, or with data lakehouse architectures (Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hudi).

• Experience in a company transitioning from mid-market to enterprise-heavy ACV, or scaling through a Series C+/growth stage.

• Experience owning a professional services P&L or delivery organization.

Where could this role be based?

• Boston area preferred, open to other US remote locations

Starburst is dedicated to maintaining fair and equitable compensation practices. The salary range provided for this role reflects the minimum and maximum targets for candidates across all U.S. locations and could be inclusive of variable compensation, such as commission or bonus. All employees receive equity packages (ISOs) and have access to a comprehensive benefits offering. Actual compensation packages are determined based on relevant skills, experience, education and training, and specific work location. For more information, connect with the recruiting team or Hiring Manager during the process as they can provide more detailed information about the salary range.

Pay Range $240,000 — $300,000 USD

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