Director of Account Management
Job Description:
The Director of Account Management owns the growth and retention of Smart Panda Tools’ institutional partner portfolio. You will manage the full relationship lifecycle (from onboarding through renewal and expansion) ensuring every partner institution gets measurable, sustained value from our Student Mobility Suite.
This role partners directly with Sales, Marketing, Product, and Support to align account strategy with institutional goals. You will identify expansion opportunities, lead renewal cycles, and serve as the primary strategic contact for our partners’ leadership teams. Beyond revenue targets, you will build the account management function that scales with our growth.
Why Join Us?
Smart Panda Tools builds the enterprise infrastructure that higher education institutions rely on to modernize transcript evaluation, automate credit articulation, and protect their academic authority. Our Student Mobility Suite is used by nearly 200 universities to process millions of transcripts without replacing the systems those institutions already depend on.
We are a team of higher education veterans, engineers, and enrollment operations experts. Many of us have sat in the Registrar’s chair, managed enterprise IT systems, and built the infrastructure to connect them. We build the technology we wish we had.
The people who thrive here care deeply about operational detail and student outcomes. They want to understand why institutions work the way they do before building something to improve it. They bring strong opinions while remaining curious, and design for the specific rather than the generic.
Administrative friction should never obstruct the path to great education. If that resonates, we’d like to work with you.
Key Responsibilities:
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Partner Relationship Management: Build and maintain deep relationships with key stakeholders and decision-makers at higher education institutions. Understand their operational goals, their enrollment challenges, and how our infrastructure fits into their existing workflows. You are their primary advocate inside Smart Panda Tools.
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Retention and Renewals: Own the end-to-end renewal cycle for your portfolio. Monitor account health, usage patterns, and satisfaction. Resolve friction points before they become risks. Collaborate with Legal and Finance on pricing and contract terms to secure timely renewals.
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Expansion and Revenue Growth: Meet and exceed quarterly and annual growth targets by identifying upsell and cross-sell opportunities: additional solutions, licenses, and services. Lead product conversations that connect our capabilities to specific institutional needs, not generic feature lists.
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Strategic Account Planning: Build tailored account roadmaps for each partner. Track retention and expansion milestones. Maintain an accurate, CRM-driven pipeline that gives leadership clear visibility into portfolio health and revenue forecasts.
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Market and Product Intelligence: Stay current on higher education trends, enrollment pressures, and competitive movements. Partner with Marketing to translate institutional insights into content, sales enablement, and campaign strategy. Feed product feedback from partners directly to the Product team.
Required Qualifications:
- 10+ years of sales or account management experience, preferably in SaaS or within the higher education market
- Proven track record of meeting or exceeding retention and expansion targets
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Strong negotiation, presentation, and communication skills
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Experience building and maintaining relationships with institutional leadership (Registrars, VPs of Enrollment, CIOs, Provosts)
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Ability to understand complex software solutions and articulate their value in the context of a partner’s specific operational environment
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Proficiency with CRM software (Pipedrive experience is a plus)
- Self-motivated and able to work independently in a remote environment
- Bachelor’s degree in business, marketing, or a related field
Preferred Qualifications:
- Direct experience working within higher education institutions or EdTech companies.
- Familiarity with transcript evaluation, transfer credit articulation, or enrollment management workflows.
- Experience managing institutional accounts where the buying committee includes both academic leadership and IT leadership.