Rowden
Customer Success Director
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Customer Success Director
Department: Customer Success
Location: Bristol, UK
Description
We’re creating the UK’s next-generation engineering powerhouse, delivering critical technology that strengthens national security and resilience.
We turn advances in sensing, AI and communications into operational capability at the edge, where connectivity may be limited or unavailable. Our work accelerates technology deployment, improves frontline decision-making, and protects people and critical assets in demanding environments.
Based in Bristol, Rowden currently employs around 200 people and operates more than 20,000 square feet of engineering and manufacturing facilities. With a growing international presence, we are one of Europe’s fastest-growing engineering businesses.
The Role
As a Customer Success Director, you will lead relationships with some of our most important customers, ensuring that our products and services deliver a strong customer experience and measurable value – from large systems integration projects to hardware and software products.
In this role, you will act as a figurehead and driving force for something we've worked hard to earn: our reputation as the company that wants to make things better. You will protect it fiercely and speak up for doing the right thing by the customer. You will help drive that approach across the business, going above and beyond where it counts. Delivery, engineering and sales teams are just as central to that reputation as you are, and you will do this with them.
You will deal with people at every level of the organisations we work with, from frontline soldiers and emergency responders up to senior responsible owners. They need to see you as someone credible who understands their problems and can get things moving. This is a hands-on job. To earn trust, you need to be present and engaged at every level. You will get properly stuck in, spend time where the systems we deliver are being used or our teams are working, and understand the detail of what is really going on.
You won't run individual sales captures or projects in this role. Instead, you will focus on our current customers and end users, understand their challenges and priorities, and help Rowden line up behind them.
You will work across all our business lines, products and services. While you won't know everything on day one, you will need to learn what we do in as much depth as the job requires, and be humble enough to bring in an expert when someone else knows better.
You will report to our VP Customer Success and work closely with the sales and delivery teams. Staying closely aligned with the teams delivering is vital and cannot be overstated – you will need to work in close partnership with the Business Line leads and their teams, sharing what you hear from customers and agreeing together how to act on it.
This role is based at our Bristol HQ with hybrid working. Expect frequent travel around the UK and some overseas travel. Candidates must be eligible for SC clearance.
More information about security clearance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetting-clearance-levels
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For senior roles, compensation is tailored to the scope of the role and the specific experience a candidate brings. We do not publish a fixed salary band. We will discuss compensation openly at the first stage of the process and can share an indicative range before either side invests significant time.
Key Areas of Responsibility
Strategic Customer Engagement
- Build and maintain strong relationships with our customers at all levels, based on trust.
- Stay present and engaged at every level of the stakeholder landscape, including getting into the detail of what is happening on the ground.
- Understand customer priorities, funding lines, organisational objectives and their strategic direction.
- Develop customer engagement strategies that position Rowden for long-term success.
Customer Success
- Make sure customers realise measurable operational value from Rowden capabilities.
- Drive customer adoption and advocacy.
- Identify emerging risks before they affect delivery or customer confidence.
- Set up and maintain Customer Success Plans for strategic accounts.
- Where customers are unhappy, take ownership, work with the business line teams and improve things.
Working Across Rowden
- Work hand-in-glove with the Business Line Leads and their teams. Share customer insight early, agree priorities together and act as one team in front of the customer.
- Work with business line teams to maximise customer satisfaction and the uptake of our products and services.
- Be a figurehead for Rowden's reputation as the company that wants to make things better. Advocate for doing the right thing by the customer and help drive that approach across the business, alongside the teams who deliver it every day.
- Represent Rowden with confidence and competence in a wide range of settings, including complex commercial discussions with customers and industry partners.
Commercial Growth
- Identify opportunities to expand existing customer relationships.
- Work alongside Sales to shape future opportunities.
- Support strategic account planning.
- Contribute to the growth of your accounts.
What Success Looks Like
We will look at:
- The health of your assigned strategic accounts
- Executive stakeholder engagement
- Customer retention
- Customer advocacy and Rowden's reputation with senior customers
- Expansion opportunities created
- How well you work with delivery, sales and business line teams
Within your first 12 months, we would expect you to have become a trusted contact in your accounts, put a Customer Success Plan in place for each, and built clear working routines with the sales and business line teams.
Key Skills, Experience and Behaviours
You don't need to tick every box below word for word. We are looking for a general profile, so if most of this sounds like you, we'd like to hear from you.
What We're Looking For
- Credibility with senior customers. You have worked closely with senior military personnel in some capacity. Military service is welcome but not required.
- Deep domain knowledge. You understand how defence works in practice and the pressures your customers face.
- Experience in delivery, account management, customer success or a similar senior customer-facing role, ideally in defence, government or a related technical sector.
- Commercial awareness. You can handle complex commercial situations with customers and industry partners, and you know when something doesn't add up.
- Emotional intelligence. You are persistent and determined, and you can tell when to push and when to step back.
- A hands-on style. You build trust by showing up and getting stuck in, and you are comfortable with the detail.
- Reliability. You do what you say you will do, and you keep customers and colleagues informed when plans change.
- A high-ownership, high-commitment mindset. You connect people and ideas, create opportunities and see things through.
- Curiosity about technology, and the willingness to learn what our products do.
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Nice-to-Have:
- Experience with customer success plans, account health measures or similar frameworks.
- Experience working with, or supplying to, the UK Ministry of Defence or allied customers.
- Existing security clearance.
The system doesn't always work for the people who depend on it, and Rowden is trying to improve it. This role puts you at the centre of that effort. You will shape how we show up for customers, and you will see the results in the hands of the people using our systems. If you want to help make things better and have the experience to do it, we'd like to hear from you.
Working at Rowden
We are committed to building a flexible, inclusive, and enabling company. Our aim is to create a diverse team of talented people with unique skills, experience, and backgrounds, so please apply and come as you are!
We also recognise the importance of flexible working and support this wherever we can. We typically operate a flexible, hybrid-working model, with an average 3 days in the office each week (dependent on the role). We welcome the opportunity to discuss flexibility, part-time working requirements and/or workplace adjustments with all our applicants.
Rowden is a Disability Confident Committed company, and we actively encourage people with disabilities and health conditions to apply for our roles. Please let us know your requirements early on so that we can make sure you have everything you need up front to help make the recruitment process and experience as easy as possible.
Finally, if you feel that you don’t meet all the criteria included above but have transferable skills and relevant experience, we’d still love to hear from you!
What Matters to Us?
- Our focus is on the end user. We exist to deliver the best possible outcomes for the users of our systems.
- Pace matters. The problems we solve are urgent.
- Our diverse skills and backgrounds make us better. Our team prides itself on being inclusive and multidisciplinary.
- We are radically honest. Saying what we mean, even when it isn't easy.
- We are pragmatists. We provide realistic, focused solutions that get to the point.
- We improve continuously. We are relentless in our drive to make things better.
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