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Lead, Retention Strategy

United States

At Coursera, we aim to allow employees to develop their skills and grow their careers. One way we do this is with internal transfers. In order to support open and fair transfers, we practice transparency and have set guidelines for who is eligible to request a transfer.

Anyone who has been in their role for more than 6 months and in good standing may apply for a new position at Coursera. For consideration outside this timeframe, individuals should talk to their manager and People Business Partner. Please be sure to read the our Internal Mobility Program Policy here. 

We’re a globally distributed team that comes together intentionally for collaboration, complex problem-solving, and key milestones — creating opportunities for teams to do their best work together. Our virtual hiring and onboarding experience makes it easy to join us and start making an impact from anywhere. If you’re ready to make a global impact, help scale unique products across Coursera + Udemy, and grow your career, apply below.

Job Overview

Within the Consumer organization, our work centers on helping learners discover, engage with, and realize value from the combined Udemy and Coursera portfolio. The Monetization team plays a critical role in shaping how customers evaluate, purchase, renew, and continue benefiting from our offerings, with a focus on improving learner value, retention, and long-term business outcomes.

We are seeking a Lead, Retention Strategy to drive the strategy, operating cadence, and cross-functional agenda for reducing voluntary and involuntary churn across our Consumer business.

In this role, you will be responsible for understanding why customers churn, identifying the highest-impact opportunities to improve retention, and building the business cases needed to prioritize initiatives across Product, Lifecycle, Monetization, Payments, Analytics, Data Science, Research, and Support. You will analyze customer behavior across key flows, geographies, channels, buyer segments, and subscription journeys to uncover opportunities that improve renewal rates, engagement, save outcomes, winback performance, and long-term customer value.

This role requires a combination of analytical rigor, strategic thinking, customer empathy, and cross-functional leadership. You will serve as a key thought partner to leaders across the Consumer organization and help ensure retention opportunities are clearly diagnosed, financially sized, prioritized, tested, and scaled.

 

Responsibilities

  • Track Coursera + Udemy retention metrics across key customer segments, geographies, platforms, acquisition channels, buyer segments, subscription products, and renewal cohorts, identifying the key drivers of voluntary and involuntary churn throughout the customer lifecycle.
  • Develop a data-driven retention strategy by partnering with Research, Analytics, Data Science, and Support to combine customer behavior, qualitative insights, and business performance data, translating findings into prioritized opportunities and business cases.
  • Analyze key customer journeys—including onboarding, discovery, engagement, subscription usage, cancellation, renewal, save, and winback—to identify opportunities that improve learner value, renewal rates, engagement, and long-term customer value.
  • Partner with Product, Lifecycle, Monetization, and Payments teams to prioritize and shape initiatives that improve retention, including engagement strategies, pricing and promotional approaches, save and winback programs, and payment recovery efforts that reduce involuntary churn.
  • Own the retention experimentation roadmap, including opportunity sizing, prioritization, success metrics, test design, readouts, and recommendations for scaling successful initiatives.
  • Lead the cross-functional retention operating cadence, aligning stakeholders on priorities, progress, risks, decisions, and execution while driving accountability across partner teams.
  • Develop scalable frameworks, metrics, and decision tools that enable consistent evaluation, prioritization, and measurement of retention initiatives across the Consumer organization.
  • Communicate retention performance, strategic recommendations, and business impact through executive-ready narratives, dashboards, business cases, and decision documents, serving as a trusted thought partner to Consumer leadership.

 

Basic Qualifications

  • 7+ years of experience in retention strategy, growth, monetization, product strategy, lifecycle marketing, analytics, management consulting, business operations, or a related analytical discipline.
  • Experience driving strategy and decision-making in a subscription or recurring revenue business, with exposure to retention, renewal, churn, engagement, pricing, payments, or monetization.
  • Strong analytical skills with experience using customer and business data to diagnose problems, size opportunities, evaluate experiments, and develop business cases.
  • Proven ability to influence cross-functional teams and drive alignment across complex initiatives.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including experience presenting recommendations to senior leaders.
  • Strong ownership, business judgment, and ability to operate independently in an ambiguous environment.

 

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience in a consumer subscription, SaaS, marketplace, e-commerce, media, or education technology business.
  • Experience leading initiatives focused on retention, renewal, churn reduction, lifecycle engagement, payment recovery, or customer lifetime value.
  • Familiarity with experimentation, SQL or BI tools, and working closely with Analytics or Data Science teams.
  • Experience developing executive-level business reviews, strategic recommendations, or operating dashboards.

 

Compensation 

This role is available in the following US Pay Zones:

US Zone 3: $147,475 - $173,500

US Zone 4: $137,275 - $161,500

At Coursera, we offer competitive, zone-based pay aligned to your location, experience, and role level across four U.S. pay zones. Our total rewards package goes beyond salary, with comprehensive health and wellness benefits, bonus and RSU equity programs, and global perks designed to help you grow and thrive wherever you are.

US Pay Zones

  • Zone 1 – San Francisco Bay Area only
  • Zone 2 – New York City Metro and Seattle Metro
  • Zone 3 – CA (outside of SF Bay Area), CO, CT, DC, GA, IL, MA, MD, NY/NJ (outside of NYC Metro), OR, RI, TX, VA, WA (outside of Seattle Metro)
  • Zone 4 – All other US locations not listed in Zones 1–3
 

Coursera is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to building a welcoming and inclusive workplace. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to legally protected characteristics and provide reasonable accommodations upon request at recruting@coursera.org. 

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