Director of Customer Communications

Who you are

• You are an experienced communications and operational leader who performs well in fast-moving, high-pressure environments
• You know how to bring structure to ambiguity, translate technical complexity into language customers can understand, and build trust through clarity, empathy, and follow-through
• You are comfortable operating with senior executives, engineering leaders, field teams, and strategic customers
• You can move between strategic design and hands-on execution, and you know how to build durable operating mechanisms rather than relying on heroics
• 10+ years of experience in a customer focused technical, post-sale, operational, support, incident management, crisis communications, or related environment
• 5+ years of leadership experience managing teams and building cross-functional programs
• Demonstrated experience leading high-stakes communications during incidents, major escalations, security events, or large-scale customer-impacting changes
• Strong technical literacy, with the ability to quickly understand cloud, platform, service, and customer-impact narratives
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to communicate effectively with both technical and executive audiences
• Proven success working across multiple organizations to align stakeholders, drive decisions, and deliver outcomes under pressure
• Strong program leadership skills, including experience building new functions, frameworks, or operating models from the ground up
• Experience in Customer Support, Technical Services, Incident Management, Critical Communications, Escalation Management, SRE, Operations, or Customer Success in a cloud or PaaS company
• Experience building or operating a centralized urgent, crisis, incident, or critical communications capability
• Familiarity with communication tooling, CRM systems, operational notification platforms, and customer segmentation models
• Experience working with global teams in a follow-the-sun operating environment
• Knowledge of incident command, crises management, business continuity, or related operational frameworks
• Strong judgment in balancing speed, accuracy, legal/compliance considerations, and customer trust during high-pressure situations

What the job involves

• MongoDB is seeking a senior leader to build a new communications function within the Customer Organization
• This role will own the strategy, operating model, governance and execution framework for a spectrum of situations requiring customer and stakeholder communications, ranging from high-stakes operational situations, incidents, critical advisories, security events, product changes, through to recurring action-required and informational type needs
• In this role, the leader will ensure MongoDB delivers transparent, accurate, empathetic, and well-timed communications during key moments of customer need
• They will drive cross-functional collaboration across Technical Services, Engineering, Product, Security, Customer Success, Sales, Legal, and Corporate Communications to guarantee a unified and seamless corporate presence across both critical and non-critical events
• This is a highly cross-functional leadership role that is explicitly expected to operate in a player-coach model. You will shape the long-term vision for the function, define the processes and measures of success, and personally guide communications during the most complex and visible situations
• Define the charter, scope, roadmap, and operating model for the Customer Communications function at MongoDB
• Codify decision rights, review workflows, and escalation criteria for all operational communications
• Orchestrate a scalable global model that ensures 24/7 follow-the-sun support
• Recruit and mentor a team of specialized Communications Managers known for technical fluency and operational precision
• Lead communications for high-severity incidents, major customer-impacting events, critical advisories, and other non-urgent operational situations
• Ensure communications are timely, technically credible, audience-appropriate, and aligned across all stakeholder groups
• Create standards for communication cadence, approval paths, message quality, and post-event follow-through
• Help define what good looks like for first customer notification, update frequency, customer action guidance, and post-incident reporting
• Establish standard and measurable processes and methods for recurring operational customer communications
• Partner with Engineering, Product, Security, Technical Services, Customer Success, Sales, Legal and Corporate Communications to deliver a unified and trusted voice to customers
• Clarify the boundary between operational communications and broader marketing or promotional communications
• Act as a senior advisor to executives and field leaders during critical situations, helping teams make sound decisions quickly and communicate with consistency
• Build strong working relationships with systems, tooling, and operations teams to improve targeting, delivery, and reporting of urgent communications at scale
• Define the templates, playbooks, review models, and governance needed to make operational communications repeatable and high quality
• Partner on tooling and data requirements so MongoDB can reach the right customer contacts reliably and at speed
• Establish success metrics for the function, including timeliness, delivery confidence, stakeholder trust, and continuous improvement outcomes
• Lead retrospectives on communications performance after major incidents and advisories, turning lessons learned into better process and execution
• Success in the role:
• In your first year, success will be defined by the following outcomes:
• Operational Maturity: Implementation of a fully adopted, scalable global operating model that ensures 24/7 consistency and eliminates manual process bottlenecks
• Stakeholder Trust: Achieve documented increases in internal stakeholder satisfaction and confidence scores regarding communication accuracy and reliability
• Strategic Impact: Successfully integrate communications tooling and data strategy, resulting in highly targeted, high-fidelity customer notifications
• Measurable Efficiency: Achieve a significant reduction in time-to-first-notification and overall incident resolution communication latency
• Customer Confidence: Measurable improvements in customer sentiment and trust metrics during critical events, verified through post-incident surveys and reporting