Customer Experience Communications Operations Manager

Job description

We are rebuilding biotech for the AI era. When a breakthrough is delayed, the world waits. Getting a molecule from discovery to patients, or a crop from lab to field, involves thousands of slow, manual, disconnected steps. AI has the potential to change this, compressing decades of R&D work into years. But that only happens when clean, structured scientific data and AI are built into how science gets done. Benchling is the AI platform for biotech R&D. Scientists use Benchling to design experiments, capture structured data, and run AI agents and models directly in their workflows. Over 200,000 scientists around the world trust Benchling to power their most important work, from academic labs to Sanofi, Moderna, and more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma. We’re building an AI scientist for our customers. We can’t do that if we haven’t built the muscle ourselves. AI fluency is the foundation we build on; it's core to how we work, and we're committed to helping every new hire integrate it into their day-to-day. As part of our interview process, you'll complete a brief AI-focused exercise or discussion so we can understand how you think about and use AI to drive impact in your role. Feel free to reference any tools, platforms, or workflows you use today. ROLE OVERVIEW As the Customer Experience Communications Operations Manager at Benchling, you will own the communications backbone for our customer base. Benchling ships product updates every day on a continuous release model, and we operate in regulated, validated customer environments where clear and appropriately timed product messaging directly translates to compliance rigor and customer trust. This role makes sure that when something changes, breaks, or ships, there is a defined, well-run process that gets the right message to the right customers on time. You will own three connected streams: incident communications, where you are accountable for the coverage, quality, and timeliness of what customers hear; change and release communications, where you own a single intake and a tiering system that sizes every change to the right message, audience, channel, and timing; and communications performance, where you own the operating model, dashboards, and retros that tell us whether the system is working and what to fix. You will report to the Leader of CX Operations. RESPONSIBILITIES - Own the incident communications framework: the severity model, playbooks, approved templates, and structure that let any qualified team send accurate customer comms at any hour. - Hold accountability for coverage, quality, timeliness, and contractual notification windows across all external incident communications, and keep delivery auditable. - Run a single intake for all customer comms requests (betas, announcements, releases, breaking and disruptive changes) and own the tiering system that sizes each change to the right audience, channel mix, and timing. - Build and maintain the approved template library so CX teams can send consistent, on-brand messaging on demand without routing every request through Operations. - Administer and improve the tooling that customer comms run through, and partner with the teams that own our integrations and automation across our tooling stack - Own the dashboards and reporting that show what is in flight, how fast it went out, and how it landed, and present performance and trends to CX leadership. - Run comms-lens post-incident reviews and drive the systemic fixes they surface with Product, Engineering, and Support. - Own the RACI across CX, Product, and Marketing for each comms type QUALIFICATIONS Requirements - 8+ years in customer communications operations, incident or change management, or a comparable operations role in B2B SaaS, ideally at a continuous-release software company. - Track record of building tiered, repeatable processes, clear RACIs, and performance dashboards. - Experience getting results through other teams: you define the standard, enable the people who execute it, and hold the bar without absorbing the work yourself. - Editorial judgment strong enough to set the bar for others. You can read a draft about a dense technical change or an unfolding incident and tell whether it is clear, accurate, and appropriately scoped for a busy scientific audience. - Comfort operating against contractual notification obligations and in regulated or validated customer environments. - Hands-on experience across a modern customer stack, for example Salesforce, Zendesk, Gainsight, a status or incident tool, BI and reporting tools, and email or marketing automation. - You use AI tools in your daily work and actively look for ways to apply them to comms triage, drafting, audience targeting, and performance analysis. Bonus if you have: - A background in the life sciences or hands-on experience with scientific R&D workflows, enough to tell a low-risk product change from one that meaningfully changes how a lab works. - Experience standing up or administering comms tooling such as lifecycle or email orchestration, in-app messaging, or status page platforms. - SQL or hands-on reporting skills for building comms and incident trend dashboards. - Prior experience in a customer-facing role (CSM, TAM, Support, Implementation) or familiarity with Benchling's product. HOW WE WORK We offer a flexible hybrid work arrangement that prioritizes in-office collaboration. Employees are expected to be on-site 3 days per week (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday). #LI-Hybrid #BI-Hybrid Benchling welcomes everyone. We believe diversity enriches our team so we hire people with a wide range of identities, backgrounds, and experiences. We are an equal opportunity employer. That means we don’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We also consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law, including but not limited to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.