Lead - Escalation Desk

Lead - Escalation Desk

Company Description

Organizations everywhere struggle under the crushing costs and complexities of “solutions” that promise to simplify their lives. To create a better experience for their customers and employees. To help them grow. Software is a choice that can make or break a business. Create better or worse experiences. Propel or throttle growth. Business software has become a blocker instead of ways to get work done.

There’s another option. Freshworks. With a fresh vision for how the world works.

At Freshworks, we build uncomplicated service software that delivers exceptional customer and employee experiences. Our enterprise-grade solutions are powerful, yet easy to use, and quick to deliver results. Our people-first approach to AI eliminates friction, making employees more effective and organizations more productive. Over 72,000 companies, including Bridgestone, New Balance, Nucor, S&P Global, and Sony Music, trust Freshworks’ customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) software to fuel customer loyalty and service efficiency. And, over 4,500 Freshworks employees make this possible, all around the world.

Fresh vision. Real impact. Come build it with us.

Job Description

Impact you can create

Escalations are defining moments in the enterprise lifecycle. In this high-visibility role, you won't just manage crises—you will be the strategic anchor that turns high-pressure, ambiguous technical failures into opportunities for trust-building and systemic improvement. Operating across a matrixed global organization, your learning agility and cross-functional leadership will directly protect revenue, influence product roadmaps, and safeguard the Freshworks brand. By joining us, you will:

• Turn Crisis into Customer Loyalty: Act as the ultimate single point of accountability, transforming chaotic, multi-stakeholder escalations into highly coordinated journeys toward full system stabilization.

• Bridge the Enterprise Ecosystem: Shatter operational silos by commanding cross-functional "situation rooms" that unite Support, Customer Success, Product, and Engineering under a singular mission.

• Protect Revenue & Executive Confidence: Serve as a trusted advisor to C-level executives globally, providing transparent, high-empathy communication that de-escalates tension when significant revenue is at risk.

• Fuel a Culture of Continuous Learning: Ensure that no crisis is wasted. By championing meticulous post-mortems, you will translate reactive fire-fighting into proactive product updates and operational blueprints.

R&R (Roles & Responsibilities)

• Cross-Functional Crisis Orchestration: Lead the end-to-end lifecycle of high-severity and executive-level escalations, rapidly aligning engineering, product, and customer-facing teams to establish ownership, action plans, and success criteria.

• Situation Room Leadership: Facilitate highly focused, high-stakes internal and external alignment calls, maintaining operational momentum and cross-functional accountability under intense pressure.

• Executive-Ready Communication: Synthesize highly complex technical anomalies into concise, business-impact language, delivering regular strategic briefings to senior internal and external stakeholders.

• Holistic Customer Advocacy: Represent the voice of the enterprise client internally, balancing deep operational empathy with clear, transparent, and realistic expectation setting.

• Root Cause & Prevention Architecture: Conduct post-incident reviews (PIRs) and partner closely with Product and Engineering to diagnose systemic vulnerabilities, track corrective actions, and continuously update escalation playbooks.

• Performance Insights: Monitor and report on core escalation metrics, contributing to executive dashboards that inform strategic resourcing and risk management.

Qualifications

Skills

• Learning Agility & Technical Comprehension: A proven capacity to quickly deconstruct complex, unfamiliar cloud software architectures and technical dependencies on the fly to accurately assess business risk.

• Dynamic Ambiguity Management: The ability to remain grounded, make high-stakes decisions, and prioritize fluid tasks simultaneously in an fast-evolving, high-pressure environment.

• Cross-Functional Influence & Diplomacy: Exceptional interpersonal authority to guide, influence, and hold teams accountable across Product, Engineering, and Success without direct reporting lines.

• Executive Presence: Superior written and verbal communication skills, with the diplomatic finesse required to manage conflict and align conflicting perspectives at the C-suite level.

• Data-Driven Problem Solving: Strong analytical grounding in root cause analysis (RCA) frameworks and a transition mindset that naturally shifts from reactive resolution to preventative strategy.

Qualifications

• Professional Experience: 6+ years of progressive experience in enterprise Support, Technical Program Management (TPM), Customer Success, or Incident Management within a B2B SaaS environment.

• Escalation Mastery: 3+ years of dedicated experience directly managing high-severity, high-revenue, or executive-level enterprise escalations.

• Cross-Functional Track Record: Demonstrated experience partnering directly with Engineering and Product Management teams to untangle complex product and infrastructure issues.

• Operational Readiness: High adaptability and availability to support occasional off-hours coverage during critical, high-impact enterprise incidents.

Additional Information

At Freshworks, we have fostered an environment that enables everyone to find their true potential, purpose, and passion, welcoming colleagues of all backgrounds, genders, sexual orientations, religions, and ethnicities. We are committed to providing equal opportunity and believe that diversity in the workplace creates a more vibrant, richer environment that boosts the goals of our employees, communities, and business. Fresh vision. Real impact. Come build it with us.

Experience Level

Senior Level