Overview
You're building and running the revenue operations function at Cerby, a security company that helps enterprises manage access to applications that traditional IAM tools can't reach. You report to the CRO and own everything from Salesforce architecture to forecasting models to GTM process design. This isn't a systems admin role - you're expected to think strategically about how the business scales.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Revenue Operations - Strategy + Execution |
| Focus Areas | Systems Architecture, Forecasting, Process Design, Analytics |
| Scope | Full GTM - Sales, Marketing, Customer Success |
| Team Size | Likely 0-2 direct reports initially |
| Reporting To | CRO (Nish I.) |
| Cross-Functional | Heavy collaboration with sales leadership, marketing ops, CS ops, finance |
Company Context
Stage: Well-funded (poster mentions $300M+ raised), likely Series C+
Size: 149 employees
Growth: Actively hiring GTM roles, poster emphasizes RevOps importance suggests scaling phase
Market Position: Operating in identity/access management security - competing against traditional IAM/PAM tools but serving a use case they don't cover (non-SAML/SCIM apps)
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Systems & Data (35%) | Strategic Projects (30%) | Reporting & Analysis (20%) | Meetings (15%)
Key Activities
- Salesforce Architecture: You own the CRM - fields, objects, workflows, integrations. Sales complains when something breaks or they can't find data. You're constantly balancing requests from different teams who all want custom fields and reports.
- Forecasting & Pipeline Analysis: Weekly forecast calls where you present pipeline coverage, conversion rates, and deal slippage. You build the models that predict whether the company hits its number. When sales misses, everyone looks at your data to understand why.
- Process Design: Sales says qualification is inconsistent, CS wants a better handoff process, marketing wants to know which campaigns drive revenue. You design the workflows, write the documentation, and deal with people not following them.
- Tool Stack Management: You evaluate, buy, and integrate tools - sales engagement platforms, data enrichment, BI tools, compensation software. You become the go-to person when Gong isn't syncing or someone needs Outreach access.
- Cross-Functional Projects: Marketing wants to change lead routing. Finance needs a new revenue recognition report. Sales leadership wants to restructure territories. You're in the middle of all of it, translating requirements and building solutions.
- Comp Plans & Metrics: You help design or administer quota structures, commission plans, and attainment tracking. Sales reps will email you asking why their comp calculation looks wrong.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- You're the bottleneck: Everyone needs something from you - a report, a field added, a process changed. You'll have 10 Slack threads going at once and never feel like you're making enough progress on strategic work.
- Messy data: Your analysis is only as good as the data. Reps don't update stages consistently, opportunities are missing close dates, accounts are duplicated. You spend hours cleaning data before you can analyze it.
- Conflicting priorities: Sales wants speed and flexibility. Finance wants controls and accuracy. Marketing wants attribution. You're constantly negotiating tradeoffs and someone's always unhappy with the compromise.
- Systems debt: You inherit technical debt - bad integrations, workflows that made sense 2 years ago, reports that break randomly. You spend time fixing the foundation before you can build new things.
- Change management: You design a new process, document it, train everyone. Two weeks later half the team is doing it the old way. Getting people to adopt new systems is exhausting.
What Success Looks Like
- Forecast accuracy: Your weekly forecast is within 10% of actual close by month-end. Leadership trusts your pipeline analysis.
- Clean data: Salesforce data quality improves - fewer missing fields, consistent stage progression, reliable reporting.
- Systems uptime: Integrations work, data syncs reliably, sales isn't blocked by technical issues.
- Strategic impact: You identify a pipeline bottleneck or conversion issue that leads to a process change that measurably improves performance.
- Autonomy: Over time, you build enough systems and documentation that you're not firefighting constantly - you can focus on strategic projects.
Who You Work With
Primary Stakeholders:
- CRO/VP Sales: Your direct report - you're their strategic partner on all things revenue operations. Weekly 1:1s focused on forecast, pipeline health, and major initiatives.
- Sales Leadership: Frontline managers who need dashboards, territory planning, and help coaching their teams using data.
- Marketing Ops: You work closely on lead routing, attribution, campaign reporting, and MQL definitions.
- CS Ops: Handoff processes, renewal tracking, expansion pipeline, and customer health scoring.
- Finance: Revenue recognition, bookings vs billings, commission reconciliation, and board reporting.
What They Need From You:
- Sales: Fast answers to data questions, tools that make their job easier, clear comp calculations
- Marketing: Proof their programs drive revenue, better lead quality metrics
- Finance: Accurate, auditable revenue data and forecasts they can take to the board
- Executive Team: Strategic insights on what's working and what's not in GTM
Requirements
- 5+ years in revenue operations, sales operations, or similar GTM operations role
- Expert in Salesforce - you can build workflows, reports, and dashboards without help from a consultant
- Strong in Excel/Google Sheets - pivot tables, VLOOKUPs, complex formulas are second nature
- Experience with common sales tools (Outreach/Salesloft, Gong/Chorus, ZoomInfo, etc.)
- SQL skills helpful but not required - you should be comfortable pulling and analyzing data
- Experience building forecasting models and pipeline analysis frameworks
- Can translate between technical and non-technical stakeholders - you explain API limitations to sales and business requirements to engineers
- Comfortable with ambiguity - this isn't a role with a clear playbook, you figure out what needs to be built
- Security or enterprise B2B SaaS experience preferred - you understand complex sales cycles and multiple stakeholders
Role-Specific Context
Why This Role Matters Here: The poster says "Your RevOps hire matters more than your next AE" - that's unusual. It signals the company is at an inflection point where operational excellence matters more than just adding headcount. They've raised significant capital ($300M+) and need someone who can build systems that scale.
Reporting Relationship: You report directly to the CRO, which is ideal. You're at the table for strategic decisions, not just taking orders from sales leadership. The poster mentions the CRO is "genuinely one of the best people I've ever worked with" - take that with a grain of salt, but direct access to revenue leadership matters.
The Security Angle: Cerby sells to enterprises dealing with identity and access management. Your buyers are likely security-conscious, have long procurement processes, and require detailed audit trails. This affects your systems - you need strong data governance, deal audit trails, and probably more detailed opportunity tracking than a typical SaaS company.
Building vs Maintaining: This is a "build" role, not a "maintain" role. You're designing the operating system for revenue, not just keeping existing processes running. Expect to spend your first 90 days auditing what exists, identifying gaps, and building a roadmap.