Customer Value Manager - Europe
CoLab Software · Europe
About CoLab
At CoLab, we help mechanical engineering teams bring life-changing products to market years sooner.
We build AI for engineers designing cars, medical devices, and jet engines. Products this complex aren't sketched and sent to production. Teams spend months on iterations, reviews, and tests, predicting how every part performs before anything is built. CoLab is where those reviews happen, and we capture the rationale behind every change. Other tools show what changed between versions. Only CoLab knows why. That's how our AI helps manufacturers like Bobcat, Triumph Motorcycles, and GE Appliances make better decisions, eliminate rework cycles, and get to market faster.
Proudly based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, CoLab started with one customer in 2018. Since then we’ve raised a $72M Series C, been named the 57th fastest growing company in North America by Deloitte (Fast 500™), signed multi-year AI partnerships with companies like Bombardier, and grown to a team of 250+.
About the role
The cars, medical devices, and jet engines our customers build reach the market years sooner only when the teams behind them change how they design, review, and release products. As a Customer Value Manager you’ll lead that change.
You are accountable for adoption, and ultimately for the value our largest, most complex global customers realize from CoLab, in line with their business goals. You’ll understand how their teams really work and build the plan to transform it. Then you’ll lead the execution yourself, consulting on their workflows, training their teams, and pulling in CoLab’s experts where needed. Success in this role looks like engineers who can’t imagine running a design review without CoLab, and results that Engineering Executives stand behind: shorter lead times, fewer rework cycles, lower cost of poor quality, faster supplier reviews, and significant savings.
This role is built for engineers & technical project managers who want their expertise to go further. A background in engineering or past experience directly engaging with engineers is required. This is critical as you’ll earn trust by speaking the language of the people you serve. You’ll bring that credibility, along with sharp business judgment, to every conversation, from front-line engineers to Engineering Executives (VP+).
You won’t do it alone. You’ll work alongside Sales on overall account strategy and with CoLab’s technical experts, including Forward Deployed Engineers and Customer Success Engineers. You lead the plan that brings them together, and you’re accountable for the value the customer sees.
On-site visits have consistently driven higher adoption, deeper relationships, and better business outcomes. We recognize personal travel constraints may arise, and we expect CVMs to proactively plan for and prioritize time with customers on-site at least 25% of the time. Twice a year, all CoLabers gather at our HQ in St. John’s, Newfoundland (typically June and December) for Team Week.
What you’ll own
Customer strategy and value plan
- Get in early: Join deals before they close. Research the customer, agree on readiness requirements and baseline value metrics, and present a tailored onboarding plan at kick-off.
- Build and run the Customer Value Plan: Get to know the customer’s business: their industry and objectives, org structure, stakeholders, tech stack, and engineering workflows. Connect all of it to CoLab. Own the plan that takes them from adoption to measurable business outcomes (value) tied to their goals, and keep looking for where else CoLab can drive value. Project manage timelines, stakeholders, and adoption milestones closely.
Engineering workflow and adoption
- CoLab power user: Be a true expert in our product: the technology, the use cases, how customers use it, and the value they get from it. As we bring on new features and functionality, you’ll keep your expertise current as our product offering evolves
- Shape how engineers work: Consult on how the customer’s engineering teams collaborate, design, review, and release products, and use that insight to heavily influence their engineering workflow strategy. You own the CoLab configuration aligned to these workflows to ensure deep adoption is reached and sustained, continuously expanding their use-cases and refining existing workflows with CoLab.
- Drive adoption and change: Build strong relationships with key stakeholders and champions, then use change management practices to turn them into advocates for CoLab across their organization. Train engineers and stakeholders on CoLab for their jobs to be done, so it becomes deeply ingrained in how they work every day.
Value and executive engagement
- Prove and communicate value: Proactively analyze usage data against customer goals and work with customers to get their internal metrics, so you can quantify the business impact (value). Own the strategy and deck for Quarterly Partnership Reviews, building them with your champions and co-presenting to the Executive Sponsor alongside your Account Team.
Account leadership and risk
- Lead the account team: Bring in CSEs, FDEs, Sales, and Product where they’re needed and own the plan that brings them together. You’ll drive outcomes through others without direct authority, while staying accountable to the end result.
- Get ahead of risk: Identify and communicate risks early, define and execute action plans, and escalate without hesitation.
Commercial outcomes
- Own retention and renewals: Own gross revenue retention across your book, and own renewals not tied to an expansion end to end (forecasting, negotiation, signature).
- Partner with your AE on growth: Co-develop account growth strategy and renewal planning, with strong influence over NRR.
- Commercial confidence: Familiarity navigating complex procurement, security, and compliance processes in enterprise accounts
What we’re looking for
- 7+ years in Customer Success, Strategic Consulting, or Enterprise Account Management
- Proven success driving enterprise transformation and value realization across global Fortune 1000 accounts
- Experience with customer journey orchestration and success planning in a high-ACV SaaS environment
- Track record of partnering with Sales to shape and execute multi-threaded expansion strategies in large, complex organizations
- Familiarity with navigating complex procurement, security, and compliance processes in enterprise accounts
- Strong executive presence and communication skills
- Comfortable operating in fast-paced, high-growth environments
- Highly organized, data-driven, and accountable
- Willingness to travel up to 25% of the time
What you bring
- Engineering background or strong technical project experience (required): Degree in engineering, or equivalent hands-on experience as a practicing engineer (design, manufacturing, systems, or quality) in a product development environment, with working knowledge of the product development lifecycle (decomposition and design through verification and validation).
- Critical thinking (required): Ability to break down complex, ambiguous customer situations, challenge assumptions (including your own and the customer’s), separate signal from noise in data, and reach well-reasoned recommendations and decisions
- Experience managing complex enterprise relationships in a technical, customer-facing role, such as CS, consulting, solutions or field engineering, or an engineer who has moved into customer-facing work
- Experience driving adoption and change in enterprise engineering orgs: shaping workflows, training & enabling teams on a technical product(s) that translates to their full adoption, and mobilizing stakeholders
- Business acumen and analytical rigor: connects the customer’s business goals to CoLab’s value. Leverages usage data to quantify impact (value)
- Strong cross-functional partner with a proven ability to mobilize internal resources and drive outcomes through others without direct authority (e.g., CSEs, FDEs, Sales, Product)
- Strong executive presence and communication skills, with credibility from Engineering Leads through Executive Sponsors (VP+)
- Experience owning renewals, including forecasting, commercial negotiation, and contract signature, and partnering with Sales to shape and execute multi-threaded expansion strategies in large, complex organizations
Nice to haves
- Hands-on experience with PLM (Windchill, Teamcenter, etc.) and CAD (Creo, NX, SolidWorks, etc.) tools, as a power user or as someone responsible for enabling others
- Formal change management training or certification (e.g., Prosci)
- Familiarity with land-and-expand SaaS motions
- Background in vertical SaaS (e.g., construction tech, industrial IoT, logistics)
- Experience with customer journey orchestration and success planning in a high-ACV SaaS environment
You’ll thrive at CoLab if you:
- Are energized by solving complex customer challenges. No challenge too tall. Your scrappiness and creative thinking propels you with confidence to solve anything thrown your way
- Want to use your engineering expertise to change how entire engineering organizations work
- Excel at translating product functionality into customer value in a technical domain
- Think critically, question assumptions, and get to the root cause of complex problems
- Lead strategic conversations with confidence and clarity
- Take ownership of customer outcomes and internal clarity
- Thrive in a fast-paced, evolving environment where processes are still being shaped
- Excel at cross-functional collaboration, even in ambiguous territory
- Operate with urgency and proactively mitigate risk